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ununoctium87

The Scorpions - Virgin Killer (the original one especially)?

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Am I on a list now for having looked at that?

There are so many lists these days, it should be more suspicious if you're not on any lists.

If you're not on at least 2 lists, you have a boring life.

It's actually a good cover. Extremely disturbing, and artsy at the same time.

It's a photo of a nude 10 year old.

> It's a photo of a nude 10 year old.

Sure, objectively there's nothing wrong with that.

The problem is that the kid is in a very unlikely position for a child; and then the broken glass effect is terrifying. It gives me an extremely uneasy, disgusting, feeling. On the other hand, I acknowledge that the composition is quite masterful. Thus, it is a work of art that does not leave you indifferent, and you remember it for a long time after having seen it. I guess that makes it a very good, unforgettable cover for a music album.

Might be a regional thing. I suppose in Europe, the nudity could denote innocence, but in the US, my immediate takeaway of a nude prepubescent child on the cover of an album called "Virgin Killer" would suggest that she was a victim of sexual violence before being murdered (particularly since the broken glass is right over the genitalia). So I'd probably argue it's simply in poor taste.

It's bad taste especially that it was used as a means to drive controversy and the song was basically constructed around the title also. But it is not about killing, instead one of the band members stated that "Virgin Killer is none other than the demon of our time, the less compassionate side of the societies we live in today—brutally trampling upon the heart and soul of innocence." [0]. Apparently the Band regrets it today and there's more background info and apparently there was a big Wikipedia shitstorm in 2008 about removing the artwork or not which led to some sort of edit ban in the UK [1].

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20100509235302/http://www.roadru...

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer#Artwork

As I said, though, there were any number of other ways you could have visually portrayed childhood innocence. The same model wearing early-childhood styled clothing, or barefoot with a flower garland around her head, would have conveyed the same message. The band was either naive or willfully blind to the use of nudity purely to be "edgy".

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