A quiet Saturday afternoon here, so doin’ my jigsaw and listenin’ to reckurds. Not unusually, I reach for INXS’s Welcome to Wherever You Are (their best) and am struck anew at how horrendous the cover is. (The vinyl version, not the CD.) I couldn’t help wondering if there’s a a wider gulf between a great album and a misguided sleeve in my collection. No, there isn’t.
Anyone else’s favourite records dressed in clothes that fail to maketh the music?
Not so much ‘bad cover’ as ‘magic album/bad cover’ juxtaposition.
The biggest great album/bad cover deltas in my collection are by the same artist. Paranoid and Sabotage are Black Sabbath’s best albums. The covers are infamously dreadful, with the latter featuring the drummer with red tights over a pair of chequered pants. You’re going to have to trust me: it’s a great album.
A sub-thread here would be Album Covers That Put-off Potential Buyers. I’ve no idea if Elvis Costello’s Spike is a great album or not; I couldn’t get past the cover.
I like Spike, though I know it’s not a fan-favourite. It’s a little overdone. You’re right about the cover which is, well, overdone.
Apparently, it’s full title “Spike: the Beloved Entertainer” is meant to be taken without the colon, i.e. with ‘Spike’ as the verb. That’s what he said somewhere, anyway; could’ve been a wind up.
I think Paranoid has a worse cover than Sabotage: the record company indolence and cheepniss in not changing the cover from War Pigs – and it was a crap cover anyway.
I have less of a problem with Sabotage – again, Bill’s story about not knowing what to wear, so he just took his trousers off and put his wife’s tights on. Gotta admire his “devil may care” attitude, even if the final effect is…unfortunate.
Zuma by Neil Young must be up there, as should many (most?) of REM’s releases
Oh, I love REM’s covers, at least up until Monster. They were a big part of the appeal, speaking to that same impressionistic inscrutability as Stipe’s lyrics and general persona. Felt like you were buying ‘into’ something.
I think The Cure’s covers are worse than REM’s. You can imagine Robert Smith doodling them when bored in Double Maths. One of the covers even has the lines from the paper.
Faith and Pornography reflected the content in each case…coincidentally my favourite two Cure albums.
The one with the lines from the exercise book was the worst. Also broke a cardinal rule of pop: a self titled album that wasn’t their first.
Kevin Rowlands My Beauty must feature here surely
The album is really not that bad but most won’t have got past the cover
I remember it coming out at the time, then being dragged out again and again in “Rock’s Greatest Acts of Folly” articles, and again recently, with some trying to rehabilitate it. (I am in the ‘never got past the cover’ camp.)
@DanP
As opposed to the ‘never got past the camp cover’ camp
Bahahahahaha
Richard Thompson has serious history with this. I would nominate Amnesia for the worst cover on a general release, but the Live at Crawley ‘official bootleg’ available mail order was truly awful – a close of of Richard and Danny Thompson kissing a breathtakingly ugly baby (Richard’s youngest child Jack).
Strolling through my iTunes/Music collection several good albums stand out as having awful covers. However, top disparity points for magic album/bad cover I award to Pink Moon.
Also nominated were:
Dog Heart City
Girl At her Volcano
Illinois
More
Tattoo You
I have to nominate Duran Duran for anything after Arena – they continue to put out good albums (maybe not as great as in their pomp, but still pretty good), but on the whole their covers are dreadful.
Second, and in a similar vein, are latter-day Depeche Mode. I know Anton Corbijn’s their artistic go-to, and he has a certain vision, yada-yada, but the last few covers with the cut-out shapes and dull backgrounds practically shout “Will this do?”
The Memento Mori artwork does seem to be a return to form for AC’s Depeche Mode work. Their best/most well known album covers were done before he came along.
Such a great photographer. Perhaps best when other handle the overall design elements ala his work with U2.
Too busy with his film-making career these days to be bothered?
Can’t help thinking of the Undertones compilation “Cher o’ Bowlies” which is chock full of brilliant tunes but the cover, for some reason, is a young model, clothed in raw meat and wrapped in clingfilm.
That’s not “raw” meat! That’s bacon!!
(Subbing for Moose…)
You are thinking of All Wrapped Up.
😉
Ah yes – I remember now.
Which was the inspiration for Lady Gaga’s dress at the 2010 MTV Awards
(need to check this “fact”, although if I stick it on her wikipedia page it becomes true)
I read a Beano album at work yesterday. The Roger the Dodger section had a little skit on Lady GaGa only she was renamed Lady GooGoo . Which I thought was funny.
Superb – that’s a running Beano joke going back as far as I remember. They have a famous person as a character and change the name ever so slightly, possibly to thwart m’learned friends. One I remember clearly was Fendon Boster, based on Brendan Foster – a then-famous GB Olympic runner.
A noble exception was Joan Armatrading, who appeared in a strip as herself because she was a fan of the comic.
Kenny Dogleash appeared too (I think it was The Beano?)
I recall the Strolling Bones appeared too.
Was The Strolling Bones not a Smash Hits-ism?
Byron Ferrari and Mark Unpronounceablenamefrombigcountry being two more from the same stable
I’m quite sure it was pre Smash Hits as I was reading the Beano in the 60s. Byron Ferrari came from the NME coined by Charles Shaar Murray I believe.
“Strolling Bones” is from long, long before Smash Hits.
I remember it being used in the mid-’60s.
I stand corrected (said the man in the orthopedic shoe).
Smash Hits was the place I thought I saw it first. Just goes to show they were nowt but a bunch of copyists
Bit surprised. I always thought it was a satirical pun for the fact they were still touring in their forties. Didn’t realise it was just a jape that accompanied them through their whole career..
Strolling Bones was probably Private Eye.
Along with Spiggy Topes and the Turds.
And I remember the Bash Street Kids singing “We all live in a purple tambourine”, for that matter.
The Blue Note covers are the high watermark of album design and I’d swear blind I love some of those albums even though I’ve only played them once or twice.
About 40 years ago I didn’t know Love from a pack of Wine Gums but I bought “Love”, “Da Capa” and “Forever Changes” in Ilford’s Our Price for £3.49 each purely on the cover art and on the basis that “I do not want to be them (pointing at UB40), I do not want to be them (pointing at Depeche Mode), I want to be them”. I still do.
You chose a fine triumvirate there @deramdaze.
Screaming Target by Big Youth (see Features) 🤓
“Liars” by Todd Rundgren is quite a good album for someone who was then into about his 40th year of recording. But his being made to look like the Easter bunny? Not so much.
“Unearthed” is a fine collection of live tracks by the great English folk guitarist and singer Nic Jones. But Yikes! That cover art! Aaaaargh – my eyes! You just can’t un-see it.
Poetic Champions Compose by our favourite curmudgeon. Sublime album, but who thought *that* would draw the punters in?
Great album though
Van is practically a genre in himself. From a wide selection (‘the clip art years’) I’m going for being surprised by grinning Van lurking behind a hedge (sense of wonder) and the biology teachers outing AKA Irish Heartbeat ‘is the minibus here yet?’
There’s a very funny story about Van being invited to a post-festival party at Glasto one year with no real expectation he would attend.
When he did break the habit of a lifetime and pitch up, the doorman had no idea who he was and shouted out “anyone order a minicab?”
Beach Boys. Pet Sounds.
It not being in my collection, I didn’t choose it. But I’m surprised it hasn’t been mentioned sooner. thought it’d be one of the very first!
I love that cover – it says “Pop” rather than rawwwkkk! – and yet it’s the greatest rawwwkkk! album of all time.
I remember thinking, what kind of weirdos have goats for pets?
It was shot at the petting zoo section of the San Diego Zoo. Comics whiz Scott Shaw!’s dad was Head of Security and oversaw the session; according to Scott! they were “just young punks.”
Oops, that should read “according to Scott!’s dad…”
I heard extracts of Movements by Johnny Harris (Shirley Bassey’s MD) discussed on Jim Irvin’s You’re Not On The List podcast, thought it sounded gloriously funky, then one of Jim’s guests describe the cover as “Johnny having a w*nk”. I can only agree.
https://www.discogs.com/master/164900-Johnny-Harris-Movements
My eyes! My eyes!!
Having a movement, more like.
See also The Smiths by The Smiths
The louvin brothers satan is real is a goodie
Following on from the Undertones above, I am sure compilations are rich pickings when it comes to bad cover/great songs. Particularly the hastily-put-together ones by former record labels.
Fortunately, Capitol got to The Beatles ‘butchers’ cover in the nick of time.
“Grrr!” The Rolling Stones compilation LP from about 10 years ago.
Awful, awful cover – but some very very good songs.
Agree with this – dreadful, lazy cover…
Cheapest is the Buffalo Springfield Retrospective comp, where you can see where the original backdrop was torn to allow the insert pictures.
The Beatles – Help
The semaphore on the cover actually spells NUJV
Probably means “Paul is dead” in Some long forgotten language
Or E Burres stigano ‘meaning’ I buried Stig.
I have never liked the covers of Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot anywhere near as much as the music.
The covers of Marillion’s albums always put me off, but I picked up Fugazi at a record fair this weekend and it is so much better than the cover would suggest.
Obviously I am not keen on ‘busy’ album covers.
Marillion’s covers are indeed awful, whilst Genesis’ Foxtrot and Nursery Cryme both look like public school fifth form art projects. Which they probably were.
The original US cover of Fairport Convention’s “Unhalfbricking” (on A&M records) is a shocker: elephants on parade?
Blind Faith?
Queen’s ‘The Miracle’. The band’s faces merged into one. Horrible!
Oh goodness, yes. I’m not sure it is the best Queen album, but it is almost certainly their worst cover. With some stiff competition in that category.
Black Sabbath Born Again is both a terrible album cover and a terrible album
But (more Sabbath) the contents of Sabotage at least detracts from the cover image – does anyone really want to see Bill Ward in his wife’s red tights