Top 40 Magazine Covers

The American Society of Magazine Editors have chosen the top 40 magazine covers of the last 40 years.

This image of John Lennon and Yoko Ono photographed by Annie Leibovitz on the day he was killed tops the poll.

Other images included Muhammad Ali, The Twin Towers and Princess Diana.

Here is the complete list and the covers. The majority of the covers make some sort of social or political comment, from Esquire to Time, Life to Entertainment Weekly.

I imagine if there were a similar list of British magazine covers we’d have to choose from pictures of Jennifer Lopez or Abi Titmuss or Shell from Big Brother.

Glossy magazines in Britain were never really about good journalism, but in recent years you wouldn’t even have thought the two cohabited. The American versions of GQ and Esquire still feature journalistic articles but it’s very rare for the British versions to do so. Unless it’s some writer attempting to be a gambler or pass himself off as a big time playboy.

British glossy magazines are virtually indistinguishable from one another these days. Couldn’t one of them attempt to be a little more challenging? It’s a shame that British publishers have taken something that could have had great cultural significance and chosen to trash it, just to get a few more readers.

Art Spiegelman who designed the New Yorker cover with the silhouettes of the Twin Towers, (which you can see much clearer on the link) has a graphic art book called In The Shadow of No Towers, which you can pick up from bookstores. I say this cos I spent some time in Borders the other week looking at it.