unhappy with the album's release, the band nevertheless reasoned that it gave them more time to work on the Hotel California album, which was released later in 1976. Artwork The cover of the album is an image of a piece of art created by artist Boyd Elder (aka "El Chingadero"), whose work was also used for the cover of One of These Nights. The piece consists of a painted plastic cast of an eagle skull against a light-blue background made of silver mylar. The bumpy appearance of the background gave rise to a myth that it was covered in cocaine powder that the band snorted after the photo shoot. The band chose not to debunk that myth, though Glenn Frey reportedly also noticed the resemblance and told Elder that the background reminded him of "a field of blow" (a slang term for cocaine). The artist was paid $5,000 for his work on the cover. As with One of These Nights, the original vinyl editions of Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) featured messages printed onto the inner dead wax. In this case, "Happy New Year, Glyn" and "With Love from Bill" appear on sides one and two, respectively. Critical reception William Ruhlmann of AllMusic said the songs in the compilation are melodic, immediately engaging, and lyrically consistent, so, "unlike the albums from which they come, these songs make up a collection consistent in mood and identity, which may help explain why Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) works so much better than the band's previous discs and practically makes them redundant. No wonder it was such a big hit out of the box". In a 1978 poll of 50 rock critics and DJs organized by Paul Gambaccini, the album was ranked number 141. It was voted by the public as the sixth best compilation album in the 1994 edition of All Time Top 1000 Albums. Commercial performance Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) debuted at number four on the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart and reached number one the following week, where it stayed for five weeks. It ranked number four on Billboards year-end album chart for 1976, and has spent a total of 239 weeks on the Billboard 200 (as of August 2018). Of its 465 weeks on the Billboard Top Pop Catalog Albums chart, the album has spent 15 non-consecutive weeks at number one. The album has the distinction of being the first album