Stuff You Never Noticed in Album Covers

Could've sworn we already had a thread similar to this, but I'm damned if I can find it now. This might go over like a lead balloon anyway but what the hell.

Has anyone ever "discovered" a forgotten/hidden detail in the cover of an album you've owned for years 'n' years? For example...

I've owned Dokken's Under Lock and Key since it was a new release in 1985, in two different formats (cassette and CD). Yet it wasn't till recently that I realized the "key" shaped "doorway" behind the band members on the front cover is actually a cut out of the Dokken logo turned on its side.


(for best results, tilt head to the left)

Mind....blown. Or maybe I'm just not as observant as I thought I was.

Anyone else looked at the cover of an album they've had forever and suddenly went, "Holy sh*t, I never noticed that before!"? Share your experience, please!

I never noticed that either!

The KISS Betty just to the left of Ace's right boot appears to be "a floating head".   After scrutinizing the album cover, my guess is she is behind the platform ?

Yeah, Keith....never noticed the Dokken logo thing on that cover.

^^ A floating head surrounded by the fog!! Wooooo, creepy!

I used to have Mercyful Fate- The Beginning on cassette. The one thing I really hated about cassettes was when they put the artwork on the cover, they would shrink it either with the top half with the artwork and band name and album on the bottom or in this case have the tiniest artwork right in the middle of the cassette so you couldn't even make out what the image was. For years I had no idea what that really was in the middle, until I got the remastered cd which you can see is a blown up version. Oh... Its a volcano resembling hell, now I get it   

This was the cassette I had which was a lot smaller


And heres the remastered version, so much clearer haha


Although looking at it now, I realize they are both completely different pictures but of the same thing....ugh.... close enough   

The best ones would really be some of the Maiden ones like Killers, Somewhere In Time and Seventh Son. Tons of hidden stuff in those and on the back overs as well.

Wasn't there a name or date or some such nonsense on the Winger s/t cover. Could have sworn we discussed that one elsewhere...

Another of discussion was the rear cover of Nirvana's Nevermind, the Kiss album in the collage...

I used to think the Ocean Machine: Biomech cover was actually some machine, but I finally realized what it really was years later after some intent curiosity.



And I think I know what this is, but I STILL may not be sure...

If you look closely @ the little rectangles in the lower right hand corner of the first Winger album cover, you can see the word "Sahara" ... which was supposed to be the band name at one time ...when they decided to go by Winger instead, they did a half assed airbrush job to remove it from the artwork.

I have looked & looked at that monkey pic on the back of "Nevermind" and have never seen the "hidden KISS"...

Fat Freddy wrote:

If you look closely @ the little rectangles in the lower right hand corner of the first Winger album cover,  you can see the word "Sahara" ... which was supposed to be the band name at one time ...when they decided to go by Winger instead, they did a half assed airbrush job to remove it from the artwork.

I have looked & looked at that monkey pic on the back of "Nevermind" and have never seen the "hidden KISS"...

I'll have to check into these. I never really gave them a close scrutiny.

On the back of the Scorpions' "Sting in the Tail" CD, the track listing is printed in mostly white lettering, except for one letter in almost every song title, which is in red.

If you put all the red letters together, it spells out "IT ROCKS."

This isn't exactly an album cover detail, but it just dawned on me a little while ago...

If you look @ the fine print on any of Twisted Sister's post-reunion release CDs (i.e. the Club Daze comps, Twisted Christmas, etc.) the copyright info is registered to "JEDMA Associates," which I guess is the band's own little corporation which controls their publishing/etc.

It didn't occur to me till today out of the blue that the "JEDMA" name comes from the first initial of each Twisted Sister band member's name:

J - Jay Jay French
E - Eddie Ojeda
D - Dee Snider
M - Mark Mendoza
A - A.J. Pero

...yeah, I know. I need to get out of the house more often.

I'm just trying to figure out how you missed the Dokken logo on the cover of Under Lock and Key for 30 years...

S.D. wrote:

I'm just trying to figure out how you missed the Dokken logo on the cover of Under Lock and Key for 30 years...

I guess I was so dazzled by the hair and the day-glo outfits they were wearin' on that cover that I simply missed those finer details

Nah, but seriously, I'd had that album on cassette for so many years, and of course they squash the album cover pics down so small to fit 'em into a cassette insert that you'd barely even look at the art.

When I upgraded to CD, it simply went on the shelf. I'd "seen" the cover a thousand times but obviously I'd never really looked at it.

Maybe if I'd had it on vinyl back in the it would've been more obvious.

It's okay, I'll fess up.

I never noticed the strings on the cover of The Number Of The Beast.



I saw the strings on the marionette the devil is controlling...but I never noticed there were strings going from Eddie's fingers to the devil, I just thought he was reaching out toward you.

S.D. wrote:

I'm just trying to figure out how you missed the Dokken logo on the cover of Under Lock and Key for 30 years...

I never noticed this as well.

I always got the Dokken album b/c I always disliked that they turned the logo sideways to make it look like a half assed key doorway; so it always actually stood out like the proverbial thumb. As for the Maiden cover, I read years back that there is supposed to be some meaning as to why Derek Riggs painted it that way. But, it's been so many years and I just can't remember. It might be like Dio's Holy Diver cover where "appearances aren't what they seem to be" or some such thing.

It might have been James B. or another poster here that mentioned Priest's "Point of Entry" American cover looks like legs leading up to the point of entry of a female. I never thought of it that way, just thought that it was the worst cover in their whole catalog.

I don't get the first Pretty Maids cover. What the hell is going on there? Is it supposed to be a visual representation of the title? Is she trapped under a coffin or something?

I never noticed until moments ago (while looking for some IM stuff on ebay) how much Eddie (on the cover of A Real Live Dead One) looks like the monster on the wing of the plane in Twilight Zone: The Movie.

Mega-ultra-necro thread bump:

I saw a post today in one of my FB groups for music collectors/geeks about Paul Stanley's 1978 solo album (Paul turned 70 today). The guy posted a pic of his first-press CD of the album (from 1988) and mentioned that there was a misprint in the track listing -- the song "Wouldn't You Like to Know Me" is mis-identified on the back cover and in the booklet as "Wouldn't You Like Me to Know."

I had never heard of this before, and my copy of that CD is also an oldie (pre-remasters) so I went upstairs to dig mine out and ... son of a bitch, it has the misprint too. I've had this CD for quite a few years, but I never noticed!  

The error was corrected on later CD pressings so I doubt that my copy is particularly rare or valuable (probably not) but at least I learned something new today.