Revealed: hidden messages on classic album covers

6 December 2025, 15:00

Which artists have left subtle messages in their record artwork for fans to discover. Radio X looks for the clues in records by Bowie, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and more...

1. David Bowie - Blackstar: release date 8th January 2016

   Bowie's final album was released just two days before the legendary musician died, giving extra emotional weight to the music. While fans tried to decipher the lyrical content for clues to Bowie's state of mind during recording, the brilliant artwork by Jonathan Barnbrook also held some secrets. It took several months for people to realise that the die-cut section on the vinyl sleeve would reveal a starfield when held up to direct sunlight...

2. Led Zeppelin - In Through The Out Door: release date 24th August 1979 (UK)

   Led Zep’s final album to be released before drummer John Bonham’s death was an elaborate affair: there were six different sleeves designed by Storm Thorgerson of celebrated art house Hipgnosis, each featuring a different angle of the same bar-room scene.

   

   The album was wrapped in brown paper, so you didn’t know which one you’d picked. However…

   If you applied water to the black and white inner sleeve, colours magically appeared! It was an old trick stolen from little kids’ painting books.

3. This Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat: release date 30th January 1968

   The original artwork to the 1968 album White Light/White Heat appears to be pure black… but if you look closely you can see a very faint image of a skull tattoo on a disembodied shoulder.

   

   It belonged to the actor Joe Spencer, who was one of Andy Warhol’s “discoveries” - and it’s thought the black-on-black design was a Warhol idea. The image is much clearer on this 2013 "deluxe edition".

   

4. The Rolling Stones - Their Satanic Majesties Request: release date 8th December 1967

   On the famous cover of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, photographer Michael Cooper gave a namecheck to the band’s biggest “pop rivals”, with a doll wearing a fan-made sweatshirt that said “Welcome The Rolling Stones”. Later in 1967, Cooper shot the cover for the Stones’ psychedelic album Their Satanic Majesties Request...

   

   ...And he included a reciprocal shout out to the Fabs, courtesy of their faces hidden in the folds of material and flowers.

   

5. Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV: release date 8th November 1971

   Never mind the backwards messages, here’s the clincher. If you open up the gatefold to Led Zep IV, you get this classic image of a hermit on a hill (buying a Stairway To Heaven, presumably). But if you place the image by a mirror...

   You can see a "horned beast" in the rocks. Can’t you? It’s obvious!

   

6. Beastie Boys - Licensed To Ill: release date 15th November 1986

   The cover to the trio’s debut features a stupid visual joke of a plane crunching into the side of a mountain. But look closer for a puerile message.

   

   Hidden (in plain sight) is the plane’s serial number: 3MTA3. What happens if you reverse it? You get EATME. Nice.

   

7. Paul and Linda McCartney - Ram: release date 17th May 1971

   Not long after the stupidly daft “Paul Is Dead” rumour that gripped hippies in the US in 1969, Macca left a real hidden message the cover of his 1971 album, Ram...

   

   L.I.L.Y. stands for “Linda I Love You”.

   

   • Read more: "Paul Is Dead": Inside music's weirdest hoax

8. The Beatles - Revolver: release date 5th August 1966

   Klaus Voormann, a friend of The Beatles from their days in Hamburg at the beginning of the 1960s drew the striking cover for the Fabs’ 1966 album Revolver.

   

   He created the collage out of a number of photos of the band (some of which appear on the back cover of the previous album, Rubber Soul) and Klaus himself appears on the front cover, just underneath the drawing of John’s mouth.

   

   And, to complete the circle, when Voormann painted the elaborate cover artwork for The Beatles' Anthology series in 1995, he included a "torn" section of the Revolver cover that included a self-portrait showing the artist as he looked in the present day!

   

9. Iron Maiden - Somewhere In Time: release date 29th September 1986

   Derek Riggs concocted the memorable artwork for Britain’s greatest Heavy Metal export, including their hideous mascot Eddie. For 1988’s Somewhere In Time, the cover art incorporated a huge number of references to science fiction stories and movies, plus previous Maiden sleeves. They’re all logged here if you’re interested...

   

   But our favourite comes in the bottom left hand corner, in which a banner is hung in a shop behind the future-Terminator Eddie. If you reverse it, you see the message “THIS IS A VERY BORING PAINTING”. Time for another cuppa, Derek?

   

10. Mansun - Six: release date 7th September 1998

    The Chester band made a splash with their debut album Attack Of The Grey Lantern, but their second album Six was a conceptual affair that baffled the Britpop generation. The cover features many cryptic clues to the record’s concept, including Patrick McGoohan as Number 6 from the TV series The Prisoner, and Winnie The Pooh, whose creator A. A. Milne also wrote Now We Are Six. The track Witness To Murder Part II featured a narration from former Doctor Who Tom Baker, who is depicted on the cover too. And there’s also a little TARDIS!