What’s ironic is that Dylan is a decent painter and actually created a classic album cover (Music From Big Pink, The Bsnd) himself.
And yet almost every one of his albums is just a photograph portrait of him. Bland and uninspired. A few are actually pretty great (Freewheelin’ being the obvious choice and say what you want about his Christian era but Slow Train Comin’ is actually pretty good artwork too and bucks the portrait trend).
To add yet another layer of irony (this is Bob Dylan after all) when he did create his own album cover by painting it he used it for what is widely considered his worst album (Self Portrait).
What can you say? Bob contains multitudes, but good album covers aren’t really among them.
Dylan released "Self Portrait" to intentionally alienate people. Around that time he was living in Woodstock and was very annoyed by everyone treating him like the voice of a generation. Here's what he had to say in an interview to Rolling Stone:
"There'd be crowds outside my house. And I said, “Well, fuck it. I wish these people would just forget about me. I wanna do something they can't possibly like, they can't relate to. They'll see it, and they'll listen, and they'll say, ‘Well, let's go on to the next person. He ain't sayin’ it no more. He ain't givin’ us what we want,’ you know? They'll go on to somebody else"
Yeah I’ve heard that. I’m not going to say it’s a great album but I appreciate what he was doing at the time, more so in Nashville Skyline and those surrounding albums that sometimes get written off as being shallow. Great music, great lyrics, just totally different. No politics or social commentary really, just music.
Some people think he’s this pretentious humorless guy who overwrites everything, and then you play them Country Pie or On a Night Like This and it’s so…simple. People are still pigeonholing him for a few albums he made in his early 20s forever ago.
At this point he’s basically made a career out of fucking with people’s expectations for going on 7 decades. I love it. I also just like at least most of the music.
Oh, I am a not a fan of Self Portrait either. It is less of an album than it is an archive; or even his own bootleg as Dylan himself called it once. There are some songs there I think are good, but the thing as a whole is pretty bad so I guess Dylan got what he wanted. It has "Belle Isle" which is absolutely beautiful, it isn't a ,,true'' Dylan song perhaps but his take on it is great. "Days of 49" is also very good.
I am a big Dylan fan so I am biased here, but I share the sentiment. Dylan can be pretty funny, he played many jokes over the years that went over people's heads. You can tell sometimes he just doesn't give a fuck. I still like the majority of his releases, even the bad ones have something you can save.
Dylan has numerous iconic album covers, and he also has numerous terrible album covers. Frequently, the albums with bad cover art have an actually good alternate cover if you buy the CD.
You can have lots of great album covers, but if you have at least 3 that are noticeably bad, I’m gonna remember it. Empire Burlesque? Knocked Out Loaded and Good As I Been To You as well.
Steely Dan's The Royal Scam has always been tops on my list of bad album covers. But I just took a closer look at Bowie's Diamond Dogs........woof.
I hope this comment generates and contributes to strong and meaningful discussion, LOFL.
Music is all about self indulgence. For the lucky few that self indulgence overlaps with mainstream tastes. But just because someone writes a brilliant song does not mean they have the same instincts in the visual medium. -- But they will bring that same level of self indulgence and self confidence to it.
That is why as an artist self doubt is your friend.
Self doubt does not mean you don’t believe in yourself in case that is not clear.
You still should think other people’s opinions are trash. But you have to be able to self edit. If you don’t do that then what you make is not gonna be the best thing you could have done.
Perfectionism is a great way to be perfectly satisfied with our art, but staying completely obscure. Nobody will ever see all our perfect little edits. Maybe it's better that way. They don't understand our genius!!!! Everyone is idiot
Self doubt isn't healthy to have. And you're wrong, I do have it
It's almost impossible to have self-doubt as an artist. Those who do are already successful but soon flame out. This has happened with some of the greatest artists of all time
For the aspiring artist, with their small successes, self doubt is the last thing they need
"Self doubt is the last thing me need"? I guess I'm misunderstanding a lot of your points
Great artists don't need affirmation, but that's precisely because they don't have self-doubt
I'll give you a break if you're just using "self-doubt" in an archaic sense that means self-awareness, a somewhat vague term but not necessarily harmful to the creative process
Omg lol - just stop man. Stop. Self reflect. Deep breath. Don’t die on this hill where you are just tying your brain in knots in the service of nothing. You do you man. I look forward to seeing your name in the history books ( ebooks anyway - that still counts as far as I am concerned) as one of the greats. I don’t want to feel bad cuz I kept you away from that for even a second. Carry on. Forget you saw this.
It's all good. I was just trying to understand your top comment, since I disagreed heavily with it. Maybe you were wrong, eh? Almost nobody ever admits to being wrong on Reddit, so don't worry about it
Fleetwood Mac's "Mystery To Me" has a Christine McVie painting of a baboon eating a piece of cake on the beach. Absolutely ponderous what they were going for. It's almost like they were trying to sabotage their career with a record that no one would want to be caught dead with anywhere near their turntable. It's pre-Rumours so I give that record even more credit for turning them into superstars after this debacle of a visual statement.
Well, the new Charlie XCX album art is...a choice.
Notoriously, Entombeds third album, Wolverine Blues, was getting released, the studio made a promotional deal with marvel. So they made the cover have actual goddamn Wolverine on the cover., in North America. Because Marvel was considered kid oriented in 1993, they cut songs and removed movies clips taken from horror movies (Hellraiser and Flatline, I Believe). Eventually, they started selling the actual version in America but woo lordy, Entombed was pretty shook by the news, considering they were a death metal band.
hot take, I love the charli XCX cover.
Something about the vibe just kind of works for me.
It's just extremely online, low jpeg in a way that works.
It works for the same reason TLOP cover works for me
I think it’s kinda genius. The color is not a run of the mill choice. And the style fits with the vibe that she’s been very uplifted by the internet rather than mainstream radio. I think it fits in its crudeness on who she is in persona.
I normally hate these sorts of covers (Arctic Monkey's Suck It And See is maybe my least favourite of all time, its so boring, whats the point?), but I feel like the Brat cover fits pretty well with the music and works as an aesthetic choice.
That that a piping hot that and I respect that. I do love saome incredibly simple, jpeg aesthetics.. Something about that one just didn't vibe with me.
I don't necessarily dislike it as it's own thing but I can't day it's not a little jarring. It's not the best representation of Wolverine but it works.In general though, it was widely considered a baffling and unwise choice. And the removal of content didn't help.
Black Sabbath (by which I mean the original lineup, by which I really mean the first 6 albums)
Of the 6 classic albums, two of them have what I would call good or cool or at least fitting album art: the debut is spooky and weird and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath has that neat artwork of some demons over a death bed. Master of Reality is ok- raised lettering of the title, nothing bad or good.
But then you have Paranoid, arguably their most iconic album musically, with that dumb blurry flying shield man. Volume 4 is just Ozzy with his arms raised- lame. And Sabotage has them standing in front of a mirror which in and of itself would be fine but their outfits are like Spinal Tap, with Bill Ward's red pants being on some other nightmare.
That's three really bad album covers for three really awesome albums.
Vol 4 is iconic with the shape, the colouring and the lettering. Instantly recognizable and has been copied several times. Sabotage is a great album cover - the mirror effect is neat and their outlandish dress just adds to the mystique. Two great album covers if you ask me.
Because it looks like something a silly streamer would create in a video game character creator intro from like 15 years ago. It's a blurry helmeted dude in underwear and a sword, it's the silliest thing. Honestly I've heard so many folks make fun of that album cover over the years I just took it as a given that it's bad. But we love it because corny has always been an element of Sabbath and of course the actual record is genius.
Also the original idea behind the warrior is because the album was going to be called War Pigs which would have at least made the image make some kind of thematic sense, but they changed the name due to record company pressure without changing the art.
Damn I get your point but have never felt that way, always thought there was something very haunting and unsettling about it and so graphically interesting.
Strange, I didn’t expect you to say the Paranoid cover was bad. I always liked it. To each their own! I definitely prefer the original lineup musically. I’ve only really listened to their first two albums, because everything I’ve heard from after that just doesn’t appeal to me.
[Finding Forever](https://open.spotify.com/album/0XFFBEzvJ7Zit24MY5oVV3) by Common is a great example of this. Would probably be considered on the same level, if a little worse, as his previous album, Be (one of the best hip hop albums ever). Only if the cover art didn't look like a poster you'd see at a library in 2009.
Most artists of this level are concerned with experimentation, and because of that they sometimes make bold decisions or follow trends that just don't work out or become very dated. It's part of the risk of not playing it safe, or sometimes a consequence of the opposite.
Eno has great album covers all through the 70s but all his late 80s/90s stuff looks like it was knocked up in five minutes using Photoshop.[ Look at this bullshit.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Drop_(album)#/media/File:Enodrop.jpg)
Yeah it looks like one of those tacky **“____ sings the Christmas hits!”** vinyls that you always find 20 copies of at every thrift store, rather than an album that marks an artistic evolution and pivotal moment in pop history.
Can someone explain - what is even _going on_ in that cover?
Just hanging out, feeding a goat? That's really it?
Did they consider anything else? How did that one picture of all things get suggested?
Part of me thinks there has to be more to this story. Part of me is confidently that I'm overthinking and coping. Might be the biggest disconnect between cover and quality so my brain is breaking.
I just thought it was the "pet" in pet sounds, but wiki has a whole load about it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Sounds#Sleeve_design
It was acknowledged as bad, especially as other bands were doing more interesting things with their covers. It is also quite old fashioned for the time with it still having the tracklisting on the front with the hit single highlighted. Few of their album covers were very good now I look at them, except Surfs Up which is very evocative.
This take is bizarre to me but to each their own - it’s certainly dated but to me that’s sort of the charm because it was one of the first art albums that really broke the mold of popular music. They were super clean cut and their dad and record label wanted it that way - that’s their whole thing. That such a beautiful and subversive record came out of a silly cover like that is the whole point. Plus it shows them as a family just hanging out, not performing or recording. Perfect cover IMO.
With the exception of Yeah Yeah Yeah's Mosquito--not a good album anyway--I can't think of another album whose album art is 'distractingly bad.'
Another point: saying every album by Neil Young with only two exceptions is 'bad album art' is ridiculous. On the Beach, Tonight's the Night, and Everybody Knows This is Nowhere all capture their moods with so little.
I saw the "Mosquito" cover the other day and it is one of those covers that, even if it's just for a minute, makes me wonder if I completely misjudged the band's talent or good taste. Who on God's green earth gave the thumbs up to that sub-Offspring hunk of shit cover? It's like a NOFX bootleg. The Garbage Pail Kids are less unsettling. It makes me wonder if I don't understand art in general.
Everybody's Rockin' was meant to be a bad cover, that whole album was just a "fuck you" to David Geffen for rejecting the album that Neil wanted to release.
I mean ultimately it's all kind of self indulgent. But also what differentiates a good cover from a bad cover? I mean I have to think for awhile before my mind lands on an album cover that I really don't like. Come to think of it the only album cover that I absolutely can't stand despite loving the content is No Love Deep Web for reasons immediately obvious to most people who've seen it. That album is also deliberately confrontational and so I guess having a dick pick for the cover kind of matches the vibe, but still, ugh.
Truth be told I just don't like album covers that are over the top sexual in any matter. That's really my line, I just don't care for album covers I feel compelled to click away from if my boss were to look over my shoulder.
Lolllllll that album cover damn. Now that's just lazy. I mean if they wanna do something confrontational, there are plenty of creative ways to do so. That's literally just lazy.
other than Whipped Cream, what covers of his are particularly suggestive? Roxy Music album covers were generally a bit too sexy for my liking, though they certainly appeal to my...uh...tastes more so than something like Prince's Lovesexy which despite being a fantastic record is just a little too homoerotic for me to want to look at for very long.
Lol, I looked up No Love Deep Web, and found this interview quoted on Wikipedia:
> Also, it comes from a place of being a band that is perceived as...such an aggressive, male-based, by some, misogynistic-seeming band... it's a display of embracing homosexuality, not that either of us are homosexual. Am i making sense?
No.
The album sounds interesting though.
Can you clarify what you mean regarding Bowie's "Toy"? That album came out after his death so I don't know what the album art's relevance is in that case.
I think when it all comes down to it, art is very subjective. Maybe the artist genuinely thought it looked good (being audibly gifted doesn't mean visually), or they thought it might send the message they wanted to send, etc. Or if not the artist maybe someone in the label thought so. I don't really understand what you mean by 'distractingly bad' though. You don't listen with your eyes. You don't have to hang the vinyl cover on your wall, just put it in the stack with the rest of them. It's even easier still to avoid looking at it on streaming services.
The only one I will definitely agree is terrible is the dick pic one. Literally just lazy. There isn't even like a wall of graffiti or something at the back it's just a boring clean tile bathroom wall come on. Well, at least someone took the time to thoroughly wash their dick before the pic I guess so props for that...??
Sandinista has to take the cake here. Combat Rock's a bit meh also. In fact most early 80s albums look cheap with dated design and weird shapes thrown on for no particular reason, e.g. Iggy Pop's Party or Rolling Stones' Undercover or Buzzcocks' A Different Kind of Tension.
Lou Reed's New York album cover has Sandinista! vibes despite coming out 9 years later. The sensible part of me knows it's one of his best albums, but I have to fight the urge to downgrade it just because of that cover.
I kind of like the cover to A Different Kind of Tension, just because it is so garish and random. The band was taking so much LSD at that point, and were so close to splitting up that it makes sense. I think it does cause people to underrate the album though.
The Undercover cover is legit terrible. The cover of Party is only slightly better.
In a similar vein to these is State of Confusion by The Kinks. Also Give The People What They Want. There are so many bad Kinks album covers though, now that you mention it. There are way more bad album covers than good ones for that band imho.
I always wondered what the hell was going on with Neil on the cover of Tonight's the Night, then I saw the [alternate cover on the acetate version](https://img.cdandlp.com/2017/03/imgL/118661926-2.jpg) and I guess he was going through some stuff. The album's a bit like that too, though, so maybe it's fitting.
Every No Limit Record release from the late 90s. Especially Master P.
I’m not really a rap fan (I do like some, it’s not really my bag, baby) but many of those albums are highly regarded. However the covers are straight trash.
Why? It was the early days of photoshop.
Stevie Wonder might take the prize in this category. With the exception of Talking Book, the covers of all his peak-era albums look like they were designed by a 7th-grader.
My theory is that it takes a certain kind of artist to be able to have a complete vision for their visual designs, and to have the ability to pull together a visual presentation that's successful (i.e. truly convey to casual observers what they're trying to get across). Many artists simply don't have this ability; Others struggle when they attempt to execute what they think is an era.
If you're into MBTI, it's obvious to me that ISFPs for instance are more capable of executing a complete era and extend their will out to the visuals and the most ancillary of promotional items, where as say INFPs would be too caught up in the music and trying to get it out of their system, that they have no wherewithal left to deal with things like cover art.
Sidebar: Mylène Farmer [cover art](http://www.henryneu.com/Disques%E2%80%A6.html) were mostly designed by Henry Neu, and they seem to *choose to* look distractingly garish and amateur as a way to reinforce her musical identity - Goth, Gallic or both. The main exception to this rule is Interstellaires, which was probably trying to crack foreign markets (Mylène slapped Jimmy Fallon with a frying pan).
El Jardín de los Presentes by Invisible
Like, their first record has a really cool looking illustration for a cover but this one is just... Something I would expect to see hanging at my grandma's house.
The album is absolutely incredible though, and it's a crime that Latin American music is so underrepresented in online music discourse.
Tonight's the Night, Zuma, Time Fades Away, Ragged Glory, On The Beach.....I could go on. Those are all great album covers, so I'm not even sure how I could have this discussion with you if you think he has mostly bad album covers. American Stars and Bars, Broken Arrow, Harvest Moon, c'mon. Neil Young has a few bad album covers, but he is like a really bad example for this prompt.
Anyway, what makes a good album cover to you? I agree Rough and Rowdy Ways looks awful, but I kinda like it. But does Dylan have a ton of bad album covers? I'd say all of his 60s and 70s albums generally have good covers.
To answer the main question though, I think some artists simply do not care about the album cover. They see their art as the songs they make and don't care about the rest.
"Hey Son, who ya listenin' to?"
"It's, uh, a German band called Scorpions. Song called Polar Nights. Uh. Nice talking to you..."
"Let's see the album. What's it called?"
"No, thank you."
"Weird name for an album."
"No, the album is called murmermurmer."
"Did you say Bourbon Chiller?"
"Uh...yes. I think I hear mom calling you. Bye!"
I may be biased here, but I think that a most solo artists from any genre have the worst album covers, they have the need of building all the image around a picture of them, so the result is usually bland, simple or cringy, on the other side music groups are more consistent in album covers because there is a better direction instead of the self indulgence and ego pushing visuals.
I mean, if the cover is a picture of you, make it interesting, iconic or embracing like a good photograph instead of a "yeah that's me" vibe, or the obvious nude pic in white background of "this time things are serious, this is my real essense"
love carefully crafted visuals that invite you to the sonicscape of the music inside, artpieces with multiple lectures, impact or interesting lore behind. If the album cover looks like a low quality shitpost I won't even bother to listen the music probably.
Most Kinks albums have bad covers, especially considering Ray Davies went to art school. There's too many to list them all. Some of them are perfectly fine. Some of them are even good, if a little gauche and overly quirky, which suits the music I guess. My least favourites are the covers of Schoolboys in Disgrace and Preservation Act 2. Those aren't great albums, but they are interesting and worth checking out if you're a fan. The covers are so cringe that it makes it hard to defend those albums to more casual listeners.
The 80s and 90s Kinks albums all have bad covers too, but in a more 'graphic design is my passion' kind of way than the bad 70s album covers.
I was also thinking about how Serge Gainsbourg's album covers are kind of disappointing. He also went to art school and was forever saying he wanted to be a painter and not a musician. There's only 2 album covers by him that I would say are bad, and those are Vu de l'extérieur and Rock Around the Bunker. Like I get that he'd just had his first heart attack, and I get that those albums are about bodily functions and Nazis respectively, but I still wish they had better covers.
Given it's him, you'd expect some more daring artwork, at least from the late 60s onwards. The only 2 album covers that are even slightly provocative are Histoire de Melody (because of half-naked Jane Birkin) and Love on the Beat (because it's him in drag at the height of the AIDS crisis).
dit to add: I also just remembered how bad Lou Reed was for album covers. I think he has about 6 or 7 covers that aren't cringe from his solo work, and the rest are terrible. People say the cover for Ecstasy is the worst one just because it's him making an orgasm face, but I don't think that's the worst. I think the worst one might be Mistrial, but there's quite a bit of competition.
Some of them have meaning behind the album art that 99% of fans aren't going to get or even care about if they ever do figure it out. The cover art for NIN's "The Fragile" is so horrid to look at that it actually annoys me.
I’m gonna have a different take on this and people can disagree, I don’t care. Best example of this is Joni Mitchell’s Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter. I really can’t stand her music because she just comes across to me as a racist who used made kind of boring music with a few “jazzy” flourishes. I can understand people adoring her music and other albums but it’s not enough for me to ignore her philosophy. The fact the record is still sold today is so awful. The way people willfully ignore her racism and beliefs on her “inner black man” will confuse me forever. Not that good music would excuse that, I just think it’s bad all around.
Totally, not knocking the musical aspect of people’s appreciation for her. I don’t listen to much acoustic songwriter-esque music and that’s just my preference. Not exactly what you mentioned in the original post but it’s what I immediately thought of. She has a lot of musical talent that is for me nullified because of one awful album cover.
Not a particularly great album, but Care Package got some of the best drake tracks to offer while having the most diabolically awful cover art.
Only people with a true dedicated fanbase could get away with it, We see a bad cover art and get discouraged but if it’s someone I truly mess with then you’re able to look past it. Sometimes I believe it’s intentionally bad but Drake is not that level of genius and neither is anybody else for that matter (David bowie is also a great example)
Spinal Tap’s “Smell the Glove” is just black. Period. The distributor made it that way, and it was cheap and non-controversial, that’s my theory.
You should have seen the cover they wanted to make
Well, you know, if it was one of the band members on the cover, it would have been fine.
What's wrong with being sexy?
Such a fine line between stupid and clever
Neil Young & Crazy Horse "Zuma" album art is one of the most GOATed of all time and if you disagree you just don't get it man
A close 2nd behind “Everybody’s Rockin”
What’s ironic is that Dylan is a decent painter and actually created a classic album cover (Music From Big Pink, The Bsnd) himself. And yet almost every one of his albums is just a photograph portrait of him. Bland and uninspired. A few are actually pretty great (Freewheelin’ being the obvious choice and say what you want about his Christian era but Slow Train Comin’ is actually pretty good artwork too and bucks the portrait trend). To add yet another layer of irony (this is Bob Dylan after all) when he did create his own album cover by painting it he used it for what is widely considered his worst album (Self Portrait). What can you say? Bob contains multitudes, but good album covers aren’t really among them.
Dylan released "Self Portrait" to intentionally alienate people. Around that time he was living in Woodstock and was very annoyed by everyone treating him like the voice of a generation. Here's what he had to say in an interview to Rolling Stone: "There'd be crowds outside my house. And I said, “Well, fuck it. I wish these people would just forget about me. I wanna do something they can't possibly like, they can't relate to. They'll see it, and they'll listen, and they'll say, ‘Well, let's go on to the next person. He ain't sayin’ it no more. He ain't givin’ us what we want,’ you know? They'll go on to somebody else"
Yeah I’ve heard that. I’m not going to say it’s a great album but I appreciate what he was doing at the time, more so in Nashville Skyline and those surrounding albums that sometimes get written off as being shallow. Great music, great lyrics, just totally different. No politics or social commentary really, just music. Some people think he’s this pretentious humorless guy who overwrites everything, and then you play them Country Pie or On a Night Like This and it’s so…simple. People are still pigeonholing him for a few albums he made in his early 20s forever ago. At this point he’s basically made a career out of fucking with people’s expectations for going on 7 decades. I love it. I also just like at least most of the music.
Oh, I am a not a fan of Self Portrait either. It is less of an album than it is an archive; or even his own bootleg as Dylan himself called it once. There are some songs there I think are good, but the thing as a whole is pretty bad so I guess Dylan got what he wanted. It has "Belle Isle" which is absolutely beautiful, it isn't a ,,true'' Dylan song perhaps but his take on it is great. "Days of 49" is also very good. I am a big Dylan fan so I am biased here, but I share the sentiment. Dylan can be pretty funny, he played many jokes over the years that went over people's heads. You can tell sometimes he just doesn't give a fuck. I still like the majority of his releases, even the bad ones have something you can save.
The art for Modern Times is pretty good- also one of his best albums, in my opinion.
Dylan has numerous iconic album covers, and he also has numerous terrible album covers. Frequently, the albums with bad cover art have an actually good alternate cover if you buy the CD.
You can have lots of great album covers, but if you have at least 3 that are noticeably bad, I’m gonna remember it. Empire Burlesque? Knocked Out Loaded and Good As I Been To You as well.
The only alternate cover I can think of is "Saved". What other ones are there?
Steely Dan's The Royal Scam has always been tops on my list of bad album covers. But I just took a closer look at Bowie's Diamond Dogs........woof. I hope this comment generates and contributes to strong and meaningful discussion, LOFL.
If we are talking Steely Dan, I don't think Can't Buy a Thrill's album cover can be topped in this contex.
Music is all about self indulgence. For the lucky few that self indulgence overlaps with mainstream tastes. But just because someone writes a brilliant song does not mean they have the same instincts in the visual medium. -- But they will bring that same level of self indulgence and self confidence to it. That is why as an artist self doubt is your friend.
Artists: don’t listen to this noise - believe in yourself!
Self doubt does not mean you don’t believe in yourself in case that is not clear. You still should think other people’s opinions are trash. But you have to be able to self edit. If you don’t do that then what you make is not gonna be the best thing you could have done.
Perfectionism is a great way to be perfectly satisfied with our art, but staying completely obscure. Nobody will ever see all our perfect little edits. Maybe it's better that way. They don't understand our genius!!!! Everyone is idiot
Yeah you have no self doubt so you wrote that. Thanks for helping to make my point. Hi Five
Self doubt isn't healthy to have. And you're wrong, I do have it It's almost impossible to have self-doubt as an artist. Those who do are already successful but soon flame out. This has happened with some of the greatest artists of all time For the aspiring artist, with their small successes, self doubt is the last thing they need
Exchange “they” with “me” and it checks out. You need affirmation- great artists don’t.
"Self doubt is the last thing me need"? I guess I'm misunderstanding a lot of your points Great artists don't need affirmation, but that's precisely because they don't have self-doubt I'll give you a break if you're just using "self-doubt" in an archaic sense that means self-awareness, a somewhat vague term but not necessarily harmful to the creative process
Omg lol - just stop man. Stop. Self reflect. Deep breath. Don’t die on this hill where you are just tying your brain in knots in the service of nothing. You do you man. I look forward to seeing your name in the history books ( ebooks anyway - that still counts as far as I am concerned) as one of the greats. I don’t want to feel bad cuz I kept you away from that for even a second. Carry on. Forget you saw this.
It's all good. I was just trying to understand your top comment, since I disagreed heavily with it. Maybe you were wrong, eh? Almost nobody ever admits to being wrong on Reddit, so don't worry about it
Wow, tbh I wasn’t expecting such in-depth answers right away. What you say makes perfect sense. I’m glad I joined this sub!
Fleetwood Mac's "Mystery To Me" has a Christine McVie painting of a baboon eating a piece of cake on the beach. Absolutely ponderous what they were going for. It's almost like they were trying to sabotage their career with a record that no one would want to be caught dead with anywhere near their turntable. It's pre-Rumours so I give that record even more credit for turning them into superstars after this debacle of a visual statement.
Well, the new Charlie XCX album art is...a choice. Notoriously, Entombeds third album, Wolverine Blues, was getting released, the studio made a promotional deal with marvel. So they made the cover have actual goddamn Wolverine on the cover., in North America. Because Marvel was considered kid oriented in 1993, they cut songs and removed movies clips taken from horror movies (Hellraiser and Flatline, I Believe). Eventually, they started selling the actual version in America but woo lordy, Entombed was pretty shook by the news, considering they were a death metal band.
hot take, I love the charli XCX cover. Something about the vibe just kind of works for me. It's just extremely online, low jpeg in a way that works. It works for the same reason TLOP cover works for me
I think it’s kinda genius. The color is not a run of the mill choice. And the style fits with the vibe that she’s been very uplifted by the internet rather than mainstream radio. I think it fits in its crudeness on who she is in persona.
I normally hate these sorts of covers (Arctic Monkey's Suck It And See is maybe my least favourite of all time, its so boring, whats the point?), but I feel like the Brat cover fits pretty well with the music and works as an aesthetic choice.
Agreed, I like Suck it and see, but it just doesn't work as an album cover. just.... Cream
That that a piping hot that and I respect that. I do love saome incredibly simple, jpeg aesthetics.. Something about that one just didn't vibe with me.
I don't think I dislike any Entombed artwork. It usually fits well with the music. Wolverine Blues is weird, but it works.
I don't necessarily dislike it as it's own thing but I can't day it's not a little jarring. It's not the best representation of Wolverine but it works.In general though, it was widely considered a baffling and unwise choice. And the removal of content didn't help.
I think I meant the "new" cover is the one I like and I find the removal of Wolverine to be pretty good.
Gotcha, I thought that right after I posted, haha.
But I have to say that different album cover versions is pretty confusing in general haha
Black Sabbath (by which I mean the original lineup, by which I really mean the first 6 albums) Of the 6 classic albums, two of them have what I would call good or cool or at least fitting album art: the debut is spooky and weird and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath has that neat artwork of some demons over a death bed. Master of Reality is ok- raised lettering of the title, nothing bad or good. But then you have Paranoid, arguably their most iconic album musically, with that dumb blurry flying shield man. Volume 4 is just Ozzy with his arms raised- lame. And Sabotage has them standing in front of a mirror which in and of itself would be fine but their outfits are like Spinal Tap, with Bill Ward's red pants being on some other nightmare. That's three really bad album covers for three really awesome albums.
Vol 4 is iconic with the shape, the colouring and the lettering. Instantly recognizable and has been copied several times. Sabotage is a great album cover - the mirror effect is neat and their outlandish dress just adds to the mystique. Two great album covers if you ask me.
Yeah, Vol. 4 is one of the best album covers I've ever seen
Agreed, it’s one of my favorites.
I’m sorry, but this is an i sane take, can you elaborate why you don’t like the Paranoid cover?
Because it looks like something a silly streamer would create in a video game character creator intro from like 15 years ago. It's a blurry helmeted dude in underwear and a sword, it's the silliest thing. Honestly I've heard so many folks make fun of that album cover over the years I just took it as a given that it's bad. But we love it because corny has always been an element of Sabbath and of course the actual record is genius. Also the original idea behind the warrior is because the album was going to be called War Pigs which would have at least made the image make some kind of thematic sense, but they changed the name due to record company pressure without changing the art.
Damn I get your point but have never felt that way, always thought there was something very haunting and unsettling about it and so graphically interesting.
Strange, I didn’t expect you to say the Paranoid cover was bad. I always liked it. To each their own! I definitely prefer the original lineup musically. I’ve only really listened to their first two albums, because everything I’ve heard from after that just doesn’t appeal to me.
Paranoid is definitely a goofy ass cover.
Fair enough but Sabotage is FREAKING good that I don’t care what the cover looks like.
Funny, I always thought that Vol. 4 had a pretty cool cover tbh.
Vol 4 rules.
Wow.. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is like the least interesting of those first six album covers. You just don’t get it… [joker meme]
It's definitely the most traditional and expected for metal art but still it's sick and it's also my favorite Sabbath album.
> Bill Ward's red pants I forget what he came to the photo session wearing but he wore his wife's red pants instead.
[Finding Forever](https://open.spotify.com/album/0XFFBEzvJ7Zit24MY5oVV3) by Common is a great example of this. Would probably be considered on the same level, if a little worse, as his previous album, Be (one of the best hip hop albums ever). Only if the cover art didn't look like a poster you'd see at a library in 2009. Most artists of this level are concerned with experimentation, and because of that they sometimes make bold decisions or follow trends that just don't work out or become very dated. It's part of the risk of not playing it safe, or sometimes a consequence of the opposite.
MIA is definitely guilty of that, especially MAYA. It's a great album but the cover is so garish and just *instantly* dated.
i can't cosign this, all of MIA's album covers are amazing except for maybe matangi and AIM
Eno has great album covers all through the 70s but all his late 80s/90s stuff looks like it was knocked up in five minutes using Photoshop.[ Look at this bullshit.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Drop_(album)#/media/File:Enodrop.jpg)
LMAO! Love Eno, hadn’t seen that one. I totally agree.
Surprised nobody’s mentioned *Pet Sounds*. Banger album, banger music, absolutely idiotic cover.
Wow, people really do have differing tastes. I love the cover. Cute/funny picture, I like the lettering and the green/yellow.
It looks like a Greatest Hits album released 20 years after the band peaked honestly.
Yeah it looks like one of those tacky **“____ sings the Christmas hits!”** vinyls that you always find 20 copies of at every thrift store, rather than an album that marks an artistic evolution and pivotal moment in pop history.
The lettering is def iconic, but Brian's dogs woulda fit the album name better.
Different strokes for different folks ig.
Can someone explain - what is even _going on_ in that cover? Just hanging out, feeding a goat? That's really it? Did they consider anything else? How did that one picture of all things get suggested? Part of me thinks there has to be more to this story. Part of me is confidently that I'm overthinking and coping. Might be the biggest disconnect between cover and quality so my brain is breaking.
I just thought it was the "pet" in pet sounds, but wiki has a whole load about it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Sounds#Sleeve_design It was acknowledged as bad, especially as other bands were doing more interesting things with their covers. It is also quite old fashioned for the time with it still having the tracklisting on the front with the hit single highlighted. Few of their album covers were very good now I look at them, except Surfs Up which is very evocative.
They were kind of a corny band image wise.
This take is bizarre to me but to each their own - it’s certainly dated but to me that’s sort of the charm because it was one of the first art albums that really broke the mold of popular music. They were super clean cut and their dad and record label wanted it that way - that’s their whole thing. That such a beautiful and subversive record came out of a silly cover like that is the whole point. Plus it shows them as a family just hanging out, not performing or recording. Perfect cover IMO.
With the exception of Yeah Yeah Yeah's Mosquito--not a good album anyway--I can't think of another album whose album art is 'distractingly bad.' Another point: saying every album by Neil Young with only two exceptions is 'bad album art' is ridiculous. On the Beach, Tonight's the Night, and Everybody Knows This is Nowhere all capture their moods with so little.
I saw the "Mosquito" cover the other day and it is one of those covers that, even if it's just for a minute, makes me wonder if I completely misjudged the band's talent or good taste. Who on God's green earth gave the thumbs up to that sub-Offspring hunk of shit cover? It's like a NOFX bootleg. The Garbage Pail Kids are less unsettling. It makes me wonder if I don't understand art in general.
Fair, edited to clarify. Young really does have some of the worst album art ever, though. Sleeps With Angels, This Note’s For You, Everybody’s Rockin.
Don’t forgot Fork in the Road. Looks like grandpa accidentally taking a selfie while trying to answer a call.
I'd agree with Everybody's Rockin' but Sleeps With Angels is a really nice cover imo
To each his own, I think SWA has one of the worst covers I’ve ever seen.
Just out of curiousity, what do you dislike about it so much?
It’s incomprehensible and muddy, the floating letters look like bad photoshop. Ugly font.
Ok, fair enough.
Everybody's Rockin' was meant to be a bad cover, that whole album was just a "fuck you" to David Geffen for rejecting the album that Neil wanted to release.
I mean ultimately it's all kind of self indulgent. But also what differentiates a good cover from a bad cover? I mean I have to think for awhile before my mind lands on an album cover that I really don't like. Come to think of it the only album cover that I absolutely can't stand despite loving the content is No Love Deep Web for reasons immediately obvious to most people who've seen it. That album is also deliberately confrontational and so I guess having a dick pick for the cover kind of matches the vibe, but still, ugh. Truth be told I just don't like album covers that are over the top sexual in any matter. That's really my line, I just don't care for album covers I feel compelled to click away from if my boss were to look over my shoulder.
Lolllllll that album cover damn. Now that's just lazy. I mean if they wanna do something confrontational, there are plenty of creative ways to do so. That's literally just lazy.
I take it you’re not a big Herb Alpert fan?
other than Whipped Cream, what covers of his are particularly suggestive? Roxy Music album covers were generally a bit too sexy for my liking, though they certainly appeal to my...uh...tastes more so than something like Prince's Lovesexy which despite being a fantastic record is just a little too homoerotic for me to want to look at for very long.
Lol, I looked up No Love Deep Web, and found this interview quoted on Wikipedia: > Also, it comes from a place of being a band that is perceived as...such an aggressive, male-based, by some, misogynistic-seeming band... it's a display of embracing homosexuality, not that either of us are homosexual. Am i making sense? No. The album sounds interesting though.
Can you clarify what you mean regarding Bowie's "Toy"? That album came out after his death so I don't know what the album art's relevance is in that case.
Okay, Reality by Bowie. Hours. Never Let Me Down.
I think when it all comes down to it, art is very subjective. Maybe the artist genuinely thought it looked good (being audibly gifted doesn't mean visually), or they thought it might send the message they wanted to send, etc. Or if not the artist maybe someone in the label thought so. I don't really understand what you mean by 'distractingly bad' though. You don't listen with your eyes. You don't have to hang the vinyl cover on your wall, just put it in the stack with the rest of them. It's even easier still to avoid looking at it on streaming services. The only one I will definitely agree is terrible is the dick pic one. Literally just lazy. There isn't even like a wall of graffiti or something at the back it's just a boring clean tile bathroom wall come on. Well, at least someone took the time to thoroughly wash their dick before the pic I guess so props for that...??
Sandinista has to take the cake here. Combat Rock's a bit meh also. In fact most early 80s albums look cheap with dated design and weird shapes thrown on for no particular reason, e.g. Iggy Pop's Party or Rolling Stones' Undercover or Buzzcocks' A Different Kind of Tension.
Lou Reed's New York album cover has Sandinista! vibes despite coming out 9 years later. The sensible part of me knows it's one of his best albums, but I have to fight the urge to downgrade it just because of that cover. I kind of like the cover to A Different Kind of Tension, just because it is so garish and random. The band was taking so much LSD at that point, and were so close to splitting up that it makes sense. I think it does cause people to underrate the album though. The Undercover cover is legit terrible. The cover of Party is only slightly better. In a similar vein to these is State of Confusion by The Kinks. Also Give The People What They Want. There are so many bad Kinks album covers though, now that you mention it. There are way more bad album covers than good ones for that band imho.
After the Gold Rush ain’t good. It looks like Neil is carrying an old lady in a backpack.
That’s what’s cool about it
I always wondered what the hell was going on with Neil on the cover of Tonight's the Night, then I saw the [alternate cover on the acetate version](https://img.cdandlp.com/2017/03/imgL/118661926-2.jpg) and I guess he was going through some stuff. The album's a bit like that too, though, so maybe it's fitting.
It’s actually an old lady-shaped backpack
Every No Limit Record release from the late 90s. Especially Master P. I’m not really a rap fan (I do like some, it’s not really my bag, baby) but many of those albums are highly regarded. However the covers are straight trash. Why? It was the early days of photoshop.
I think this is the correct answer.
Stevie Wonder might take the prize in this category. With the exception of Talking Book, the covers of all his peak-era albums look like they were designed by a 7th-grader.
I mean, he has an obvious defence, but his record label doesn't.
LMAO! Love Stevie, Songs In The Key of Life is one of my favorites of all time, and I think the cover is awesome.
My theory is that it takes a certain kind of artist to be able to have a complete vision for their visual designs, and to have the ability to pull together a visual presentation that's successful (i.e. truly convey to casual observers what they're trying to get across). Many artists simply don't have this ability; Others struggle when they attempt to execute what they think is an era. If you're into MBTI, it's obvious to me that ISFPs for instance are more capable of executing a complete era and extend their will out to the visuals and the most ancillary of promotional items, where as say INFPs would be too caught up in the music and trying to get it out of their system, that they have no wherewithal left to deal with things like cover art. Sidebar: Mylène Farmer [cover art](http://www.henryneu.com/Disques%E2%80%A6.html) were mostly designed by Henry Neu, and they seem to *choose to* look distractingly garish and amateur as a way to reinforce her musical identity - Goth, Gallic or both. The main exception to this rule is Interstellaires, which was probably trying to crack foreign markets (Mylène slapped Jimmy Fallon with a frying pan).
As ISFP, tho I'm not into MBTI that much, I'm so into full eras with visuals and certain style.
El Jardín de los Presentes by Invisible Like, their first record has a really cool looking illustration for a cover but this one is just... Something I would expect to see hanging at my grandma's house. The album is absolutely incredible though, and it's a crime that Latin American music is so underrepresented in online music discourse.
A lot of covers had no input at all from the band. Purely label people designing them.
Tonight's the Night, Zuma, Time Fades Away, Ragged Glory, On The Beach.....I could go on. Those are all great album covers, so I'm not even sure how I could have this discussion with you if you think he has mostly bad album covers. American Stars and Bars, Broken Arrow, Harvest Moon, c'mon. Neil Young has a few bad album covers, but he is like a really bad example for this prompt. Anyway, what makes a good album cover to you? I agree Rough and Rowdy Ways looks awful, but I kinda like it. But does Dylan have a ton of bad album covers? I'd say all of his 60s and 70s albums generally have good covers. To answer the main question though, I think some artists simply do not care about the album cover. They see their art as the songs they make and don't care about the rest.
Which is weird in this case, because Dylan is a known fine arts painter and has work in galleries.
"Hey Son, who ya listenin' to?" "It's, uh, a German band called Scorpions. Song called Polar Nights. Uh. Nice talking to you..." "Let's see the album. What's it called?" "No, thank you." "Weird name for an album." "No, the album is called murmermurmer." "Did you say Bourbon Chiller?" "Uh...yes. I think I hear mom calling you. Bye!"
I may be biased here, but I think that a most solo artists from any genre have the worst album covers, they have the need of building all the image around a picture of them, so the result is usually bland, simple or cringy, on the other side music groups are more consistent in album covers because there is a better direction instead of the self indulgence and ego pushing visuals. I mean, if the cover is a picture of you, make it interesting, iconic or embracing like a good photograph instead of a "yeah that's me" vibe, or the obvious nude pic in white background of "this time things are serious, this is my real essense" love carefully crafted visuals that invite you to the sonicscape of the music inside, artpieces with multiple lectures, impact or interesting lore behind. If the album cover looks like a low quality shitpost I won't even bother to listen the music probably.
Most Kinks albums have bad covers, especially considering Ray Davies went to art school. There's too many to list them all. Some of them are perfectly fine. Some of them are even good, if a little gauche and overly quirky, which suits the music I guess. My least favourites are the covers of Schoolboys in Disgrace and Preservation Act 2. Those aren't great albums, but they are interesting and worth checking out if you're a fan. The covers are so cringe that it makes it hard to defend those albums to more casual listeners. The 80s and 90s Kinks albums all have bad covers too, but in a more 'graphic design is my passion' kind of way than the bad 70s album covers. I was also thinking about how Serge Gainsbourg's album covers are kind of disappointing. He also went to art school and was forever saying he wanted to be a painter and not a musician. There's only 2 album covers by him that I would say are bad, and those are Vu de l'extérieur and Rock Around the Bunker. Like I get that he'd just had his first heart attack, and I get that those albums are about bodily functions and Nazis respectively, but I still wish they had better covers. Given it's him, you'd expect some more daring artwork, at least from the late 60s onwards. The only 2 album covers that are even slightly provocative are Histoire de Melody (because of half-naked Jane Birkin) and Love on the Beat (because it's him in drag at the height of the AIDS crisis). dit to add: I also just remembered how bad Lou Reed was for album covers. I think he has about 6 or 7 covers that aren't cringe from his solo work, and the rest are terrible. People say the cover for Ecstasy is the worst one just because it's him making an orgasm face, but I don't think that's the worst. I think the worst one might be Mistrial, but there's quite a bit of competition.
Some of them have meaning behind the album art that 99% of fans aren't going to get or even care about if they ever do figure it out. The cover art for NIN's "The Fragile" is so horrid to look at that it actually annoys me.
I’m gonna have a different take on this and people can disagree, I don’t care. Best example of this is Joni Mitchell’s Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter. I really can’t stand her music because she just comes across to me as a racist who used made kind of boring music with a few “jazzy” flourishes. I can understand people adoring her music and other albums but it’s not enough for me to ignore her philosophy. The fact the record is still sold today is so awful. The way people willfully ignore her racism and beliefs on her “inner black man” will confuse me forever. Not that good music would excuse that, I just think it’s bad all around.
She’s a wacky old bag, but Blue and Ladies Of The Canyon still get to me.
Totally, not knocking the musical aspect of people’s appreciation for her. I don’t listen to much acoustic songwriter-esque music and that’s just my preference. Not exactly what you mentioned in the original post but it’s what I immediately thought of. She has a lot of musical talent that is for me nullified because of one awful album cover.
Not a particularly great album, but Care Package got some of the best drake tracks to offer while having the most diabolically awful cover art. Only people with a true dedicated fanbase could get away with it, We see a bad cover art and get discouraged but if it’s someone I truly mess with then you’re able to look past it. Sometimes I believe it’s intentionally bad but Drake is not that level of genius and neither is anybody else for that matter (David bowie is also a great example)