Xfm Manchester Schedule

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  The Strokes - Is This It

  Skinny jeaned, NYC nervy rock, depicted by a woman rubbing her bare arse with a PVC glove. The Americans couldn't handle it and replaced the image with an abstract pattern. LOSERS!

• 

  Roxy Music - Country Life

  Roxy frontman Bryan Ferry liked the ladies and the ladies liked him. The group soon earned a reputation for featuring striking models on their album sleeves, with 1974's Country Life being the most outrageous example. The girls names are Constanze Karoli and Eveline Grunwald, by the way, so stop treating them as objects, ok?

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  Goldfrapp - Supernature

  Modern disco diva Alison Goldfrapp looked stunning on the cover of her 2005 album.

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  Bloc Party - Intimacy

  Snogging. It's great isn't it? The sleeve of BP's 2008 album gets straight to the point.

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  The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers

  Oh, those Stones. The Greatest Rock And Roll Band In The World (copyright, The Rolling Stones) employed pop art figurehead Andy Warhol to come up with cover art for their 1971 album Sticky Fingers. The artist delivered a sleeve that featured a tightly-jeaned male crotch. Original pressings featured an actual zipper that invited curious purchasers to inspect the generously-filled slacks.

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  Black Crowes - Amorica

  More crotch madness. This time, for the band's 1994 album Amorica, a photo based on a cover from US smut bible Hustler. Some shops freaked and either sold copies that airbrushed out the pubes (ouch!) or even the entire fleshy area. 

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  Blink 182 - Enema Of The State

  Blink's 1999 album features a sexy nurse about to inflict some outrageous act on someone's personage, if the terrible pun of the title is anything to go by.

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  Divinyls - Divinyls

  The Aussie duo of Christina Amphlett and Mark McEntee had their biggest hit in 1991, thanks to the song I Touch Myself, which detailed Amphlett's enthusiasm for solitary, er, pursuits. The sex kitten vibe was carried over to the album cover art, which featured the singer dressed in what can only be described as a net, possibly on the verge of more self-abuse. You'll go blind, you know!

• 

  Fatboy Slim - Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars

  More crotches! Honestly, it's permanently below the belt with you lot, isn't it? This for Norman Cook's third album as the Fatboy in 2000.

• 

  Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking

  Naked girls melded together with their heads on fire. Yeah, that's quite shocking, Perry Farrell.

• 

  Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland

  Sir Jimi of Hendrix unveiled his masterpiece in 1968. It was an ambitious, multi-tracked affair, spanning four sides and cemented Hendrix as the master of psychedelic guitar rock. The record label decided to illustrate this achievement by arranging 19 naked ladies with strategically placed Hendrix album and single sleeves. Jimi was NOT pleased.

• 

  John Lennon And Yoko Ono - Two Virgins

  Put 'em away! The Beatle and his new muse declared their love to the world by going stark naked on the cover of their first album of experimental noise. Well, at least they were having a good time… but Paul McCartney was NOT impressed.

• 

  Kylie Minogue - Light Years

  OK, we're including Kylie on this Xfm list, cos she did go a bit indie at one point and made that record with the Manics. Anyway, this is her at the height of her "SexKylie" glory. 'Nuff said.

• 

  Liz Phair - Liz Phair

  For her fifth album in 2003, US singer songwriter ditched her "Riot Grrl" credentials and - according to her critics - "sold out", making a more mainstream album that showcased her hot new look. The music may have been open to some debate, but Phair was unequivocally easy on the eye.

• 

  Louis XIV - The Best Little Secrets Are Kept

  The San Diego band, much loved by Brandon Flowers, decided to run the track listing of their second album from 2007 on the cover - drawn on the body of a nekkid girl! Couple this with the none-more-sleazy lyrics to the hit Finding Out True Love Is Blind and you have a sexy classic.

• 

  Manowar - Anthology

  Speaking of being sexy, New York metal act Manowar knew a thing or to about appealing to the laydeez. Take a look at the sleeve this 1997 compilation, whose staging surely must have caused some kind of baby oil shortage in the North American region. Calm down, girls! (or boys, if you're into Saxon-age beefcake)

• 

  New Order - Get Ready

  What would you rather see - a young sexy girl in ripped jeans, photographed in sensuous black and white… or a group of 50-something blokes from Manchester? Designer Peter Saville agrees with you.

• 

  Pixies - Surfer Rosa

  The original title for the Boston band's 1988 album was going to be Gigantic, after the classic track. When the band saw Vaughan Oliver's design for the record, they changed the title to Surfer Rosa after worrying people would think the original moniker was referring to the dancer's impressive bazookas.

• 

  Placebo - Sleeping With Ghosts

  A reference to living with haunting memories, or the sordid business of phasomophilia? Only Brian Molko can tell us.

• 

  Prince - Lovesexy

  Following the success of SIgn 'O' The Times in 1987, Prince followed it up with a striking, dark record of grimy hip hop, which became known as The "Black" Album. He then decided the Devil had tempted him and withdrew the record, replacing it with the jollier Lovesexy. But, to show he still could court controversy, His Princeness appeared on the sleeve butt naked, sat in a huge flower, complete with suggestive (but alarmingly bent) pistil. Cheers for that.

• 

  Pulp - This Is Hardcore

  Airbushed shaggery packaged Jarvis and co's 1998 album. Porn ain't pretty, you know.

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  Queens Of The Stone Age - Queens Of The Stone Age

  Proving, once again, that rock and roll is aimed squarely at the groinal regions. All this for the debut from Josh Homme's rock crew.

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  Red Hot Chili Peppers - Mother's Milk 

  Originally, the cover to the Chili Peppers' 1989 album was to feature two women - Anthony Kiedis's girlfriend, actress Ione Skye and model Alaine Dawn. Only Dawn's image appeared on the finished product - the model was alarmed to see that's she'd been chosen for the final cut, her nips covered by tiny Chili Pepperses.

• 

  Roger Waters - The Pros And Cons Of Hitch Hiking

  Pink Floyd man goes solo and employs regular collaborator Gerald Scarfe to rustle up some nudy outrage. Do you think she got to where she wanted to go?

• 

  Sebastien Tellier - Sexuality

  From the city of love, Paris, France… M. Tellier is all poised to take a long horse ride… Into lady country.

• 

  Steel Panther - Balls Out

  A band that work entirely with single entendres, the Panther's 2011 album sleeve ran afoul of the Advertising Standards Authority in Britain, who said that ads for the record "...was sexually suggestive... where the woman was seen dangling two silver balls between her legs in a way that we considered was suggestive of male genitalia." Like, duh.

• 

  Suede - Suede

  Metrosexual hijinks clothed the sleeve for Brett Anderson's 1993. The murky photography mirrored the murky sexual ambiguity of the lyrics. We think.

• 

  Sugar Ray - Lemonade And Brownies

  Some Playboy-esque posing announced the arrival of the Californian pop metal band  back in 1995. What a lovely... rug.

• 

  The Rolling Stones - Undercover

  The Stones - now old hands at the smutty and controversial album cover - unveiled this lewd sleeve for their 1993 album Undercover. A limited edition design had peel-off stickers. The pervs.

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  The Scorpions - Lovedrive

  Serial offenders when it comes to the "sexy" cover, German metallers The Scorpions hit a peak (or a low, depending on your point of view) with their 1979 album Lovedrive. Designed by Storm Thorgerson of barking mad designers Hipgnosis (who cut their teeth on Pink Floyd's albums), it's either a masterpiece of bizarre erotica, or a waking nightmare. We're not sure which.

• 

  Whitesnake - Lovehunter

  God bless heavy metal. The sleeve for the famed cock-rockers' 1979 album was painted by respected artist Chris Achilleos (who used to do covers for Doctor Who novels, for heaven's sake!). However, the resulting brickbats thrown at the crassness of the image in the right-on late 1970s meant Achilleos would steer clear of the rock world for many years after that.

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  Belle And Sebastian - Tigermilk

  Yes, it's a topless woman in a bath, apparently breast-feeding a toy tiger. But there's something strangely sexy about the sleeve for B&S's 1996 debut album.

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  Robert Palmer - Double Fun

  The late Robert Palmer was such a dirty old beggar, God bless him. One can presume that the cover to his 1978 album indicated that RP was anticipating some pool-based naughtiness and not that he was curator of his local leisure centre's lost property office.

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  The Smiths - The Smiths

  For the band's 1984 debut. Morrissey cropped an image of beefcake actor Joe Dallesendro admiring his own six-pack, taken from the Andy Warhol-sponsored movie Flesh. This everyday tale of New York hustler folk aroused much outrage on its release in 1968.