If you’ve ever imagined David Bowie as a cat (who hasn’t … right?), your kooky fantasy has been brought to life. Someone has created meowtastical versions of legendary album covers featuring cats that represent music greats like The Beatles, Loud Reed, and more. Don’t shun Roxy Kitten — click through for a little cute overload.

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The story behind an album cover is almost as good as the story on the cover itself. Here at Flavorpill, we’ve got a mild fascination with the album art that didn’t make the cut, whether it was rejected by the record label, by the artists themselves, or a fluke released by the band to make us laugh. If you ask us, sometimes the one that wasn’t chosen is even better than the official version, and that only adds to the mysterious allure of the covers that could have been. After the jump, check out seven of our favorite vulgar, funny, and creative rejects, and be sure to throw your contributions of lovable losers in the comments.

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Everyone doodles. In the margins of books, on the program of a boring play, on your best friend’s leg in math class. We rip up napkins, pull the labels off soda bottles, move the eyes from subway posters of Angelina Jolie’s face to subway posters of Vince Vaughn’s face. Destruction, alteration, casual graffiti — it’s all human nature. Enter Deface Value, operated by the owner of Seattle-based used record shop Jive Time Records, which catalogues found and submitted album covers that have been defaced — flayed or covered or drawn on to varying degrees, creating new works of art that may or may not be comments on the albums themselves. Whether you consider record covers to be sacred objects of divine inspiration or fair fodder for the budding artist within, we think you’ll dig these. Take a peek at our favorites after the jump.

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From Frank Sinatra to Foo Fighters, Five Hundred 45s: A Graphic History of the Seven-Inch Record chronicles more than half a century of vinyl-single art, all reproduced at original size.

Compiled and written by album designers Spencer Drate and Judith Salavetz, the book groups its 500 subjects thematically, rather than chronologically. Collectively, the images represent the best use of art, illustration, photography, and typography in the packaging of an analog format that has survived through the digital revolution.

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Further fanning the flames of anticipation surrounding their recently-bumped-up forthcoming album, Spoon has released the cover art for Transference, which is due out January 19, 2010 in the US. Finally. The photograph itself is one from 1970 taken in Mississippi by renowned photographer William Eggleston, a photographer accustomed to having his work featured on an album cover or two. It was originally published in Eggleston’s Guide back in 1976.

It’s lovely and it makes us a bit nostalgic for other great album art that came out of the gallery world as opposed to a record company’s art department.

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What would some of your favorite album covers look like if they were reduced to 144 dots? Graphic Nothing, a UK-based graphic designer and self-described “purveyor & peddler of colors & shapes & words & pictures,” answers that question in a cool series called As Dots (Record Covers). Play along after the jump and try to correctly identify five of our favorites.

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Remember when everyone was unsure about whether American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert was gay? This very pretty cover image — in which Adam reminds us of a Kardashian sister mixed with the Goblin King in space — would have helped clarify things. Also: is he naked? It was shot by Warwick Saint, but it kind of reminds us of fan art. Adam’s debut album, For Your Entertainment, drops on November 23rd.