Paul Stanley is not a huge fan of the KISS album Unmasked. The legendary singer and guitarist singled out the 1980 album as his least favorite from the band—right down to the cover.
In a February 2026 YouTube video promoting KISS’s new website, Stanley, 74, said of Unmasked, “The famous infamous album cover. … When I saw the cover, I said, 'Hey I have to go on record and say this cover sucks.”
The Unmaskedcover artwork by Victor Stabin features comic book panels with one depicting the KISS bandmates taking off their iconic makeup “masks,” only to show the same makeup underneath. Founding drummer Peter Criss’s Catman image is included on the cover, despite the fact that Unmasked was the first KISS album he didn’t play on at all.
Unmasked was released in May 1980 as the eighth studio album by KISS. It featured the lead single “Shandi,” which peaked at No. 47 on the Billboard Hot 100.
In a post on his official website, Stanley said, “I’ve always believed that if you only listen to one kind of music, you’ll produce pretty defective songs in the sense that they’ll have no breadth. And a song like 'Shandi' basically comes from me sitting with a 12-string acoustic guitar. Before I could plug into a Marshall amp, I used to have a harmonica around my neck and an acoustic guitar and I used to go to Greenwich Village to see singer-songwriters, and Shandi is part of that tradition."
While he liked the song "Shandi," Stanley shared his feelings on the Unmasked album as a whole in the 2005 book KISS: Behind the Mask. "I think Unmasked is a pretty crappy album. It's wimpy,” he stated in the tell-all.
He also went off on the album in an interview posted by Classic Rock, where he ranked Unmasked as the worst KISS album of all time, closely followed by 1981's Music From The Elder. "The worst record I've made...Unmasked was tepid and had no balls to it. Actually, the band at that point probably had no balls to it either,” Stanley admitted.
KISS kept their makeup on for 3 more years after 'Unmasked' was released
The true KISS unmasking came in September 1983 when the bandmates shed their makeup to promote their album Lick It Up. KISS remained unmasked until 1996.
During an appearance on the Howie Mandel Does Stuff podcast, Stanley explained why the makeup had to come off amid lineup changes in the band.
“Taking off the makeup, some people may say it was brilliant, it really came down to… we didn’t have any choice,” he admitted. “The band was waning at best, I mean, our sales were way way down and we put out a great album with the makeup on and it was clear to me that people were listening with their eyes, and also, we had changed two [band] members and came up with new makeup. It became that to me was disingenuous.”
“Having them wear the original makeup is more genuine to me than coming up with new characters. You know, what do you want, turtle boy, you know, snail man,” the KISS legend cracked. “So, that [to take it off] was like… We get a lot of credit for being a lot brighter than we are, it really was a move to try to survive. If we couldn’t survive without the makeup, we didn’t deserve to survive.”
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