It’s unclear which artist first uttered the phrase, “It’s all about the music” – a quick Google search reveals it being deployed by indie bands, techno DJs, heavy metallers and, winningly, the Icelandic entrant in the 2024 Eurovision song contest – but whoever it was was lying. Pop music in its multifarious forms is never all about the music, nor has it ever been. It was always inexorably linked with visual imagery (in the 1920s, country star Jimmie Rodgers underlined his working-man authenticity by being photographed in his brakeman’s overalls years after he quit working on the railroads; the mystique of Billie Holiday or Charlie Parker was at least partly defined by William Gottlieb’s photographs in jazz magazine DownBeat), but there’s no doubt the relationship was supercharged by rock’n’roll’s arrival. America was less shocked by what Elvis Presley sounded like than how he looked: the relatively long hair, the clothes that borrowed as heavily from Black culture as his music, the movements critics compared to a burlesque dancer or an animal. Over in suburban north London, a schoolboy called Reg Dwight gawped at a photo of Elvis long before he heard him sing. “Compared to people in Pinner… he might as well have been bright green with antennae,” he recalled. Look at any photo of Elton John (as Reg would become) in the 1970s – including the Terry O’Neill shot here – and it’s tempting to say you can tell that rock’n’roll arrived in his world image-first.

Meanwhile, at their press conferences in the early 60s, the Beatles spent more time fielding questions about their haircuts than their music. Prior to the drug busts or the terrifying events at Altamont captured here, the outrage caused by the Rolling Stones revolved largely around their appearance. The same was true of Jimi Hendrix, who didn’t set his guitar on fire because it improved its sound, but because he understood that the images carried almost as much weight as the music.

Photographs contextualise pop; they potentiate it. Sometimes, as in the case of the stills here that capture Sinéad O Connor tearing up a photograph of the pope on US TV, or Geri Halliwell at the 1997 Brit awards, or Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake at the 2004 Super Bowl half-time show, they drown it out entirely. Everyone remembers the photo being ripped up, the Union Jack dress and the “wardrobe malfunction” – and the ensuing furores – but it’s harder to recall what songs they were performing at the time (a cover of Bob Marley’s War, Who Do You Think You Are and Timberlake’s Rock Your Body). To borrow a phrase from the late Clive James: you couldn’t hear for looking.

Some of the most intriguing photos shown here are fascinating because they seem to tell a very different story from the accepted narrative about an artist. The well-worn line about the Stooges is that they were a band ignored, reviled or dismissed in the late 60s and early 70s, who had to wait for the arrival of punk for recognition, but Tom Copi’s shot of Iggy Pop being hoisted aloft by adoring fans in 1970 captures a moment of unalloyed triumph and hero-worship. The image of the Sex Pistols and their acolytes being interviewed by Bill Grundy makes you wonder how these people could ever have been deemed a threat to the very fabric of British society. The swastika armband notwithstanding, they look more like a bunch of rowdy schoolkids. And did rapper Tupac Shakur realise how camp and homoerotic David LaChapelle’s images of him would be? Was he deliberately playing with his macho image, or simply bowled over by LaChapelle’s apparently limitless capacity to persuade his subjects to run with an improbable idea? It was, after all, LaChapelle who photographed Courtney Love as a modern-day pieta in 2006, with what appeared to be the dead body of her late husband, Kurt Cobain, draped over her lap.

The images here broadly fall into two categories: posed shots – David Bowie in full Aladdin Sane drag; Grace Jones as an art deco sculpture; the Dixie Chicks, as they were still known in 2003, daubed with the abuse and criticism heaped on to them in their wake of some mild criticism of the then US president George W Bush – and photographs and screengrabs that capture an event. It’s noticeable that there are fewer of the former from recent years. That may well say something about the changes in the way we consume pop music. One of the effects of streaming’s rise has been to dramatically decontextualise music. What you gain in abundance and availability, you lose in detail: you get a song, a line of text telling you its title and the name of the performer, and a couple of passport photo-sized images of the cover artwork and the artist. In addition, the traditional music press – which would have been the original destination for a lot of the photographs here – has almost completely vanished. Over the same period, we’ve seen a rise in artists with no discernible image whatsoever. In an era when #relatability to your audience is seen as being of paramount importance, looking exactly like your fans – rather than inciting your fans into changing their appearance so it apes yours – has become a commercial virtue. Whatever other strengths they may have, there aren’t any iconic images of Ed Sheeran or Lewis Capaldi or Benson Boone or Noah Kahan because … well, they just don’t look iconic, they look wilfully ordinary.

Then again, think about the audiences flocking to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, dressed in outfits corresponding to specific moments in her career. Consider this year’s biggest breakout pop star, Chappell Roan: her success may be founded on her songwriting’s ability to fix the messy emotions of teens and early twenty­somethings, but the fact that she would seem pretty extraordinary-looking in any pop era hasn’t harmed her. It still isn’t all about the music, nor is it ever likely to be. AP

* * *

Johnny Cash, 1968

By Jim Marshall

Johnny Cash’s reputation as the romantic outlaw of American music is rooted in At Folsom Prison, the live album recorded in front of inmates at the California state prison on 13 January 1968. It didn’t matter that he never served a prison term (only a few overnights in jail for minor offences). As his brother Tommy once put it: “He always identified with the underdog.” The album – certified gold within two months of its release – was a big turning point for Cash, whose career had been waning as he struggled with drug and alcohol addiction. He subsequently became an outspoken campaigner for prison reform. GS

* * *

Grace Jones, 1978

By Jean-Paul Goude

Grace Jones cemented her role as pop’s extraordinary outlier via a number of celebrated album covers in the 80s, created with her then-partner, French photographer and graphic designer Jean-Paul Goude, and focusing on her face. But in this 1978 New York magazine shoot (later used for her 1985 greatest hits album, Island Life), he zooms out, to showcase her statuesque physique. It’s a trick, though, created using a montage of images of Jones in multiple positions, repainted over and over. “What I’m interested in is the illusion of reality,” Goude said in 2007. Somehow, via Jones, its impossibility makes perfect sense. MC

* * *

James Brown, 1985

By David Corio

Here James Brown, known as the hardest-working man in showbusiness, jumps in the air during a gig at the Hammersmith Odeon in London in 1985. The American funk music icon was already 53, and for a decade his career had been faltering, amid addiction issues and legal run-ins. Still, his energy as a performer remained undiminished. A Guardian critic at the time described the show as “a display of the quixotic, quirky and singular genius of Brown himself”. GS

* * *

Donna Summer, 1977

Photographer unknown

Donna Summer was destined for success. Growing up in Boston in the 50s, her neighbours would lend her money with the caveat that she’d pay them back once she became a famous singer. By 1977, Summer, captured here at her peak, had been anointed the Queen of Disco after a run of Giorgio Moroder-assisted singles, including the orgiastic Love to Love You Baby. While they sparkled like disco balls, 1977’s neon I Feel Love added a futuristic halo and further cemented Summer as an icon of a genre rooted in gay and Black history. MC

* * *

Annie Lennox, 1982

By Lewis Ziolek

When it launched in 1981 as a 24-hour music video channel, MTV hit a snag: there weren’t enough videos to play. By 1983 it was taking its chances on relatively unknown British bands, including Eurythmics, AKA Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox, whose single Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) became an instant MTV classic. Part of its appeal was Lennox’s cropped hair and suit (seen in this photoshoot for the album), creating a moment of beguiling androgyny. MC

* * *

Woody Guthrie, 1941

By Lester Balog

The music of American folk legend Woody Guthrie was rooted in his leftwing convictions: his best-known song, This Land is Your Land, was composed as an alternative national anthem with an explicit socialist message. During the second world war, Guthrie began to perform with “This Machine Kills Fascists” on his guitar, written on a sticker, scratched into the back of the instrument or, as in this famous photo, painted in big, bold letters. The image, which perfectly sums up the way Guthrie fused art and politics, was captured by Lester Balog, a labour activist and founding member of the Workers’ Film and Photo League in the US. GS

* * *

Iggy Pop, 1970

By Tom Copi

We probably have Iggy Pop to thank for crowd-surfing. The lead singer of the Stooges has been credited with inventing the move at the Cincinnati summer pop festival in June 1970. The moment is captured in this striking image of Iggy: shirtless, of course, and pointing ahead with a silver-gloved hand. Photographer Tom Copi (who had attended the same high school as the punk star in Ann Arbor, Michigan) recalled that someone then handed Iggy a jar of peanut butter which he smeared on his chest before throwing handfuls of it into the crowd – “to their mighty amusement”. GS

* * *

Elton John, 1975

By Terry O’Neill

Terry O’Neill first shot Elton John in 1972, kickstarting a creative relationship that would include more than 5,000 pictures, ranging from backstage candids to him at home feeding his cat. The most famous were taken at LA’s Dodger Stadium at the peak of his success. Watched by a sea of faces, with Elton the bejewelled ringmaster, it’s one of rock’n’roll’s most enduring images. Reminiscing years later, O’Neill said, “Elton said to the audience, ‘If you are wondering who this fellow is running around with a camera, it’s Terry O’Neill’ and the crowd roared! I’ll never forget that.” MC

* * *

The Beatles, 1969

By Ethan A Russell

With tensions in the band running high, and having withdrawn from the live circuit completely, in January 1969 the Beatles staged an unannounced rooftop gig at their Apple Corps HQ on London’s Savile Row. As fans and passersby, many on their lunch breaks, realised what was happening, the police were also alerted and tried to shut it down. After a third and final take of single Get Back, John Lennon joked, “I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we’ve passed the audition.” It would be the band’s final public performance, with Lennon quitting eight months later. MC

* * *

Sex Pistols, 1976

Today show (screenshot)

This is the moment British punk rock went mainstream – when the Sex Pistols swore on live TV. The up-and-coming band were a last-minute booking on Bill Grundy’s Today show after a cancellation by Queen (Freddie Mercury had to go to the dentist). It was a tense interview – observed from behind by, among others, Siouxsie Sioux and fellow Banshees member Steve Severin – with clearly no love lost and plenty of jibes from both sides. “What a fucking rotter,” were the concluding words of guitarist Steve Jones. A slew of complaints and a tabloid frenzy ensued. The band and the punk movement went on to bigger things; Grundy’s career never recovered. GS

* * *

Aretha Franklin, 1969

By Michael Ochs

As a child, Aretha Franklin spent a lot of time in church watching her reverend father preach. Inspired by the fluctuating speed and dynamics of his delivery, Franklin began to carve out her own singing style, a talent curtailed by her first label, Columbia, who saw her as a jazz singer. In 1966, Atlantic boss Jerry Wexler swooped in and took her to the label’s studio (seen here) and back to her roots. As he recounted in Craig Werner’s book Higher Ground: “I took her to church, sat her down at the piano and let her be herself.” Franklin, quickly crowned the Queen of Soul, flourished, using her voice to channel a deeper connection with believers and nonbelievers alike. MC

* * *

Sinéad O’Connor, 1992

By Yvonne Hemsey

Released in 1990, Sinéad O’Connor’s version of Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U quickly turned a protest singer into a pop star. Fast forward two years and she was still refusing to toe the line, despite a prestigious slot on SNL. Towards the end of Bob Marley’s War, as she sang, “We have confidence in the victory of good over evil”, O’Connor, who was raised Catholic, tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II. Staring down the camera, she added, “Fight the real enemy”, alluding to the cover-up of sexual abuse, including her own, in the name of religion. The controversy ended her career in the US, but O’Connor continued to draw attention to the issue. It wouldn’t be until 2001 that the pope publicly acknowledged child sex-abuse in the church, vindicating her bold stance. MC

* * *

Miles Davis, 1986

By Irving Penn

For his 1986 album Tutu, Miles Davis hired Irving Penn, who was famed for his innovative approach to photographing celebrities including Marlene Dietrich and Pablo Picasso. This extreme closeup of the trumpeter’s face was among a series of black and white images included on the record jacket. It’s a suitably bold and unusual portrait of a musician who changed the sound of jazz for ever. GS

* * *

Jimi Hendrix, 1967

By Jim Marshall

For the closing night gig at the Monterey pop festival in June 1967, Jimi Hendrix wanted to pull out all the stops. His band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, were big in the UK but had not yet made it stateside. There was backstage squabbling with the Who’s Pete Townshend over who would get to go first; Hendrix lost the coin toss. So he found another way to make an impression – with an explosive set culminating in burning his guitar during a rendition of Wild Thing. “You sacrifice things you love,” Hendrix later said. “I love my guitar.” A countercultural icon was born. GS

* * *

Run DMC and the Beastie Boys, 1987

By Lynn Goldsmith

Here the members of two groups from the golden age of hip-hop – DJ Hurricane, Ad-Rock, MCA and Mike D of the Beastie Boys, and Run-DMC’s Run, Jam Master Jay and DMC – are gathered in a portrait by celebrity photographer Lynn Goldsmith. The groups were tight: that year – on the back of smash hit albums for both bands in 1986, Licensed to Ill and Raising Hell respectively – the Beastie Boys joined Run-DMC as supporting act on the US-wide concert tour Together Forever. The success of the tour cemented their shared status as East Coast hip-hop legends. GS

* * *

Stormzy, 2019

By Samir Hussein

Stormzy had made headlines even before he stepped on to Glastonbury’s fabled Pyramid Stage: that he was about to become the first Black British solo artist to headline was both celebrated and criticised, with the thinly veiled racism recalling the outrage that had greeted Jay-Z’s headline slot 11 years earlier. His Bansky-designed, union jack-adorned stab-proof vest perfectly encapsulated a paranoid and fearful country, while anchoring a set uninterested in wearing its politics lightly. MC

* * *

Rolling Stones, 1969

Photographer unknown

“It was perhaps rock’n’roll’s all-time worst day,” wrote one critic. On 6 December 1969, a free festival headlined by the Rolling Stones at Altamont Speedway in California – billed as a west coast Woodstock – descended into disaster. After a late venue change, Hells Angels were called in to guard the extremely low stage, in exchange for $500 worth of beer. There were violent scuffles all day, culminating in an Angel stabbing and killing concert-goer Meredith Hunter during the Stones’ performance. Three other people died: two in a hit-and-run, one in an accidental drowning. The end of the Age of Aquarius was proclaimed. GS

* * *

The Chicks, 2003

By James White

Onstage in London in March 2003, nine days before the US-led invasion of Iraq, Natalie Maines of the Chicks (FKA the Dixie Chicks) gave a frustrated anti-war speech detailing her shame at being from the same state as then president George W Bush. Her words travelled and the band’s career – 2002’s Home album had sold 6m copies in America alone – imploded. Country radio stations blacklisted them, they received death threats and, in Louisiana, protesters used a tractor to destroy their CDs. Two months later, the band appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, their naked bodies daubed with a litany of the phrases used. “It definitely was the most bold thing we had ever done,” Emily Strayer said in 2013. “I felt like we knew the gravity of that shoot while it was happening.” MC

* * *

Patti Smith, 1975

By Robert Mapplethorpe

The cover for Horses, Patti Smith’s debut studio album, is widely considered one of the best ever, which is only fitting for a groundbreaking record that kicked off the punk rock movement and has influenced countless artists. The simple black and white portrait of the musician in typically androgynous style was shot by Robert Mapplethorpe, a close friend and former lover of Smith’s. “When I look at it now,” she wrote in her 2010 memoir Just Kids, “I never see me. I see us.” GS

* * *

Ginger Spice, 1997

By Richard Young

Armed with a union jack tea towel and a dream, Geri Halliwell concocted one of the most iconic images in pop culture history. Worried her outfit wasn’t special enough for the Spice Girls’ victory lap performance at the 1997 Brit awards, Halliwell, with the help of her sister, stitched the tea towel to a plain black Gucci dress to fit the prevailing national optimism. With the lad-centric, beer-swilling Britpop era teetering, her strident pose became synonymous with the band’s Girl Power mantra, ushering in a new era of Cool Britannia and influencing a raft of future female pop stars, in a country on the cusp of New Labour. MC

* * *

Miley Cyrus, 2013

Photographer unknown

Miley Cyrus’s first bid to dismantle her wholesome Disney image in 2010 via her knowingly titled Can’t Be Tamed album was met with a shrug. Three years later she upped the ante with controversy-baiting single We Can’t Stop. For the 2013 MTV Video Music awards, pop’s enfant terrible was paired with Robin Thicke, then having huge success with Blurred Lines, a predatory Pharrell-production that hinged on the line “I know you want it”. Their performance caused controversy, with Cyrus criticised for both cultural appropriation and corrupting the nation’s youth with her twerking. “You’re thinking about it more than I thought about it when I did it,” was her blunt response. MC

* * *

Tupac Shakur, 1996

By David LaChapelle

Tupac Shakur was photographed by David LaChapelle just months before his – to this day unsolved – murder by drive-by shooting in Las Vegas in September 1996. (A former Los Angeles gang leader was charged with the killing last year but the trial has been delayed.) The 25-year-old rapper had recently been released from prison (on bail pending appeal on a sexual abuse case), which gave LaChapelle the idea for a photoshoot with the theme of “becoming clean”. A shirtless Shakur covered in soap bubbles is among the best known of the photographer’s high-concept, high-gloss celebrity portraits. GS

* * *

Taylor v Kanye, 2009

By Christopher Polk

Perhaps the most newsworthy thing about Kanye West’s recent album, Vultures 2, is that it once again references long-term muse Taylor Swift. Fifteen years since West interrupted the then 19-year-old’s acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music awards, to claim Beyoncé should have won, the pair’s opposing trajectories have been resolutely intertwined. When the feud reignited in 2016 over a derogatory lyric aimed at Swift by West, the Kim Kardashian-assisted fallout, including name-calling, apparently edited recordings of phone conversations and a host of social media hashtags, inspired Swift’s darker-hued 2017 Reputation era. MC

* * *

Joni Mitchell, 1968

By Jack Robinson

This portrait of a fresh-faced Joni Mitchell in a long boho-style dress with an acoustic guitar in her lap was shot by fashion photographer Jack Robinson for the February 1969 issue of Vogue. The Canadian musician had just released her debut album, Song to a Seagull, and was emerging as a name to watch on the hippy folk scene. In the subsequent decades she explored styles including rock, jazz, electronic and pop, and grew increasingly acclaimed for the sophistication of both her lyrics and her musical arrangements. Today Mitchell is recognised as one of the most influential singer-songwriters of all time. GS

* * *

Bob Marley, 1978

Photographer unknown

Throughout the 70s, Jamaica was riven by a violent political conflict between the democratic socialist People’s National party and the conservative Jamaica Labour party. Thousands were killed or injured – including Bob Marley, who was shot in 1976, probably by a JLP gunman. Two years later he returned to Kingston from self-imposed exile in London for the One Love Peace Concert, hoping to unify the country through music. Here, he and his band, the Wailers, are on stage with prime minister Michael Manley (far left) and his opponent Edward Seaga (third from left). Marley’s global reputation as a peacemaker was cemented. GS

* * *

Beyoncé, 2018

By Andrew White

Beyoncé’s career is littered with peaks one might assume couldn’t be bettered: Crazy In Love; 2014’s surprise self-titled visual album; the Formation world tour. But 2018’s Coachella headline show – the first by a Black woman and quickly crowned Beychella by fans – feels like a once-in-a-generation superstar flexing at full power. It’s not just the set list, which careens between Destiny’s Child bangers and cute dance-offs with sister Solange, or the relentless physicality of a set put together a year after giving birth to twins. The key to its success is its deft celebration of both Black history and Beyoncé’s own southern roots, making it a headline slot as powerful, theatrical and thrilling as any work of art. MC

* * *

David Bowie, 1973

By Brian Duffy

It was as his alter ego Ziggy Stardust, the messianic rock star from outer space, that David Bowie shot to fame in the early 1970s, with the release of breakthrough album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. “I fell for Ziggy, too,” Bowie later recalled. “I got hopelessly lost in the fantasy.” And so, at a concert in Hammersmith, London, in July 1973, he announced Ziggy’s demise, to shock from the audience. Ziggy had already evolved into the character immortalised on the cover for Aladdin Sane, shot by celebrated fashion photographer Brian Duffy with a brief to deliver the most expensive album shoot ever made. This image showing Bowie looking right into the camera is an out-take from that shoot. GS

* * *

Freddie Mercury, 1985

By Neal Preston

Queen’s 21-minute performance at Live Aid in 1985 is widely considered one of the best gigs ever (it’s on YouTube, so you can decide for yourself). Here, the band’s magnetic frontman, Freddie Mercury, is shown commanding the attention of the 72,000-strong audience at Wembley Stadium, as well as nearly two billion TV viewers worldwide. It was during an improvised a cappella segment with the crowd that Mercury sang what came to be known as the “note heard around the world”. Bob Geldof, who co-organised the charity concert, has since happily admitted that Queen stole the show that day, saying, “It was the perfect stage for Freddie: the whole world.” GS

* * *

Amy Winehouse, 2008

By Richard Young

Grounded in the UK after being denied a visa to travel to LA, and having entered rehab for drug abuse, no one knew which Amy Winehouse would show up for the 2008 Grammys. Beamed in via satellite on a night where she was nominated for six awards, happily she was on top form, dissing Justin Timberlake one minute, cheering on her hero Tony Bennett the next. When he announced her single Rehab as Record of the Year, her anxious swaying stopped, her face softened and her jaw dropped, creatinga joyful antidote to the tabloid images that monstered her. MC

* * *

Elvis Presley, 1956

The Milton Berle Show (screenshot)

Elvis Presley was just starting to make a name for himself when a spot on The Milton Berle Show, on 5 June 1956, shot him to rock’n’roll notoriety and earned him the epithet “Elvis the Pelvis”. For the first time on television, the 21-year-old set aside his guitar to show off his dance moves (all swinging hips and shaking legs) in a performance of his latest single, Hound Dog. The fangirls went wild, but the conservative press slammed his “appalling lack of musicality” and “animalism”. One Catholic weekly paper ran the headline “Beware of Elvis Presley”. GS

* * *

Madonna and Britney, 2003

By Win McNamee

With her politicised album American Life flopping, Madonna knew she had to pull out all the stops when she opened the 2003 MTV Video Music awards. At one point, she turns to Britney for a kiss – which is splashed across the world’s press next day, as pop’s biggest provocateur passes on an increasingly tricky mantle. MC

* * *

Oasis v Blur, 1996

By Cattell

Pick a side: Team Oasis or Team Blur? The famous rivalry between two of the biggest British bands of the mid-90s apparently began because Damon Albarn slept with a woman who’d been dating Liam Gallagher. But the Battle of Britpop reached its peak when both groups released singles on the same day in August 1995. Blur’s Country House outsold Oasis’s Roll With It by 274,000 to 216,000 copies. The following May, they faced off again in a quarter-final “grudge match” during a charity football tournament in London (other bands taking part included Massive Attack, Pulp and the Bluetones). For the second time, Blur came out on top, scoring 2-1. GS

* * *

Kurt Cobain, 1993

By Frank Micelotta

This photo of Kurt Cobain with an acoustic guitar is from Nirvana’s legendary MTV Unplugged show, shot in one take at Sony Music Studios in New York in November 1993. The performance has become inextricably linked to the death of Cobain, who took his own life a few months later, aged 27. Partly it’s the funereal atmosphere of the staging – stargazer lilies, candles and a black chandelier – but there’s also a sense of the loss of what could have been: the gentle intimacy of the mostly acoustic set hinted that Cobain and his band were on the verge of a new musical direction, beyond their grunge roots. GS

* * *

N.W.A, 1988

By Eric Poppleton

The blockbuster debut album of N.W.A, created in a few weeks for a reported $12,000, defined a new direction for hip-hop: hardcore gangsta rap. The cover, featuring six members (it’s Eazy-E with the gun), encapulates the provocative stance of the self-styled “world’s most dangerous group”. “You’re taking the perspective of someone who is about to be killed,” photographer Eric Poppleton later said. “Not that they were going to do that to me.” GS

* * *

Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, 2004

By Frank Micelotta

A “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Super Bowl – Justin Timberlake apparently unwittingly exposing Janet Jackson’s jewellery-adorned breast to a TV audience of 100 million – led to national outcry, endless public apologies and a big fine for TV network CBS. Jackson (not Timberlake) was blacklisted by radio stations and uninvited to that year’s Grammys, a move that smacked of racism and misogyny. MC

* * *

Prince, 1987

By Jean-Baptiste Mondino

As 1987 drew to a close, Prince was preparing to release the Black Album, his funk-laced follow-up to Sign o’the Times. But then, perhaps fuelled by a bad MDMA experience, he pulled it, declaring it “evil”. The softer, gospel-tinged Lovesexy took its place, featuring a controversial nude cover shot by French photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino, who was inspired, he said, by the Sistine Chapel and Prince’s “kind of Tantric” ability to fuse spirituality and sexuality. While some record shops refused to stock it, fans speculated about the meaning behind the aroused stamen close to Prince’s crotch. MC

* * *

Abba, 1974

By Olle Lindeborg

“We weren’t taken seriously, I think because we were wearing such strange clothes,” mused Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus in Abba: Against the Odds, a 2024 documentary celebrating 50 years since the band’s Eurovision win. “The kitsch … we suffered for that.” At the time the contest was dominated by beige ballads as opposed to DayGlo bangers such as Waterloo. In the UK, radio initially ignored their output, tarring them with the Eurovision brush, while Sweden, their home country, dismissed their “glitzy glam bubblegum pop”. Luckily for Abba, they went on to be quite successful. MC

* * *

Bob Dylan, 1963

By Don Hunstein

Don Hunstein, long-time photographer for Columbia Records, took this portrait on a shoot for the singer’s breakthrough second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, in February 1963. It captures 21-year-old Dylan in his Greenwich Village apartment, soulfully strumming on an acoustic guitar, with his signature harmonica close by. Now, of course, he is recognised as one of the greatest ever singer-songwriters – the only one to receive a Nobel prize. GS

* * *

Michael Jackson, 1989

By Annie Leibovitz

The first time Michael Jackson publicly debuted some of his most iconic dance moves – the moonwalk followed by a spin into a toe stand – at the Motown 25 celebrations in 1983, he cried when he walked off-stage. Unhappy with his performance, which many cite as the moment his solo career went interstellar, it highlighted his perfectionism. Annie Leibovitz caught a glimpse of this when she shot him for the cover of Vanity Fair in 1989: “Michael was reluctant to dance like on stage, until I asked everyone in the room to leave,” Leibovitz later recalled. “So he danced for 45 minutes, it was unbelievable. I was sweating like crazy.” This cover image, simultaneously serene and laser focused, feels like a moment of calm for Jackson before his tumultuous 90s. MC

* * *

Castlemorton Common rave, 1992

By Alan ‘Tash’ Lodge

This snapshot of gurning ravers was taken at the largest illegal rave in UK history. Alan “Tash” Lodge had been attending free festivals since the 70s. On a sunny bank holiday weekend in May 1992, he joined about 30,000 partiers gathered beneath the Malvern Hills. It was meant to be a small event for new age travellers, but the news had spread. A crackdown followed, resulting in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which famously targeted events with music “predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”. GS

* * *

One Direction, 2010

By Ken McKay

Launched in 2004, The X Factor quickly came to dominate Saturday night entertainment, feeding a pop culture obsessed with “reality” and glimpsing behind the curtain. As boys battled girls, groups and “the overs”, AKA anyone with the temerity to be over the age of 25, the viewing figures grew even as the long-term career prospects of its contestants shrank. In 2010, Simon Cowell, plus guest judge Nicole Scherzinger, conspired to create the butter-wouldn’t-melt One Direction, a Frankenstein boyband fused together out of failed solo auditionees Harry, Niall, Liam, Louis and Zayn. While they didn’t win the contest – that crown went to beige hat-botherer Matt Cardle – One Direction, a more muted take on the 90s boyband, soon became the planet’s biggest pop phenomenon since the Spice Girls, and kept The X Factor going until its limp demise in 2018. MC

• These 41 images are moments in music that left their mark. Which others come to mind for you? Email saturday@theguardian.com