Chris

@PrayerI agree with it being part of the original design.  I just thought there were copies without, but maybe I'm mistaking? I looked at my CD and it has the black bar as well.  And yeah, I don't believe someone "forgot to crop it out" either. As you said, it's on the inner sleeve as well.

@tscott I was checking Discogs and it was on every edition of the album, even on the cassette:

@PrayerSo I must be thinking of when I've seen the actual image a zillion times without the bar throughout the internet. For instance when you google Madonna's debut album cover, there are images where the bar is cropped out.