Here is another addition to the AblumArtExchange Blog's ongoing search for the worst album covers of all time. The forthcoming album by by industrial metal band Ministry features a dead junkie and a big piles of chunky vomit. The album is scheduled to be released on April 3, 2012.
The puke dripping off the dead guy's goatee is a nice touch. Don't you think? The cover art fits right in with past "Search for the Worst" albums that feature things like pee, poop and dead people. I'm actually kind of disappointed that the cover doesn't include a rat eating one of the dead guy's eyeballs.
The end of 2011 means that it is time for the "Best of" and "Worse of" lists to be published online and in magazines. This year, there were not as many disgusting album covers as we have seen in the past. There were not any animal mutilations or covers featuring feces and other bodily wastes.
However, there were covers featuring amputated limbs, a mutilated woman, and a nose or two being picked. There were also a couple of covers that are noteworthy for being poorly designed and disappointing to fans. My list of The Worst Album Covers of 2011 appears below in order from 10 to 1.
#10 The Cars - Move Like This
The Cars were once known for producing albums with memorable album covers. Unfortunately, the cover for their first new album in decades was a major disappointment. It featured stock photo backgrounds and strange silhouettes of the surviving band members.
The third album by Arizona rock band The Maine credits four people for design, art direction and other tasks required to produce an album cover. I just want to know which one of them applied the lipstick.
The debut album by San Francisco electronic band The Limousines was self-released in 2010 and released by Dangerbird Records in 2011. It is the only album cover I have ever seen that features a spit bubble. The photos that my niece takes of her baby blowing them are cute. This? Not so much.
Released by Moshi Moshi Records, the Care Bear EP by Teeth is somewhat of a mystery. At first glance, the image of a hirsute statute with money falling around it seems wacky. On closer inspection, one notices that the anus of the male figure is very detailed and unusually large. Creepy? Yep.
The cover for the self-titled debut album by British electronic music duo You Love Her Coz She's Dead features a young woman with a safety pin jammed through her bloody lips. What else can I add besides the description? Uck! This makes nose picking look appealing.
The cover for the sixth studio album by American rock band Limp Bizkit is one of two revealed in 2011 that many fans immediately thought was a joke. The illustration by Wes Borland is certainly meant to be satirical. However, it is just a bit too weird to have been taken seriously.
Every year, I can count on some German band coming up with an objectionable album cover. Nuclear Raped Fuck Bomb by N.R.F.B. features an inexplicable photo of amputees who appear to be using donkeys as crutches. Add the blatant attempt to shock us with a title that combines sex and violence and we've got a third-place winner for the "Worst of" list.
There is not much that I can add to the hundreds of thousands of words that have been written about what is certainly the most controversial album cover of the year. When the cover for Lady Gaga's Born This Way was revealed online, the most common reaction was, "Where is the REAL cover?" Is it bad? Yes. Was it effective? Absolutely. The fact that it worked well as a marketing gimmick is the only thing that kept this monstrosity out of my #1 spot this year.
My choice for the worst album cover of 2011 is a for an album that celebrates rape, murder and a hatred for women. In that light, the cover featuring a woman who has been brutally murdered and dumped by the side of the road like garbage is fitting. The only question that remains is, "What kind of person buys this kind of thing?"
When I set out to find the worst album covers of all time, I did not want to create a list of album covers that are simply bad. I wanted to find the absolute worst. The covers on my list will feature things that are disgusting, offensive and wildly inappropriate.
This week, I found another candidate. The cover art for the forthcoming EP by Austrian artist Thomas Rainer's solo music project Nachtmahr is perhaps one of the most repulsive I have ever come across. The album is titled Can You Feel the Beat? and the cover features a young woman with two black eyes and a bloody nose holding a bloody baseball bat up to her mouth in a suggestive manner.
Violence against women is an ugly thing. Using it to promote a product is highly offensive and may earn Can You Feel the Beat? a spot on the list in our continuing search for the worst album covers of all time.
The latest addition to the list of album covers that may be the worst of all time is for the self-titled debut album by British electronic music duo You Love Her Coz She's Dead. The album was released on August 29, 2011.
This image of what appears to be a teenage girl mutilating her mouth with a safety pin is more than repulsive. Yuck!
According to the NPR website, Nonesuch Records posted the cover art for a forthcoming album by Steve Reich yesterday that is creating an understandable controversy.
The photo, which appeared on the website Sequenza 21, and then on Nonesuch's own site, is a graphically enhanced version of Masatomo Kuriya's shot of the second plane approaching the World Trade Center's twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001. The album, to be released Sept. 6, contains Reich's new work WTC 9/11, performed by Kronos Quartet.
Few would say that the image isn't provocative; others have already posted strong reactions. With the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 just around the corner, my Manhattan-based colleague Anastasia Tsioulcas and I thought a brief discussion might be appropriate.
It has been several months since an album cover has been worthy of being featured in our ongoing Search for the Worst series. The last cover to be considered was Lil Kim's violent beheading of Nicki Minaj on the cover her mixtape Black Friday.
The problem with using a photograph like this as album art is that no matter how well-intentioned, an album cover is a commercial marketing tool. It is designed to sell a product. Album covers can be inspirational. They can be works of art. However, the main objective is to sell music and make a profit.
In spite of the album being a work to mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11, this cover is probably destined to be listed as one of the worst of all time for many years to come.
On Monday, rapper Lil Kim distributed the cover art for her new mixtape, Black Friday. This resulted in several AAX Blog readers writing to suggest that I include the cover in my continuing series, Search for the Worst.
The cover is a parody of Nicki Minaj's current album, Pink Friday (right). It depicts Lil Kim (a convicted felon) butchering Minaj with a sword. Considering Lil Kim's history of conspiracy in violent crime, the cover rises above bad taste and could be regarded as a death threat.
I have never seen an album cover used to threaten the life of a rival recording artist before. In addition, the cover is poorly executed. For some reason, blood is squirting from Lil Kim's backside. I do not even want to think about why that could be happening.
Thanks to those who wrote in. Lil Kim's Black Friday does indeed earn a spot on my list of the worst album covers of all time. I think it is actually much worse than Millie Jackson squating on a toilet.
From what I've been able to determine through online research, Murder Junkies is a tribute band to the late punk rock performer GG Allin. Allin died in 1993 of an apparent drug overdose. Apparently, the band has existed in various incarnations since performing as a backing band for Allin.
While the cover art for punk albums is often deliberately shocking, this one is so far beyond the limits of sanity it has earned a spot on the AlbumArtExchange Blog's list of the all-time worst. The album is scheduled to be released on March 8, 2011.
It is the time of year when websites and blogs begin posting their annual "worst" and "best" lists. I will wait until 2010 is actually over and our final poll has concluded to publish the AAX Blog Best Album Covers of 2010 list.
Since I don't ask readers to vote on the worst album covers every week, I think it is okay to let the world know what the worst ones are and why. Below are the ten worst album covers of 2010. They were chosen based on poor design, inept execution, questionable taste, or all three.
The cover for Vampire Weekend's Contra made headlines when the model who posed for the photograph filed suit on the grounds that she had not given permission for its use. Beyond the controversy, the album cover deserves to be one of the worst of 2010 simply because it is designed to look like an amateur Polaroid that someone pulled out of a shoebox. The result is imitation authenticity. It is the Milli Vanilli of album art.
CocoRosie's Grey Oceans was released with different covers for the CD and LP versions. Unfortunately, both featured the duo wearing what looks like what would happen if you covered yourself with glue and ran through a crafts store. At best, the costumes look like they spent a few bucks at their local Michaels.
Christina Aguilera's Bionic is an example of what can happen when a very good photograph of a beautiful woman is given to a "outsider artist" along with a lame concept. Everything about this album cover is wrong, from the blood streaming typography to the Rocky Horror lips.
Usually, covers for metal albums get a pass when it comes to being gross. The cover for Lordi's Babez for Breakfast is an exception. Believe it or not, there is a line and this cover crosses it with the image of a demon infant drawing blood from a breast. Yuck.
The cover for MGMT's Congratulations is another example of outsider art that is supposed to be artistically significant in some way. I suppose I would be more forgiving of this particular cover if it had better execution. There are several flaws in the image that look as if they are the result of an unskilled hand rather than inspiration.
When I wrote about the cover for Reba McEntire's All the Women I Am a few months ago, I actually got hate mail from enraged Reba fans. For them, the country legend can do no wrong. In my book, that makes her tacky album cover even more objectionable. The background is made out of aluminum foil! Kitchen wrap!
It is a joke. I get it. However, the cover for Got Cock? by Revolting Cocks is just too over-the-top. It is like a stand up comic who tries to hard and is just a bit too crude. The best thing about the cover is that the album title wasn't actually tattooed on the model's lips.
It is one thing to publish an album cover with a controversial, race-baiting concept. It is another to steal a controversial, race-baiting concept from another recording artist. The cover for rapper Sheek Louch's Donnie G: Don Gorilla appears to meet both requirements that qualify it as one of the worst album covers of the year.
#2 A Plea for Purging - The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The cover art for The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by A Plea for Purging is bloody and mutilated head of a wolf. The animal has been decapitated and several extracted teeth appear in a puddle of blood beside a pair of pliers. AAAAAAAGH!
I don't think I have to explain why Soul Center by General Eclectics was chosen to be the Worst Album Cover of 2010. I really don't want to know anything about the artist or why such a disgusting image was placed on the cover of their album. A close up of a stream of urine coming out of a horse. Really?
Prior to its release, Kanye West revealed through Twitter that the cover for his album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy had been "banned" due to sexual content. The artwork by painter George Condo is supposed to be a representation of West being straddled by what he described as a phoenix. Of course, a phoenix is a mythical bird. The creature on the cover looks more like a griffin. In any case, the cover came close to making it to the top 10 worst of 2010.
This is the ninth installment of Search for the Worst here at the AlbumArtExchange Blog. I am taking my time when in comes to selecting album covers for this category. I want to make sure that my list of the worst album covers of all time includes nothing but the most vile and disgusting and not album covers that are simply bad.
The cover that I've chosen this time is for a 2001 album by French death metal band Arkhon Infaustus called Hell Injection. The album cover is so heinous that is has a "censored" cover for use on online stores (right).
Of course, the cover is intentionally disgusting. It is exactly what one would expect from a band whose lyrics deal with Satan worship, sex and sado-masochism.
These days, if a death metal band wants to shock the public with a controversial album cover, the best thing to do would be to use an image of a unicorn flying over a rainbow. While my generation was shocked by horror movies like The Exorcist, kids today have seen everything. They shoot demons with shotguns in video games. A transexual Jesus is hardly going to impress them.
Over the past few months, my search for the worst album covers has focused covers that feature bizarre images of cannibalism, coprophagia, defecation and dead animals. The cover that I'm featuring today is a 2003 album by experimental rock band Xiu Xiu.
The cover for A Promise features a nude man posing on a bed while holding a baby doll. I have chosen to post the censored version of this cover. If you want to see the uncensored version, click the image to go to the AlbumArtExchange gallery.
Using nudity doesn't mean that an album cover should be considered a bad cover. There are plenty of album covers with beautiful and artistic nudes. This album cover is just plain creepy. I don't know what the story behind the photograph is and I suspect I would regret finding out. The problem with an album cover like this is that many people will view it as exploitative. It looks like something found under a serial killer's pillow.
This is the time of year when website and blogs start publishing their “worst of” lists. This year is notable because it marks the end of a decade. I have already read a few lists that name the worst album covers of the decade. A couple of list include Walking On A Dream by Empire of the Sun (right) and other likely candidates such as Brooke Hogan’s The Redemption.
The one thing that I always notice about these list is that they often include far too many recent covers. It seems that people have a very short memory when it comes to album art. This often results in the worst album covers being forgotten in favor of ones that were released in the last year or two of the decade.
I am not going to create a list of the worst album covers for the decade. There are simply too many to list. It would be very difficult to narrow it down to just 10. However, I am quite certain about which album cover should be named the worst of the decade.
The worst album cover of 2000 to 2009 is the original cover created for Party Music by The Coup. The album cover features members of the band blowing up the World Trade Center buildings. The album was set to be released shortly after September 11, 2001 and had to be delayed while a new cover was created. Unfortunately, promotional albums had already been distributed with the original cover.
In my opinion, nothing compares to this album when it comes to qualifying as the worst of the decade. The Empire of the Sun album cover may be corny and clumsily executed and the Brooke Hogan cover may be the result of a huge ego, but at least neither cover rises to the level of infamous bad taste and incredibly poor timing exhibited by The Coup’s Party Music.
The reason why I began my search for the worst album covers ever created is that many of the previous lists published online have included album covers that are far from the worst. Many lists include classic album covers like Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica (right) and Frank Zappa’s Weasel Ripped My Flesh. While these covers may be avant garde, they are certainly not as bad as they come.
However, one album cover that is included on almost every list of “worst ever” covers belongs without question. R&B singer Millie Jackson’s 1989 album Back to the S__t! features Jackson sitting on a toilet with her panties around her ankles and a straining expression on her face.
This album cover is so crass, it can’t even be viewed as being campy or ironic. It fails on every possible level. With tracks titled Love Stinks and Muffle That Fart, one would mistakenly assume this was a comedy album.
There have been a few other album covers featuring people sitting on Toilets. This year, The Bloody Beetroots used an illustration of a masked character sitting on the toilet while reading a newspaper. Because it is an illusttation rather than an actual photograph of the artist, I do not think it is as bad as the Millie Jackson cover. Imagine an album cover with Rihanna or Beyonce sitting on the pot.
A few weeks ago, I added an album cover featuring a dead raccoon (right) to my list of those worthy of being included on my forthcoming “worst ever” list. I feel that The Real Feel by Spiral Stairs crossed the line by putting roadkill on their album and using it as some kind of sick and misguided joke.
Now, Swedish rocker Olle_XXL has gone one step further by using a photograph of a cat with the mangled carcass of a bird in its mouth. The album is titled Great Tit & Grey Pussy and the cover is certain to provoke a universal reaction — UCK!
Anyone who has ever owned a cat knows the horror of having their pet drag mutilated animals inside. My friend Cliff has a very sweet cat named Shadow that has a habit of bringing him disemboweled gophers. Do we really need to see this on the cover of an album? I would hate to see this become a trend.
One of my ongoing endeavors is to compile a list of the worst album covers ever created. Unlike other lists, the AlbumArtExchange blog will not include covers that are simply avant garde or parodies of other album covers.
Yesterday, I came across an album cover that is a genuine contender for one of the worst album covers of all time. The cover of The Evolution of the Homo by Homo Erectus features a pair of gorillas mating. That alone doesn’t qualify this cover as one of the worst. What makes the cover rise to that level is that is coupled with a title and concept that slurs gay people.
The bio from the Homo Erectus (a.k.a. Dimitri Papas) MySpace page makes it all too clear what this album is all about:
In his early years, Homo Erectus first discovered electronic sounds by distorting the sounds of the Organ he was forced to play, not realising that this was going to spawn him into someone different. Duran Duran, Devo, Brian Eno and Depeche Mode were some of his influences during this time. Recording and experimenting on cassette tapes was his only way of expressing his thoughts and feelings.
[…]
At the same time Homo Erectus discovered the Homo Sexual. The delicious scents, muscularity and manjuice of this specimen were too much for Homo Erectus to resist. Desires for the Homo Sexual became fulfilled and his quench for manjuice was satisfied.
If this is supposed to be satire, it really misses the mark. The concept for this album is certain to offfend people regardless of their sexual orientation. It is crude, childish and trite. Didn’t this type of thing die with Beavis and Butthead? “Heh, heh. He said homo.”
The Evolution of the Homo was released on October 31. You can listen to samples of the tracks from the album on Amazon.com. With song titles like Skank, Sex Machine Man and Big Thick Dick, you will know what to expect. I suppose that this kind of thing has an appeal to a certain type of dance club fanatic and those with immature tastes in music.
For me, this is about as low as it goes (except for the guy with the poop on his face). Fifth grade humor combined with a photograph that degrades two beautful and endangered animals puts this album cover in a class by itself.
When I created the “Search for the Worst” category on this blog, my goal was to feature only the most universally offensive, horrible album covers ever created. So far, I’ve selected an album that features a bloody illustration of cannibalism and another that is a photograph of a dead raccoon.
Today, I discovered an album that features a portrait of the artist with what appears to be feces smeared around his mouth. Coprophilia is not something that I believe would sell albums to anything except a very small segment of the population. Yet, here is an album cover with the revolting image and a suggestive title that attempts to do just that.
Barry Lawton is a singer songwriter, hailing from the sprawling metropolis that is Crewe, South Cheshire. He has released two albums, ‘Enough To Go Around’ released in 2001 and his 2003 release entitled ‘Brown Lipstick’.
Lawton specialises in well-crafted intelligent pop tunes with the emphasis on melody and lyrical punch. If you’re looking for mystical sojourns into introspection, then you’ve sadly come to the wrong place.
The only reason why I am including the “buy now” link for this album is so people can click through and verify that this is real. YUCK! If this cover doesn’t qualify as one of the worst of all time, I don’t know what does.
It has been several months since I’ve posted anything under the dreaded “Search for the Worst” category. This is the category reserved for album covers that I feel are destined to appear on “Worst Album Cover” lists for years to come.
The Real Feel by Seattle rock band Spiral Stairs is unquestionably that bad. It is perhaps one of the most disgusting album covers I have ever seen. The cover was designed by photographer Ashod Simonian, who writes on his blog:
I played on it and designed the packaging. Before the backlash begins, I should state that I love raccoons and I hate death. Death freaks me out. I also don’t condone pills though I have had the occasional recreational pill and have found them to be terribly awesome. I am a big fan of art and art as personal expression and I am also way into humor. I suppose you could add honesty and creativity and innovation to the list of things that I’ll stand behind as well. So step off.
So step off? No, I’m backing away slowly — like you do when you see a crazy person eating bugs and talking to himself. I don’t know why anyone would use a photograph of a dead raccoon as the cover of an album. No one is going to buy an album that is repulsive. It just doesn’t work that way.
There are lots of lists of the “worst album covers” published in newspapers, magazines, and online. Personally, I’ve always found most of them to be disappointing. They almost never include the really bad album covers — the ones that are responsible for a loss of sales and maybe even the demise of a recording career.
Over the next few months, I will be asking the readers of this blog to nominate album covers that they feel are the worst ever. I want the AlbumArtExchange list to be the most comprehensive and include high quality scans of each and every cover.
Any discussion of Sharp Teeth generally begins with some mention of the cover art, which depicts a bearded, razor-toothed young man devouring the innards of a likewise hairy and sharp-toothed woman in the middle of a snowy wilderness. For better or worse, the music itself isn’t as gruesome as the cover might imply. David Karsten Daniels turns out to be a pretty gentle guy: a folky indie singer/songwriter along the lines of Chris Garneau, Sparklehorse, or Sufjan Stevens…
The main purpose of album cover art is to sell the album. Since cannibalism really has nothing to do with Sharp Teeth and “folky indie” music in general, this cover didn’t do the job. The fact that it became the focus of the iTunes review demonstrates the problem.
What album covers do you think qualify as the worst ever? Why? Post a comment and let me know which covers should be included. Just make sure that the cover is part of the AlbumArtExchange collection.
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