10. Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass - Whipped Cream & Other Delights. The other delights, unfortunately, are mainly covered up by the whipped cream, but this is still vintage goodness.
9. Betty Davis - They Say I'm Different. The woman once married to Miles (hence how she got the movie star-esque name) has two of the sexiest album covers ever. We can't explain why we love our #9 choice... or why we chose it over her possibly sexier "Nasty-Gal" photo...
8. The Pixies - Surfer Rosa. We've listened to this album about 300 times and we still don't know who Surfer Rosa is or why Kim Deal gets upset when Black Francis yells "you fucking die." But yeah, gotta love the field-hockey-players-and-the-coach sex scandal story. Oh, and the cover ain't bad either... and those catchy tunes... and... and...
7. Shakira - Oral Fixation. With a title like that, you'd think Shakira wants to be treated like a sex object-- but look, there's a baby! And this sluttastic photo is playfully Biblical, so you know she's a good Catholic girl. Right?
6. Blondie - Parallel Lines. For Halloween one year, we had a girl dress as Debbie Harry and we joined her in the easy-as-hell hipster uniform worn by the guys in this photo-- and damn it if we weren't sexy as all hell. The other night, we saw Debbie Harry play a fundraiser with a local high school band, doing bizarre and funky versions of "Heart of Glass" and other classics from that album. (We had a boner both nights.) Mainly, this cover is incredibly sexy thanks to the dudes with their shit-eating grins realizing how lucky they are to even be associated with a knockout like Debbie Harry, who makes this one helluva photo with that scowl contrasting their gleeful faces.
(Trivia: what future famous person picked Debbie Harry up in his car one night when she was walking home from waitressing at Max's Kansas City. Hint: he was a creep and she jumped out of the car at the next red light. Answer: Ted Bundy.)
5. The Strokes - Is This It? One could make about a dozen jokes about this album and its cover ("Heh heh... I bet they like to "Stroke" it to their own cover..." or "Is this it? Indeed, how come the album isn't as good as the cover?" for starters.) We'll just mention that whimpy Americans don't even have this picture on their 2001 records because it was deemed "too risque." So was the song New York City Cops-- but that's understandable, given 9/11 occurred just before the record's initially-planned release date.
4. Pulp - This Is Hardcore. A record with only one good song ("Like A Friend," and it isn't even the best of the two released versions)-- hey at least the cover makes for good wallpaper.
3. Ween - Chocolate and Cheese. Personally, we prefer the cover where they parody Leonard Cohen's Best of album using the Elephant Man, but these boobs are pretty sensational. Speaking of sensational, get a load of that belt! We might even wear that thing if it came our way...
2. The Cars - Candy-O. We're pretty sure this ain't no real woman, but for you anime freaks out there, this is one to get your keyboards sticky over. Ew, ew, ew-- pretend we didn't even say that. By the way, for some unimaginable reason, girls tend to get in the mood when The Cars come on the radio-- even if the song is "Let the Good Times Roll." FYI, dudes.
1. Roxy Music - Country Life. Their first US top 40 record (it went Top 5 in Britain), Roxy Music's Country Life is an obvious choice for #1 because of the near-nudity factor. (Of course, there are dozens of possible candidates for this list that have nudity in their covers, but they simply weren't as hot. Maybe for our Part Two someday...) Here's what Wikipedia has to tell us about this glorious photo:
The cover features two scantily-clad models, Constanze Karoli... and Eveline Grunwald. Bryan Ferry met them in Portugal and persuaded them to do the photo shoot as well as to help him with the words to the song "Bitter-Sweet". Although not credited for their photos they are credited on the lyric sheet for their German translation work.
The cover image was considered controversial in some countries such as the United States, Spain, and The Netherlands, where it was censored for release. As a result, a later American LP release of Country Life (available during the years 1975-80) featured a different cover shot. Instead of Karoli and Grunwald posed in front of some trees, the reissue used a photo from the album's back cover that featured only the trees.. Author Michael Ochs has described the result as the "most complete cover-up in rock history." [Wikipedia]
Honorable Mentions: Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking; Jennifer Lopez - On the 6; and one of the Slunt records. Suggestions are welcome for a follow-up list...
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