Photographer Robert Whitaker, who is widely known for the controversial "butcher cover" of the Beatles album Yesterday And Tomorrow, has died. He was 71. more ›

In 2007 we dusted off some album covers that featured city-centric artwork, in a series we called NYC Album Art... but it looks like we missed a couple! Ephemeral NY has a list of more album art today, including Steely Dan's Pretzel Logic cover, and Simon and Garfunkel's first album. more ›

Some New Yorker subscribers have had a few days (or not) to LOL about this week's cover of Mayor Bloomberg gazing at himself in the mirror while seated at a vanity with a box of chocolates (the card reads "To Me"). Today, the press corps asked the cover boy what he thought of the Barry Blitt illustration—turns out that double the Bloomberg is all right with Mike! The Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Howard Saul described Hizzoner as such, "Bloomberg gushed with tremendous pride and happiness. In Yiddish it’s called kvelling." more ›

The 24-year-old pop superstar Lady Gaga has been gracing the covers of NYC's tabloids this year—flipping off photographers at baseball games in a very unladylike fashion. Now she's classing things up as September's Vanity Fair cover girl—but forever chasing the shock and awe factor, she's stripped down instead of dressing up. more ›

The Village Voice has dropped their annual Queer Issue, and they've put three (allegedly) straight dudes on the cover! What a tease to the issue's demographic. You know, if you're into that sort of look. Inside there's a piece titled "The Guido Ideal," which is about "gay Jersey guidos on the down-low." But according to the NY Post, cover boys Vinny Gaudagnino, Ronnie Ortiz-Magro and Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino had no idea they were being photographed for the Queer cover. more ›

Bay Ridge's best (only?) classic rock tribute band—with a focus on Skynyrd and the Allmans—thinks they're free as a bird to keep their chosen name: the Southern Comfort Band. But Southern Comfort the major alcohol brand is harshing their buzz by sending demands that they change their name. more ›

22-year-old Brooklyn Decker (born in Ohio and raised in North Carolina, obvs) is gracing this year's cover of the Sport Illustrated Swimsuit issue. David Letterman says this issue (and the much coveted cover spot) is still a "huge thing" for America (is it?). He unveiled the billboard on 53rd and Broadway last night, and the model will sit down with him on tonight's show. more ›

[UPDATE BELOW] Here we go again! Bruce Springsteen, barstool musician and voice of the working class, is suing a bar. The Daily News reports that he's the face behind the latest copyright infringement lawsuit. more ›

Earlier this week Ralph Lauren was accused of some over-the-top Photoshopping in their ads, and now it appears GQ has given Betty Draper a digital boob job. Mad Men's January Jones graces the magazine's November issue, and NYMag accuses them of "artificial enhancement by way of Photoshop." What do you think? We don't want to know what they'd do if Joan Holloway were on the cover! more ›

To accompany its Michael Jackson package of articles, the Village Voice put a 1976 photograph of the music legend on its cover. The Voice's Runnin' Scared blog explains that the picture of a dynamic Jackson against the city was "taken on a balcony on the Upper East Side by music photographer Michael Putland. Whatever brought him to town, Jackson was a tough subject, Putland says. He could hardly believe that someone who projected such a giant personality on stage could be so fragile and soft-spoken in person. 'I felt almost sorry for him while taking the photos. I wanted to say, "It's OK, Michael."' Putland also said that it was hard getting Jackson to show his personality, noting that he seemed "very child-like." Also: "It was Jackson's request to wear the deerstalker. Putland remembers thinking that it was a silly hat, but he didn't have the heart to say no." Also check out the Voice's archives of Jackson reviews and articles. In other MJ news, tickets for Jackson's memorial in LA next Tuesday will be randomly drawn (enter here), the powerful sedative Diprivan was found in his home, and he will be buried in a $25K casket. more ›

Is Vanity Fair running out of cover concepts? The magazine is giving their sultry Tom Ford/Keira Knightley/Scarlett Johansson cover a comedy makeover, replacing Ford with Paul Rudd, and the ladies with Jonah Hill and ex-Freaks and Geeks Seth Rogen and Jason Segel. (Rogen will also be gracing the cover of Playboy in the near future.) Check out video of the shoot, and more photos from inside the issue (which includes Amy Poehler, but not Tina Fey—who is #1 on this list). The mag declares their subjects are "Comedy’s New Legends," but who are they missing? more ›

The New Yorker finally announced the twelve winning entries in their annual Eustace Tilley cover contest, and this year both Bansky and the iPhone get some love! They have a gallery of all winners on their site, and say "a sample of the winning covers also appears in the February 9 and 16, 2009, issue of the magazine, which celebrates our eighty-fourth anniversary." more ›

Reportedly the Hudson News shop in Grand Central Terminal has "censored" the latest issue of GQ, whose cover features a photo of Jennifer Aniston posing with strategically-placed hands and nothing but a tie. Folio reports, "The popular newsstand has placed a piece of paper across the issue in its window display. Copies inside the store, however, remain uncovered." They harken back to June of 2006 when the store covered up an issue of FHM featuring Brooke Hogan (incidentally the following 4 issue covers were also covered up). NYMag assumes in the most recent case that Hudson News is simply on Team Angie, but Folio points out that in the case of the Hogan cover, the issue "sold over 400,000 copies on newsstands, well above its 350,000 average." Perhaps Hudson News is just keeping in mind the kids visiting the Transit Museum annex's train show? more ›

In its roundup of the top ten media blunders of 2008, Politico's Michael Calderone puts the New Yorker "Politics of Fear" cover at #8 (between the mainstream media's reluctance to acknowledge the National Enquirer's reports of John Edwards' affair and how VP guessing was out of control). Calderone writes, "The Zabar’s set were in on the joke. But some didn’t see the humor in the illustration of Barack and Michelle Obama sharing a terrorist fist-jab and dressed, respectively, as a Muslim and Angela Davis-style black radical, with an Osama bin Laden painting on the mantle and an AK-47 leaning against the fireplace, in which burned the American flag." But he adds that, after the uproar, things ended up okay: "[New Yorker writer] Lizza and editor David Remnick — whose excellent piece on Obama in the same issue was largely overlooked in the ensuing dustup — are working on books dealing with Obama." Plus, Obama won. more ›

Remember that New Yorker cover satirizing right wing scaremongering about Barack Obama and his wife Michelle? It was a big deal for a couple days over the summer, way back during those Halcyon days before the economic collapse drove us out here to these abandoned condos on the West Side where we survive on acid rain water and squab. Oh, right, that has happened (yet). In the meantime, let's have a laugh with the new cover of Entertainment Weekly, which features Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart recreating that controversial illustration. more ›

The political news cycle yesterday was dominated by the controversy surrounding this week’s New Yorker cover; called “The Politics of Fear,” it depicts Senator Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as America-hating radical terrorists gloating in the Oval Office. New Yorker editor David Remnick, who celebrates his tenth anniversary helming the magazine with this issue, spent the day making the interview rounds and getting some great publicity for the magazine; speaking to Wolf Blizter on CNN, he defended the cover as “Colbert in print.” more ›

Barack Obama’s campaign spokesman Bill Burton is calling this week’s New Yorker cover art “tasteless and offensive.” The illustration by Barry Blitt depicts the Illinois senator in the Oval Office wearing traditional Muslim garb while doing a “terrorist fist jab” with his wife Michelle, who is dressed in fatigues, with an Afro and an AK-47 slung over her shoulder. To complete the scene, there’s a portrait of Bin Laden over the fireplace, in which an American flag is ablaze. more ›