About 10 years ago Borders had a 5 for £20 offer with Naxos classical CDs. I'd selected 4 titles of works I wanted to hear, but was lost with a choice for a fifth, with several hundred titles to chose from. Then a coupling of two Vaughan Williams symphonies caught my eye, due to it featuring Atkinson Grimshaw's evocative Autumn Morning on the cover. I had no idea what the music sounded like.

That weekend I was on an early morning train journey in a virtually deserted train carriage, and dug out the said CD. The opening work, Symphony No. 5, was astounding - not only a brilliantly ethereal work, but recorded exceptionally well.

That one CD got me into discovering all kinds of other classical music. The other 4 CDs (which contained, truth be told, the more populist works) have hardly been listened to since.

Back in 1981, if Peter Saville had designed the sleeve for a reissue of Glyn Poole's "Milly Molly Mandy" which released the smell of catshit while it played, I would have bought it on 7", 12", cassette, DAT and Indian smoke signal.

As a result, I often ended up wasting my hard-stolen gluesniffing-money on post-punk-pap-piffle like "From The Hip" by Section 25 and "From Each.." by A Certain Ratio, whose only common denominator apart from their deceptive good looks was that they both sounded like hair-lipped donkeys trapped in a broken Leslie speaker at the bottom of a liftshaft.

Here's the original "Milly Molly Mandy" for your listening pleasure. May I suggest a noseful of freshly bagged Uhu to enhance your listening pleasure, sir.

I was listening to an album I bought on the strength of a cover. This was the image:

Did it live up the image? Of course, listen to this:
http://open.spotify.com/track/7vh70rRYO4sowSqV2HO3Px

She has a scarily beautiful voice

thank you Patrick

for the cover. I thought they were a bit shouty, Peel-shite northerners, but that clinched it for me to give them a proper go. How glad I was.

In The Court Of The Crimson King - King Crimson

Music In A Doll's House - Family

Warrior On The Edge Of Time - Hawkwind (the original vinyl cover opened up into a largish cardboard shield)

Led Zeppelin III

Octoberon - Barclay James Harvest

Yessongs - Yes (plus a host of other Roger Dean covers)

Sunburst Finish - Be Bop Deluxe

It's not something I do very often but I bought the Drop Nineteens album because of the cover:

I also recall buying a disco album from Woolworths that had on the cover
"The most amazing album since the invention of the phonogram wheee!" I couldn't resist it but I don't think I ever played it.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31725BRNA8L._SL500_AA240_.jpg

(Original cover)

I got their album "Private Cinema" just to own the artwork if nothing else and was pleasantly surprised by the music as well. It's sort of a cross between post rock and American alternative rock. A good find.

Is the only thing I can ever remember buying because I liked the cover. It would be laying it on a bit thick to say that the CD changed my life but it did lead me on to so many of the artists I now love, most importantly the master of jangly guitar and shit pottery cats Sir Matthew Of Sweet.

I bought this album because of the cover, I was too young..... But whenever album covers are mentioned this is the only one I can think of. I spent hours pouring over it while wondering what it all meant and listening to those "Fantastic" songs.

bought this about 1970 just because of the fab cover and absolutely hated it
and i've never listened to it since - perhaps i should revisit , as i find that i'm listening to and buying sounds that i would have avoided like the plague back in my teens.

But I finally got the Best of Del Shannon after being obsessed with the cover of one of his albums owned by my parents

I don't think I've bought many records without having at least some inkling of what they sounded like. But have become interested in an artist or a type of music, the cover often influences me when it comes to choosing which title to go for.

With ECM this can get a bit impossible because they're all so beautiful. This was my first John Surman record. With string quartet. I love that sleeve, and I love the album to this day.

My first Saint Etienne album was the collection Too young to die, bought because of an ad in a magazine. It has later been joined in my collection by just about every other Saint Etienne album ever made.

solely because of its cover. I was browsing the country section in HMV, saw this absolute vision of beauty and had to buy it. Thankfully the music lived up to the cover and I've been a confirmed fan since

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/B00006JOB6/sr=8-2/qid=12636716...