Worst album covers

[www.coverbrowser.com]

I actually own 3 of the albums on this site, rwo of which - Joe Henry and the Louvin Brothers - are good stuff.

Not really sure how I ended up with COLONEL SANDERS' TIJUANA PICNIC, though.

And doesn't that TECHNIQUES OF RELAXATION album right next to Joe Henry look like something that should've come out on Rough Trade or Dindisc circa 1981?



Post Edited (06-21-07 21:59)

OK. I own the Joe Henry, which is a good record. Most are just basically horrible but I'm fascinated a bit by #99, "Know Your'e Swede." Is it an owner's manual?

yikes, i own 14...

but that brainticket cover isn't that bad. it's a great album, too!



Post Edited (06-21-07 23:01)

Most varieties of heavy metal, especially the thrash/death/speed-metal persuasions, are a rich motherlode of bad album covers. But this one has long carried personal significance to me.

The first time I saw this album in the record store racks, I held it up and asked the clerk (a friend of mine) just what kind of depraved creeps would want their album to have a cover like this.

He replied, "I dunno; why don't you go ahead and ask them yourself?" and pointed to two big, nasty-looking, long-haired, leather-and-denim-clad guys. They were standing just a few feet away from me, looking at me as if they wanted to drag me out behind the store and beat me with bicycle chains.

The 2 Scorpions albums shown here are good covers!!! Witty in a borderline offensive way. I'd say "Lovedrive" is a classic album cover actually.

They should have included "Virgin Killers" for the Scorpions instead - that's cringe inducing stuff.

WOW. That one's just...stupifying.

I'd put Pet Sounds in there. . . even if to just pull this list out of the willfully obscure. And because it's a terrible cover.

I like the Scorpions album with the forks in the guy's eyes.

I also think of the first Bon Jovi album, on which he looks like a transvestite prostitute waiting for a john on the streets. (Triumph, the insult comic dog, asked Jon something along the lines of "Was this right before Eddie Murphy stopped to pick you up?" shortly before noting that Jon's role as a TV vampire was "finally, a role that *requires* you to suck.)

Whenever I come across these "worst album covers" lists or whatever, I honestly feel that the homemade "mom 'n pop" albums shouldn't be lumped in with those from the major labels. Although I do admit that a lot of them are funny, I also feel that a lot of them were the result of limited resources & that the people behind them were sincere in their efforts. I much rather pick on those examples from major labels who really should have known better.

With that being said, I would have to nominate my beloved Kinks of having one of the worst series of album covers of any major rock band. The only Kinks albums covers that were OK were Face to Face, Preservation Act II, Everyone In Show-Biz and maybe Misfits. Otherwise, their album covers are nothing to write home about, the worst examples being Word of Mouth & Think Visual. I'm shocked about this, especially since Ray Davies did go to art school.

They'd probably be hesitant to include Virgin Killer on the site, for fear of legal action. Anyone familiar with that cover knows why.

On the other hand, the cover that the Scorpions' U.S. label used for Virgin Killer replaced offensive content with something just plain mundane.

Mr Bat (Sings) sure looks like John Wayne Gacy

The college radio station I used to volunteer at had that Millie Jackson album (#45) prominently displayed right in the middle of their library. Everytime you'd go in to look for a record, there she'd be, waiting for you. It still haunts my dreams on occasion.

The Joe Henry inclusion seems a little unfair. I've never thought of it as a bad cover, probably because the smaller CD booklet doesn't have the same impact as an LP-sized monstrosity. My modern day CD choice would have been Todd Rundgren's "Liars", which definitely has that vintage "Salvation Army bin" feel to it.



Post Edited (06-22-07 12:28)

You kind of have a point about the Henry cover. I agree that it's a bad cover, but until it was put on this list, I never thought about it. I rarely think about any CD cover, frankly. I know the spines of my CDs far better than the actual covers.

That said, I'm also with ya on the Liars cover. It's not a bad record musically, but damn, what the hell was he thinking with that?

I've always thought that Rundgren's A Wizard, A True Star had an ugly cover.

Considering the creativity and style that Talking Heads always had displayed (and considering their RISD backgrounds), I thought the cover of Naked was pretty lame.

And although it probably won't show up on a web site of worst album covers, the cover for the new Arctic Monkeys album is pretty ugly. The idea behind it isn't bad, but then the artist seems to have picked the worst palette of colors he could come up with for its execution.