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Terrible album covers

Started by Subtle Mocking, February 11, 2011, 04:05:46 PM

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Subtle Mocking

I really love this EP, and it has one of my favourite opening tracks of last year, but the cover is just...crap:


Ignatius_S

Quote from: Subtle Mocking on February 18, 2011, 02:39:36 PM
I really love this EP, and it has one of my favourite opening tracks of last year, but the cover is just...crap:
And inaccurate - the bloke in the suit and tie in the bottom right doesn't look delighted to me.

Crabwalk

Quote from: Subtle Mocking on February 18, 2011, 02:39:36 PM
I really love this EP, and it has one of my favourite opening tracks of last year, but the cover is just...crap:

Agreed. It does nothing to back up my assertion that it's a much better record than 'Age of Adz'.

Ignatius_S

Quote from: Cerys on February 15, 2011, 02:42:34 PM


Things improved fror them once they bumped the scary one off.
To be fair, the fancy dress shop may have only had four original Star Trek uniforms in a regular size.

Dusty Gozongas

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on February 18, 2011, 07:47:48 AM
The multi-racial makeup of that band is the thing that's annoying you, yes?

Your desire for that to be true is palpable.

riotinlagos

Quote from: Subtle Mocking on February 18, 2011, 02:39:36 PM
I really love this EP, and it has one of my favourite opening tracks of last year, but the cover is just...crap:


Reminds me of the back of Check Your Head, but less good.


It is a brilliant EP (I'd put it on par with Age of Adz), and his covers are usually decent.


Their first truly absymal album with a suitably awful cover to boot.


The American cover of Is This It. Even just using a black and white picture of the band would have been preferable.

Egyptian Feast

Quote from: riotinlagos on February 18, 2011, 03:03:43 PM
Reminds me of the back of Check Your Head,


Itself a reference to the collage on the sleeve of There's A Riot Goin' On. Couldn't find it on Google unfortunately, though.

riotinlagos

Quote from: Egyptian Feast on February 18, 2011, 03:11:57 PM
Itself a reference to the collage on the sleeve of There's A Riot Goin' On. Couldn't find it on Google unfortunately, though.

Whoops, I forgot about that.

Subtle Mocking

Quote from: Egyptian Feast on February 18, 2011, 03:11:57 PM
Itself a reference to the collage on the sleeve of There's A Riot Goin' On. Couldn't find it on Google unfortunately, though.
This?


Egyptian Feast

That's the one. While I'm here...





Shame the pics don't do justice to Bill Ward's polka dot underpants.

This is a complete abortion, designed by the artist herself. If you hold the sleeve upside down it looks like other-way Aretha has insect eggs coming out of her cleavage. 


Pepotamo1985

Quote from: Egyptian Feast on February 18, 2011, 03:41:26 PM
That's the one. While I'm here...



Forgotten about that one! In fact, Black Sabbath are also a band with lots of bad album covers - great music contained within (some of) those sleeves though.

Again, Sabs were never responsible for anything overly horrible in the vein of more typical album aesthetic awfulness...apart from that one time;



Shudder.

This takes some beating as well...I just don't understand how anyone could ever think this looked remotely good.


El Unicornio, mang

Quote from: Pepotamo1985 on February 18, 2011, 12:39:16 PM
Really?

It's just so dull...a dull logo on a big patch of yellow, superimposed on a field. I suppose it's perfectly evocative of the banality contained therein, but...blah.


Evocative of the best album of 1991, you mean *runs away*

Muel 2

Quote from: Pepotamo1985 on February 18, 2011, 10:58:22 AM
I actually quite like that one too...I don't know, the pleb in me has a place in his diseased, black heart for self-consciously, determinedly 'retro' designs like that. It's a really bold typeface and a simplistic but reasonably striking pattern and colour scheme...what's not to like?

I was given this for my birthday last year.  I love Stereolab but I wondered why they named the album "Snot Music".

Quote from: Muel 2 on February 18, 2011, 06:48:39 PM
"Snot Music".

Exactly, that's what makes it a crap cover.  Can't agree with Crabwalk about Stereolab's excellent artwork (apart from the early 'girl with gun' stuff), 'Chemical Chords' looked pretty awful too.

Anyway, if we're allowing 12" singles....ladies and gentlemen, I give you Matt Fretton




Crabwalk

I'll give you Chemical Chords Mr X. It looks like whatever came out of Santogold's arse after she'd finished vomiting on the sleeve of her debut. The rest are great though, I maintain. Emperor Tomato Ketchup, Margerine Eclipse, Dots & Loops, Cobra & Phases, Transient Random, all tops. Shit titles, mind.

Eis Nein

Crabwalk's slagging of the Fannies must not stand!

As they are all great covers: one idea done well in each case.

But fair dos on Stereolab's titles, mostly dreadful.

Crabwalk

Something has to take the blame for the otherwise inexplicable public indifference to TFC, and I'm pointing my accusatory finger at those sleeves. 'Songs From Northern Britain' has an absolute beauty, mind, and it fared no better I suppose.

DJ One Record

Quote from: Doomy Dwyer on February 15, 2011, 10:22:43 AM
Whereas this one's cover really does bespeak of the cruel disappointment that awaits the unfortunate listener -



Diabolical sixth form shit from front cover to final note. Go back and do it again.

Whenever I see this cover I'm immediately reminded of the ad banner they ran on Pitchforkmedia around the time of the album's release, which showed Pitchfork's less than favourable 5.5 score of the album swiftly followed by the phrase "What The F**k?!?!"

CaledonianGonzo

Quote from: Eis Nein on February 19, 2011, 09:19:22 AM
Crabwalk's slagging of the Fannies must not stand!

He has got a point. though.  Howdy, in particular, is woeful, but then so are the other ones he highlighted - though, as mentioned, the themed photos of SFNB and its accompanying singles are very nice.  And I like the cover of Shadows.

Johnny Yesno

Quote from: xxxx xxx x xxx on February 17, 2011, 10:05:59 PM


Great band and all, but what the hell were they thinking of with this one?

Isn't it supposed to look like a 70s library music sleeve, e.g:



Whatever they were thinking, it's pretty typical of their aesthetic.

Doomy Dwyer

Just reading about Josh T. Pearsons forthcoming album brought back awful memories of this abortion -



That's got to be the worst cover in my entire collection. There's not a damn thing right with it. The inner sleeve is just as much of an atrocity. Good album though.

Pepotamo1985

Quote from: Muel 2 on February 18, 2011, 06:48:39 PM
I was given this for my birthday last year.  I love Stereolab but I wondered why they named the album "Snot Music".

I'll give ou that, when it first popped up in this thread I legitimately thought that was the title too.



I still like the cover though.

Johnny Yesno

Haha! I didn't spot "Snotmusic". I still think it's a good design, though, and I can't agree with the idea that their album titles are bad. Transient Random Noise Bursts with Announcements and Emperor Tomato Ketchup are excellent names for albums, as is Dots and Loops, which is named after two Norman McLaren films.

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: Doomy Dwyer on February 19, 2011, 04:08:51 PM
Just reading about Josh T. Pearsons forthcoming album brought back awful memories of this abortion -
He's touring Britain soon, as well. His gig in Sheffield last year was a fantastic night.

Crabwalk

He'll need his own thread soon as i think his forthcoming album will make big waves. I've had it (legally I promise) for a couple of weeks and it's an incredible thing. Some beautiful, sorrowful contenders for the long songs thread on there. And the cover art is a hundred times better than TTJC!

I should imagine he's something else live, FM, if he plays with the intensity of the record...

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: Crabwalk on February 20, 2011, 09:37:03 AM
I should imagine he's something else live, FM, if he plays with the intensity of the record...
It's fairly soon, I think (my mate's bought us all tickets). He toured for a while solo, apparently, but when I saw him he was playing with the Lift To Experience drummer and it was loud and fantastic, in a small room upstairs in Sheffield.

lazyhour

I'm not a big fan of Stereolab's Not Music cover, but apparently it's a tribute to this Oronzo de Filippi library record sleeve from the late 60s:


Johnny Yesno

Quote from: lazyhour on February 20, 2011, 11:56:39 AM
I'm not a big fan of Stereolab's Not Music cover, but apparently it's a tribute to this Oronzo de Filippi library record sleeve from the late 60s:



I didn't know it was that specific. Thanks.

the hum

Quote from: Petey Pate on February 11, 2011, 05:02:27 PM




Always rather liked that cover, but these days Asia's album art is definitely on a par with their musical output...


HappyTree



I loved every single Queen album up to A Kind of Magic, then they seemed to lose their way a bit. Possibly they were preoccupied with Freddie's illness. So The Miracle was all right as albums go, but not that satisfying. It just lacked the depth and attention to orchestration that previous albums had.

But the cover, oh dear! I never liked this cover. It looks weird, for a start. Plus I have spent so many teenage hours poring over photos of these guys that I know their faces intimately. Apart from John Deacon, he seems to have pulled off the impossible stunt of being in one of the most successful bands of all time and still being virtually unknown.

The hair at the top is ok, nicely merged in. The eyes are horrible, you can't tell whose eyes are whose. Don't mess with the eyes! The mouths lined up beside each other look pretty disgusting too. But it's the chins that really spoil it. 4 knobbly bits hanging off the end. Yuk.

I think Photoshop was merely a glint in the milkman's eye in 1989, so I guess this kind of image manipulation was really amazing at the time. Apparently the melted photo was "in line with their decision to dispense with individual credits and simply present their music as the product of Queen".

Which is another problem. What drove Queen's music in the past was 4 strong-willed and excited songwriters going off to express their souls, then coming together to make it into magic. As Roger Taylor once remarked, one person would write their song, make a demo and then the others would all argue to try to change it. It was this tug of war between composer and interpretation that put all the energy into Queen's golden years.

As soon as they got more democratic and collaborative the spark fizzled out a bit.

Mediocre album, horrible cover!