20 Jazz Funk Greats is the third studio album by British industrial music group Throbbing Gristle, released in December 1979 by the band's label Industrial Records. It is known for its tongue-in-cheek title and artwork, and has been hailed as the band's best work, with UK magazine Fact naming it the best album of the 1970s, and Pitchfork naming it the best industrial album of all time. Recording 20 Jazz Funk Greats is the band's first full studio album, as prior albums contained both live and studio recordings. The production is credited to "Sinclair/Brooks". The album was recorded on a 16-track borrowed from Paul McCartney after Peter Christopherson had worked on artwork for McCartney. The album was produced using electronic musical instruments and effects units, primarily from Roland and Boss. Artwork and title The album's cover photograph was taken at Beachy Head, a chalk headland on the south coast of England known as one of the world's most notorious suicide spots. In a 2012 interview, Cosey explained the album cover and tongue-in-cheek title: We did the cover so it was a pastiche of something you would find in a Woolworth's bargain bin. We took the photograph at the most famous suicide spot in England, called Beachy Head. So, the picture is not what it seems, it is not so nicey nicey at all, and neither is the music once you take it home and buy it. We had this idea in mind that someone quite innocently would come along to a record store and see [the record] and think they would be getting 20 really good jazz/funk greats, and then they would put it on at home and they would just get decimated. The 1981 issue of the album released on Fetish Records featured an alternate version of the cover art in which an apparently dead and naked male body is seen lying in front of the band. In 2013, Radiohead graphic designer Stanley Donwood selected the artwork as his favourite album cover. Critical reception Reviewing the album for Pitchfork, Drew Daniel praised 20 Jazz Funk Greats as Throbbing Gristle's peak, writing that "it's in the pathos of their promiscuous liaisons with the forbidden territory of various forms of 'real music' that this album generates a weirdly gripping power of its own." He continued, "20 Jazz Funk Greats finds the band waking up from D.O.A's dark night of the soul