Info
Naked Lennon ruled best mag cover
Magazine editors' group names top 40 covers to mark the 40th anniversary of its awards ceremony, with covers featuring Dixie Chicks, Cyndi Lauper, and Leonard Bernstein making the list.
An image of a naked John Lennon, curled up on a bed alongside wife Yoko Ono on the last day of his life, has been named the best US magazine cover of the past 40 years.
The Rolling Stone front cover from January 1981--published a month after Lennon's murder in December 1980--was taken by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz.
The covers topped the list of the 40 best magazine covers of the past 40 years in a competition created by the American Society of Magazine Editors to mark the 40th anniversary of its awards ceremony.
A panel of magazine editors, artists, and designers picked the award-winning covers, which were unveiled today at the group's conference in Puerto Rico.
The list featured several other music-related covers, including a May 2003 Entertainment Weekly cover of the Dixie Chicks--also nude--in the aftermath of their criticism of President Bush about the war in Iraq. A Details magazine cover of Cyndi Lauper in February 1989 also made the list.
Vanity Fair's 1991 image of a pregnant Demi Moore--yes, nude--was second on the list. An image of Muhammad Ali with arrows in his body, from the April 1968 issue of Esquire, came in third.
The list also includes covers featuring Andy Warhol drowning in a can of tomato soup from May 1969's Esquire, Nicole Kidman's 2004 Vogue cover, a 1997 cover of Time featuring Ellen DeGeneres, and a post-9/11 New Yorker cover illustration of the twin towers against a dark skyline.