10 Greatest Rock Music Album Covers Of The 1980s
5. Meat Is Murder - The Smiths
It's become a lot harder to like The Smiths since frontman Morrissey made its life work to show everyone how big of an idiot he is.
Even so, they basically invented the indie music scene as we know it today. There's traces of them in everyone from The Stone Roses to Radiohead to The 1975.
As much as Johnny Marr's guitar-playing and Morrissey's artful crooning helped them achieve success, The Smith's were also famous for taking strong social and political stances with their music.
Enter an album literally called Meat is Murder.
This pro-vegetarian battle cry was accompanied by a thought-provoking photo of a young soldier in the trenches with the slogan written on the side of his helmet.
Cpl. Michael Wynn, the man in the photo, had originally written "Make War Not Love" on his helmet. The band changed the wording without his consent. Whoops.
Still, it's an amazing piece of art. It implies that soldier is fighting for the rights of animals everywhere, willing to die for a movement that, at the time, would have been viewed as a bunch of hippie nonsense.
The Smiths really planted their flag in the ground with this one, even more so than usual.