Atom Heart Mother

Atom Heart Mother is the fourth studio album by Pink Floyd, released in 1970 by Harvest and EMI Records in the United Kingdom and Harvest and Capitol in the United States. It was recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London, England, and reached number 1 in the United Kingdom, and number 55 in the United States charts, and went gold in the U.S. in March 1994. A re-mastered CD was released in 1994 in the UK, and in 1995 in the U.S.

The original album cover shows a cow standing in a pasture with no text nor any other clue as to what might be on the record. (Some later editions have the title and artist name added to the cover.) This concept was the group’s reaction to the psychedelic space rock imagery associated with Pink Floyd at the time of the album’s release; the band wanted to explore all sorts of music without being limited to a particular image or style of performance. They thus requested that their new album have “something plain” on the cover, which ended up being the image of the cow. Storm Thorgerson, inspired by Andy Warhol’s famous “cow-wallpaper,” has said that he simply drove out into a rural area near Potters Bar and photographed the first cow he saw. The cow’s owner identified her name as “Lulubelle III.” More cows appear on the back cover (again, with no text or titles), and on the inside gatefold.