Museum of Bad Album Covers

March 2, 2005 9:06 PM

You've seen the best album covers... but have you seen the worst? [some nsfw]
posted by Frankieist (42 comments total)

I looked through the top 10, and thought 10-7 were all amazing.

Unfortunately, it gets steadily worse until you get to number 1, which is bad in a bad way, not a funny way. Now I'm just depressed.
posted by cloeburner at 9:18 PM on March 2, 2005

I was enjoying the site until I hit on the two Queen albums they listed ("The Miracle" and "A Kind of Magic"). Sorry, but Queen is my very favorite band of all time, and even if the four-headed "Miracle" cover is a bit weird, it hardly qualifies as "worst." The cartoon characters on AKOM were taken from the video, and (for fans) are immediately identified with the song/album...has nothing to do with "80s design." Hmph.
posted by Oriole Adams at 9:24 PM on March 2, 2005

I'm not sure what to make of this. I think it's easier to agree or disagree as to whether or not an album cover is one of the "best". Some of these "worst" covers aren't all that bad to me. It would have been better to limit the selection to those albums that actually had at least limited success. Singling out some of these old low-budget gospel or "dummy" albums is hardly fair. Of course they suck. But this is fun to look at nonetheless.
posted by Witty at 9:33 PM on March 2, 2005

In fact, sometimes the more absurd it is, the more genius I see in it.
posted by Witty at 9:36 PM on March 2, 2005

Nothing holds a candle to this site, for pure Album Cover Enjoyment. Take this one, for example (Filed under "Sexy Ladies").
posted by spock at 9:38 PM on March 2, 2005

The guy who made this lost my interest with his comment "isn't this the gayest album of all time?"
posted by hopeless romantique at 9:38 PM on March 2, 2005

I want this.
posted by Witty at 9:41 PM on March 2, 2005

spock: did you look at the site? Most of those album covers are on it.
posted by Frankieist at 9:50 PM on March 2, 2005

I didn't see Party Music anywhere.
posted by bobo123 at 9:56 PM on March 2, 2005

okay. i _have_ to hear crying demons. i must.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs at 10:01 PM on March 2, 2005

weretable:

Sample here.
posted by argybarg at 10:12 PM on March 2, 2005

All that (un)love for Manowar, and no love for Thor? For shame, people, for shame.
posted by arto at 10:13 PM on March 2, 2005

My god. Just listen to all this whining and bitching. Haven't we, at long last, finally gotten what we've been asking for?
posted by cytherea at 10:18 PM on March 2, 2005

thankee, argybarg. that is... just. it is. wow.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs at 10:55 PM on March 2, 2005

That Virgin Killer cover is just awful.

What the hell were they thinking?!?
posted by clevershark at 11:14 PM on March 2, 2005

Following various links led me to this. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES LISTEN TO THIS RECORD.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 11:57 PM on March 2, 2005

I don't really understand the big problem with number 1. It's a little girl naked! It isn't titillating. It certainly isn't pornographic. It's significance escapes me but what is the big deal? If anything it is a cop out because it appears the try to obscure her genitals, But it in no way disturbs me and if it did THAT might bother me
posted by milkwood at 12:02 AM on March 3, 2005

I may be crazy, but I think the problem is that it looks like someone punched the genitals of a naked little girl photo on an album called Virgin Killer.

I'm guessing, though.
posted by shmegegge at 12:44 AM on March 3, 2005

now, #1 is just fucked up and perverted to my mind (and perverted is a word I almost never use) but #2
is just amazing. No amount of funny scandinavian folk singers or christian family groups can possibly compete with that.
posted by shmegegge at 12:46 AM on March 3, 2005

milkwood, that cover may not be titillating to you or i, but it is to all too many people. people who should be locked up.
posted by quarsan at 12:50 AM on March 3, 2005

Anybody have a link to that Rolling Stone article that works?
posted by scarabic at 12:52 AM on March 3, 2005

Pretty Generic: AAAAAAAAAAGGGH!!!!
posted by scarabic at 12:59 AM on March 3, 2005

mmmm.....sour cream.
posted by MikeKD at 1:07 AM on March 3, 2005

MikeKD: AAAAAAAAAAGGGH!!!
posted by shmegegge at 2:57 AM on March 3, 2005

Pretty Generic:

Oh

My

God.

I think that needs its own fpp. I mean, it's too easy to derail this thread with that. God, that's just...

*head explodes*
posted by shmegegge at 3:00 AM on March 3, 2005

you have remember that Virgin Killer was released in simpler, more innocent times...
posted by johnny novak at 4:31 AM on March 3, 2005

This one is funny and not, as afar as I remember, depressing or offensive.
posted by ibmcginty at 5:12 AM on March 3, 2005

ibmcginty: that one was funny, but it was kind of like shooting fish in a barrell. Records like that are kind of fascinating to me in their sheer naivete and unabashedness. This list is a little more interesting since their chopping down sequoias as well as little saplings.

And, FWIW, I think Manowar were in on their own joke. Ross The Boss was a former Dictator, so he knew a thing or two about mixing goofiness with genuine rock energy.

I remember seeing both that Virgin Killer cover and this one(nsfw) in the "metal imports" rack at a local record store when I was around twelve and being mildly freaked. Oddly enough, two years later the Scorps were my first live show.

I'm also amazed that Get Lucky didn't make it into the crypto-gay section. Nice pants there, Mike Reno.
posted by jonmc at 6:50 AM on March 3, 2005

The All Saved Muplet Band(scroll down) deserves a mention for fundy weirdness and blatant rip-offery alone (I also recall seeing that one-new-in a record store when I was very young and being bewildered by the "saved" and confused by the "misspellings.")

Kenneth Higney's cover has a nice Grizzly Adams on PCP thing going on, too. It's actually not a bad record in a burnt-out Kris Krisstofferson kinda way.
posted by jonmc at 6:58 AM on March 3, 2005

I'm shocked that Blind Faith got left out of the top 10.
posted by COBRA! at 7:07 AM on March 3, 2005

One of that list's "worst" covers, The Louvin Brothers' Satan Is Real, is what I consider to be the single greatest album cover of all time.
I stopped reading at that point.
posted by Dr. Wu at 7:36 AM on March 3, 2005

I am with you, Dr. Wu-- that album cover is awesome, used to use it as my background.
posted by ibmcginty at 7:41 AM on March 3, 2005

Jesus H. Christ on a muffin, people....can we have some kind of warning when there is a chance of seeing Yoko Ono naked??? Something like NSFWYON.
posted by spicynuts at 7:50 AM on March 3, 2005

I've always thought the Lovedrive cover is hilarious, moreso if taken in conjuction with the flip side picture (which isn't shown on the bad albums site). I won't vouch too hard for the Virgin Killer cover pic, but it's worth mentioning that the song Virgin Killer has nothing whatsoever to do with killing virgins. In fact it's just some barely-coherent Uli Roth gibberish.
posted by Wolfdog at 9:37 AM on March 3, 2005

Something Special from Jeff has been and will continue to be my favorite album cover of all time.
posted by buriednexttoyou at 11:47 AM on March 3, 2005

Pretty Generic: I remember running into that mp3 a while ago, I'm surprised it hasn't been FPPed. It's hilarious.
posted by Frankieist at 11:54 AM on March 3, 2005

I'm with shmegegge - I didn't think I'd be genuinely shocked by any of these, but that Scorpions cover is so wrong it makes the mighty Tap's rejected Smell the Glove cover seem tame.

Verging on off-topic: You can find this excellent specimen of metal's delightful excesses in the Congressional Record. Also the complete lyrics to "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister. Both were submitted as evidence during the PMRC hearings in the mid-'80s. Thanks, Tipper!
posted by gompa at 2:50 PM on March 3, 2005

Oh, and few can touch Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Tarkus - complete with gatefold giant-armadillo-tank cover and inside stills from a movie about the armadillo-tank's war on bad acid (or whatever's going on in there) - in terms of psychedelically excessive cover art.

If you were trying to talk your kids out of using hallucinogens, Tarkus might be a handy prop. Though they might wind up trying them anyway because they'd think you were scaremongering.

And that, folks, is how Marillion got started . . .
posted by gompa at 3:08 PM on March 3, 2005

OK, I have to say it's odd that they singled out Black Sabbath's Sabotage, which doesn't seem all that exceptional one way or the other, yet they seem to have neglected Born Again.
posted by Wolfdog at 3:39 PM on March 3, 2005

Wolfdog: Actual quote from Ian Gillan (Sabbath singer on that disc): "I took one look at the cover and puked."
posted by jonmc at 4:35 PM on March 3, 2005

posted by dodgygeezer at 5:11 PM on March 3, 2005

Pretty_Generic:

You just broke my brain.
posted by cmyk at 1:20 AM on March 4, 2005