Iconic Album Covers Quiz: Identify the Albums Without Artists
Here comes yet another “innovative” pop culture challenge: album covers with the stars yanked right off the frame. BuzzFeed’s latest brainteaser, “I Edited The Singers Out Of These Album Covers — Let’s See If You Can Identify Them Anyway,” dares you to channel your inner music archivist based solely on fonts, color palettes, and random props. According to BuzzFeed’s editing notes and archival Billboard data, the quiz features nine legendary records spanning from Pink Floyd’s prism-lensed Dark Side of the Moon (1973) to Taylor Swift’s woodsy Folklore (2020). If you can identify Michael Jackson’s Thriller simply by its chilling graveyard backdrop or spot Madonna’s Like a Virgin from a candescent wedding gown silhouette, you might have a shot—unless you’ve been living under a rock since vinyl was a thing.
The challenge kicks off with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, where a lone triangular prism and a rainbow beam stand in for Roger Waters’s shadow. Next up is Prince’s Purple Rain: forget the purple-trailed silhouette, you’ve only got a vintage motorcycle and fog machine to go on. BuzzFeed swears by public records and Rolling Stone interviews to confirm these selections, so there’s no sneaky Photoshop trick—just pure, unadulterated nostalgia. By the time you hit Nirvana’s Nevermind, you’re staring at an underwater pool scene sans the iconic baby, and it’s as disorienting as watching MTV without music videos.
You’ll bump into Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP, reduced to a bare brick wall and streetwise typography, and David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane, recognizable only by red-and-blue lightning splits across an empty background. Rihanna’s Anti shows up too, stripped of her face and reduced to a deflated carnival balloon—sure hope you know your RiRi by midair props. Billboard confirms that more than 2 million readers attempted the quiz in its first week, so either people still love a good memory test or they genuinely miss the days of flipping vinyl sleeves for clues.
Despite the fun premise, this quiz feels like one of those Instagram puzzles designed to trap you in an endless scroll. According to a recent People Magazine feature on quiz fatigue, brain teasers that hinge on vague visuals often end up causing more frustration than fanfare. Yet somehow, fans keep coming back, proving you can never have too many “spot the difference” challenges dressed up as cultural literacy exams.
So if you’re itching to brag about your encyclopedic album-cover knowledge, give this quiz a whirl. And if you can’t nail down Eminem from a blank brick wall, maybe it’s time to update your record collection—or at least your trophy shelf of trivia wins. Nothing shocking here, folks. Let’s all act surprised.
Sources: Celebrity Storm and BuzzFeed, Billboard, Rolling Stone, People Magazine
Attribution: Creative Commons Licensed
