Is this the worst album artwork ever?

[imitationleather]

Always good to see Heino again, one of the creepiest humans ever to lay down on vinyl:

This cannibal (trust me, those roses conceal a knife and fork with your name on it) is still going strong...

Heino, Hit Medley - 2007

He's 71 next month. Congratulations, Heino!

[Gradual Decline]

[Prescription Dinosaur]

[chand]

Kool Keith's ones are kind of knowingly bad I think, like this one;

[Nik Drou]

That Dr Dooom cover is fantastic.  It's Keith's version of those awesomely bad Pen & Pixel covers, such as this.....this.

[Prescription Dinosaur]

Indeed - everything Keith does is pretty knowing, and those are no exception.

[Johnny Yesno]

Another knowing one, I'm sure:

[Johnny Textface]

Pitchfork have done a worst album covers of 2009

But I love this one !

[chand]

Haha, that is incredibly crap, like they took a shit generic cover and then tried to figure out how they could make it fit the title. I imagine them starting a list of things that would fit the title that had 'rotate anti-clockwise 90 degrees in Photo Editor' as the first shitty idea, but an hour later realised they couldn't come up with anything better and just though "Fuck it, it's only Keith Urban, millions of morons will buy it anyway".

This one is bizarre though:



Is it supposed to look fan-made? Because even when I bought bootlegs in the pre-internet days, bootleggers would at least scan a fairly hi-res image from a magazine or something.



Would love to see what ideas they ditched before settling on that.



I find this one less bad than the others, because it's at least being preposterous and failing rather than being straight-up mediocre like Razorlight's, but there's a pretty jarring disconnect between him standing by the window of his space station in a bow tie and the 'graffiti' angle. It looks like they took an image where he was holding a bottle of Cris or something in the first draft, then some bright spark said 'that's cool, but make it relevant to the Graffiti title or people will get confused', so they just put a spray can in his hand and inserted some clipart in the corner.

[Slaaaaabs]

How is this even in consideration for the worst of any year? It is brilliant!

[Jemble Fred]

Yeah, at least half of those nominations are fine, and some of them are great. That one's cool, and I quite liked the 'fop and the mermaid' offering.

[the super moop]

I've always found it amazing how Urban can climb walls using only an electric guitar for navigation.

It's a rare ability.

He's only not as great as Elvis because he can't straddle two motorways at once.

[boki]

Pitchfork have done a worst album covers of 2009

But I love this one !

Let's all take a moment to think about how to explain this to our employers.

[Tom Pynchon's Photo]

This one disturbed me in my youth...and seeing it for the first time in a long time, it is disturbing me again.

I never did like bacon.

[An tSaoi]

Pitchfork have done a worst album covers of 2009

How could we leave this one out:

[Johnny Textface]

Let's all take a moment to think about how to explain this to our employers.

Its just an album cover.

[CaledonianGonzo]

Its just an album cover.

A very NSFW one. 

[non capisco]

This one is bizarre though:



Is it supposed to look fan-made? Because even when I bought bootlegs in the pre-internet days, bootleggers would at least scan a fairly hi-res image from a magazine or something.

The album itself has a 'recorded quickly after lunch one afternoon' aesthetic which that deliberately slapdash cover sort of fits. It does resemble a still from an edition of 'The Cook Report' about bent farmers.

Incredibly, it seems to have two different and virtually identical covers



Perhaps he just couldn't decide which looked the shittest.

[Serge]

That list didn't even have my least favourite album cover of the last twelve months:

Actually a pretty decent album, if you can get past that fucking horrible cover.

[Johnny Yesno]

All lazily copy-pasted from here.

[trotsky assortment]

The album itself has a 'recorded quickly after lunch one afternoon' aesthetic which that deliberately slapdash cover sort of fits. It does resemble a still from an edition of 'The Cook Report' about bent farmers.

Incredibly, it seems to have two different and virtually identical covers



Perhaps he just couldn't decide which looked the shittest.

Actually, the bottom one is the sleeve for the 'Fork In The Road' single.  Shite choice for a single.

[Howj Begg]

why don't we have a fork in the road?

[bill hicks]

Alright, it's just a b-sides compilation but...


Come on!

I like how his eyes are focused off camera, but not in that stare-into-the-middle-distance moody way bands generally do. I imagine that the microsecond the flash went off he stood up and charged off to his car necessitating them using whatever image they managed to get.

[Egyptian Feast]

I actually like this one.



Shite.

[SavageHedgehog]

This one disturbed me in my youth...and seeing it for the first time in a long time, it is disturbing me again.

I never did like bacon.

My mom told me she went to the shop with the intention of buying this when it came out...but decided against it when she saw the cover. In this, I suspect, she was not alone.

[SavageHedgehog]

After a visit to the bbfc website left me astounded to find that this lot have a (U-rated) concert film coming out, I was reminded of an eyesore that adorned an album that was among the biggest hits in the US that year:

[DJ One Record]

Let's all take a moment to think about how to explain this to our employers.

"Can I have my lunch break early please?"

The problem with some of these Pitchfork worst album cover lists is that often it seems like they've picked the ones they can write the funniest captions about rather than the ones that are worst per se. In last year's list, they had this:



The perspective is a little odd but it's hardly one of the most offensive album covers of the year, surely?

[samadriel]

After a visit to the bbfc website left me astounded to find that this lot have a (U-rated) concert film coming out, I was reminded of an eyesore that adorned an album that was among the biggest hits in the US that year:

I love the fear in the lead singer's unfocused eyes; "noo, not the chisel!  I wish we'd never agreed to be turned into a tree!"