Virgin Killer

Virgin Killer is the fourth studio album by the German rock band Scorpions, released in 1976 by RCA Records. It was the band's first album to attract attention outside Europe. The title is described as being a reference to time as the killer of innocence. The original cover featured a nude ten year-old girl, which stirred controversy in the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere. As a result, the album was re-issued with a different cover in some countries.
The image again gave rise to controversy in December 2008, when the British Internet Watch Foundation placed certain pages from Wikipedia on its internet blacklist, since it considered the image to be "potentially illegal" under the Protection of Children Act 1978, effectively classifying the website as child pornography. This resulted in much of the UK being prevented from editing Wikipedia and significant public debate on the decision. The decision was reversed by the IWF after four days of blocking.
Virgin Killer "failed to attain any serious attention in the United States" but was "quite popular in Japan" where it peaked at number 32 in the charts. The album was another step in the band's shift from psychedelic music to hard rock. Critic Vincent Jeffries of AllMusic contend that the album was "the first of four studio releases that really defined the Scorpions and their urgent metallic sound that was to become highly influential." He also counts the title track and "Pictured Life" among the "all-time Scorpions standouts." Lead guitarist Uli Jon Roth considers Virgin Killer and the previous release In Trance, his favourite Scorpions albums.
The original cover art for the album depicted a nude ten-year-old girl, with a shattered glass effect obscuring her genitalia. The image was designed by Steffan Böhle who was then the product manager for the West German branch of RCA Records. In a 2007 interview bassist Francis Buchholz recollects that the girl depicted on the cover was either the daughter or the niece of the cover designer. The photograph was taken by Michael von Gimbut. The band's rhythm guitarist Rudolf Schenker offers the following description of the circumstances behind the album cover:
In a separate interview Schenker also notes that he thought the cover art was a "great thing" and that he had "pushed the band to really stay behind it" as he felt that people would "think differently" when they looked at the lyrics and realized that the cover art was only being used as "a symbol of the lyrics." Schenker added: "We would never again do something like this". Roth notes that the cover art of the "old Scorpion albums" were "usually done by other people". He has since expressed regret over the original album cover:
In 2008, photographer Michael von Gimbut emphasized that he, his wife, the girl's mother, sister, and three female assistants had been present during the shooting and stated: "Back then, we loved and protected children and did not sleep with them."
The cover generated controversy: the album could only be sold sealed in black plastic in several countries and the cover was replaced in some countries with an alternative cover art depicting the band members. The original is named in various "worst album cover" lists: Cracked named it the No. 1 "Worst Album Cover of All-Time", while Gigwise lists it as No. 1 on its March 2008 "The 50 Most Controversial Album Covers of All Time!" list. It was named by UGO Networks as one of the "Weirdest Album Covers" and placed No. 6 on the "All-Time Worst Album Covers" list made by two.one.five magazine.
This would not be the last time that the band attracted controversy with its album covers. Taken by Force originally featured cover art that depicted "children playing with guns at a military cemetery in France and some people found that offensive". Lovedrive featured a "bizarre artwork" that depicts "a woman on the back seat of a car with bubblegum over her breast." Both covers were replaced by an alternative design. Vocalist Klaus Meine explains that the band's penchant for controversial cover art stems from a desire "to go over the edge" and not "to offend some people or make the headlines [as] that would be stupid", contrasting guitarist Rudolf Schenker's earlier statement: "We're using this only to get attention." In a 2010 interview Meine commented on the cover art again stating:
In August 2015, a court in Sweden said that it considered the album cover to be child pornography.
In May 2008, the American far-right news site WorldNetDaily reported the cover image on Wikipedia to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A subsequent investigation by the FBI concluded that the artwork did not violate any US laws. EContent magazine subsequently reported the Wikipedia community's internal debate: "Prior discussion has determined by broad consensus that the Virgin Killer cover will not be removed" and asserted that Wikipedia contributors "favour inclusion in all but the most extreme cases".
In December 2008, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a UK-based non-government organization, added the Wikipedia article Virgin Killer to its internet blacklist due to concerns over legality of the image, which had been assessed as the lowest level of legal concern: "erotic posing with no sexual activity". As a result, people using many major UK ISPs were blocked from viewing the entire article by the Cleanfeed system. A large part of the UK was blocked from editing Wikipedia. Following representations by the Wikimedia Foundation (which hosts the Wikipedia website) and public complaints, the IWF reversed their decision three days later and confirmed that in future they would not block copies of the image that were hosted overseas. The IWF stated that one of the reasons for reversing their decision was that it had increased public interest in the image—an example of the Streisand effect.
Scorpions
Additional musicians
Production