40 of the Worst album Covers

Looking at the first ten or so again, at least two of them are parodies - the Uranus one (which exists with a couple of titles), and “Mary Hinge” (aka Hairy Minge), whose only AllMusic entry is for a Caravan album that also has a spoonerism for a title.

I’m sure there are more.

ETA the Reverend Al one for sure.
ETA2 Boy’s Town Gang, on the other hand, phew…how did they pick just one?
boys town gang music - Google Search

That’s a mild understatement! You can buy that “music” on Amazon.

Their version of Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You actually ain’t all that bad. I may even say good, at least on a half-listen.

I seem to be the only person on the Internets promoting Root Boy Slim and the Sex Change Band, whatever the discussion is.

There are tons of these lists out there. Ca. 1990, I dated a man who owned a used record store, and EVERY.SINGLE.TIME someone purchased Prince’s “Lovesexy”, they would cringe and say, “…the cover…”

https://www.merchbar.com/pop/prince/prince-lovesexy-vinyl-record

One of my favorite YouTubers is “Classic Album Review” and his favorite bad album cover is “Love Beach” by the Bee Gees.

Perfect ad copy for waxing. :wink:

I think even beyond that, they searched albums of bad covers instead of bad album covers.

How else to explain the Nimoy and Wing ones? The album covers seem fine, just portraits of the singer. Boring and uninspired, but they aren’t even dressed silly or wearing bad makeup to deserve a place on this list.

The Party Cannon cover is excellent.

I love the original lineup of Black Sabbath, but the artwork for many (most?) of their album covers was really bad, IMO. One example is Sabotage, with Bill Ward wearing his wife’s yoga pants.

That is your example from Black Sabbath? Yoga pants >>> the album cover below. But I mostly agree. Great albums, shit artwork. I do like their eponymous album cover, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath as well as the cartoony Master of Reality (that album is monumental in my young life so it gets undeserved elevation plus I’m a big stoner rock fan and that is the bedrock of all)

I’ve always loved the cover (an music!) of Vol4

Shit artwork or not, they did find interesting fonts.

Google ‘Big Black ‘Headache’ original cover’ and you will have your answer. Warning: not for the squeamish.

Submitted for your [dis]approval: Toe Fat Two

“We Can’t Be Stopped” by the Geto Boys isn’t for the squeamish, either, and that’s why I’m not going to post a link.

All I remember about it was that when Rolling Stone reviewed it, they said that it was an automatic shoo-in for “Worst Album Cover” when they did their annual viewer’s poll.

The guy who was shot has since died - in 2019, from pancreatic cancer.

It’s actually a font called “VolumeFour”.

The one with Leonard Nimoy gives me bad vibes. Must have been shot a couple of years after he finished Mission:Impossible, he’s getting typecast thanks to Trek, he’s stressed out from suing Paramount because they are using Spock’s likeness to sell everything from cheap toys to overpriced beer, and he himself has been hitting the sauce a little too hard lately.

“Potatoe”. It just doubles the cringe.

Carcass - Heartwork

Great album, stupid album cover. Only gets noted because it’s an HR Giger sculpture but even then it’s not one his best works. It looks like something a not very gifted high school art student would create.

I don’t actually mind Paranoid, either, considering that the band thought it was a pretty random cover. It does look like an artist’s concept of what a paranoid person would do or see, even though the composition of the picture itself seems amateurish.

Tony Iommi’s explanation:

“The album cover on Paranoid has nothing to do with [the song] ‘Paranoid.’ It was going to be called War Pigs, so we had a bloke with the shield and a [sword], which remotely made sense — more so than Paranoid,” he explained. “But they banned that, you couldn’t use [War Pigs] as a title in them days. …It was so awkward for us to move forward with things.”

I’ve never heard/read that story before. Odd that an album titled War Pigs had to be renamed. Very interesting…thanks for sharing.