Two Virgins was the result of an all-night recording session by John Lennon and Yoko Ono at Lennon's home, Kenwood. It was released in November, 1968, shortly after Lennon's wife, Cynthia, filed for divorce. The album quickly became controversial after it was released with the now infamous nude photographs of Lennon and Ono.

The photographs were taken by Lennon with a time-delay camera at 34 Montagu Square, Ringo Starr's flat where Lennon and Ono were staying at the time. E.M.I. refused to distribute the album so it was distributed by Track in the U.K. and Tetragrammaton in the U.S., with the controversial image concealed in a brown paper bag. The credit was placed on the back view on the Tetragrammaton releases and on the front view on the Track releases.

Lennon claimed that the album's title came from the couple's feeling that they were two innocents, lost in a world gone mad and because after making the recording, the two consummated their relationship. Ono saw the cover as an artistic declaration: I was in the artistic community, where a painter did a thing about rolling a naked woman with blue paint on her body on a canvas...that was going on at the time. The only difference was that we were going to stand together, which I thought was very interesting...it was just standing straight. I liked that concept...