The Strokes - IS THIS IT
It was released on July 30, 2001 in Australia but was continually released through out the world over the rest of the summer and fall.
It is their debut album.
On my preliminary research, I found what everyone finds and many believe to be true: The original jacket was deemed too suggestive for the US market, so it was switched to the second cover which is a magnification of an atom smashing or big bang particle smashing or something to that effect.
This is NOT true!
The original photo is by artist Colin Lane. Lane is a fairly well known artist and has done record jackets for The Kings of Leon, John Cale, Dream theater, The killers, and Cage the Elephant.
The model was his girlfriend at the time and they did and impromptu photoshoot as she was getting out of the shower. The glove was added as a prop and it was left in his apartment by a stylist from a previous photoshoot. It is ofter compared to the “Smell the Glove" cover by Spinal Tap. Some retailers in the UK objected to the photo, but still stocked the record...And this is where history gets murky. People naturally assumed because of that it was changed for the US market, which is not true.
Originally, the album was supposed to be released in the US in September, but this was 2001 and the word trade center attacks happened and pushed the release back. For the pushed back October date, the U.S. release had the cover changed to a psychedelic photograph of subatomic particle tracks in a bubble chamber. The same image appears on the cover of The Scientist as a Rebel by theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson. A portion of the image also appeared on Prince's 1990 album Graffiti Bridge, Bruce Becvar's Nature of things, and probably several other things. The Cd version of Is This it also had a track change from "New York City Cops" to "when it started."
According to RCA product manager, Dave Gottlieb, it was 100% a band change and had nothing to do with the butt shot. While touring for the album, lead singer Julian Casablancas called and said he found something even cooler than the butt shot and wanted to change the cover, but the July and August releases were already pressed, so they used those for some markets and when the new cover was ready they switched over.
The Strokes' 2003 biography mentions the fear of objections from America's conservative retail industry and right-wing lobby as reasons for the artwork's alteration, and no ones seems to know why. I tend to believe Gottlieb, but maybe it's a combination of both.