I think it's a great image. Truly memorable.

As for Bruce, 'Born To Run' has a classic cover. But I agree about the majority of his albums not being up there in the design department. Actually, hold on... I like 'Darkness On The Edge Of Town' as well, simple and direct. And 'Nebraska' has a stark image to match the rawness of the music.

The cover for the new one is beyond terrible, as is The Ghost Of Tom Joad. Don't have a problem with Devils And Dust or Magic, though.

Indefensibly awful album.

OK but apart from Born To Run and The Who Sell Out, what have the Romans ever done for us...

I really don't like the Who's Next cover. Maybe it's my aversion to public urination.

is pretty dire, looks like work in progress of some devilish kind. Reminded me of his last lp cover, which was naff as well.
But as we all know, cover art is not as good now, as we mostly buy cds. Doesn't have the same impact as vinyl.
One of my favourite worst covers, is the collection by The Stranglers, believe it was one of their first greatest hits sets, and by god is it poor.

to the ire of certain forum notables, I posit that Fish-era Marillion were a great band with lousy covers.

Right, who wants to lay into Roger Dean?

no way does this do what's contained within justice

It really helped change your perception of the music inside. It was raw and strange and very British and it rescued the music from any taint of pomposity.(Have a look at our Album Cover Atlas to see where it was shot.)
Springsteen's album covers since Tunnel Of Love have looked as if they're plucked from the Hallmark Americana Range. They look like John Mellencamp covers.
Oh, and while I'm at it, this is a perfect place to post this reminder of the days when artists were free to turn their album covers into puerile jokes.

Pet Sounds.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Retrospective-Best-Buffalo-Springfield/dp/B00000...
(Sorry, I still don't know how to cut and paste a picture......)
This cover has to be the cheapest effort in the world: you can see the scissor cuts in the "background" allowing the insertions of the smaller images.
O so cruddy.
Good LP tho'.

RT album cover? I think it started with 'Sunnyvista' but really blossomed during the solo years. Pretty much great content, goes without saying.

Not keen on Springsteen's latest single either, it seems a bit lack lustre and uninspiring. Darkness On The Edge Of Town and Born To Run have simple but effective covers.

Has he ever had a decent album cover? Almost universally dire, plumbing spectacular depths with the likes of On the Beach, American Stars n Bars and Zuma. Fine albums all. But he reserves the very worst for his worst music - Everybody's Rocking, Are You Passionate, Landing on Water, etc.
Only passable cover in a 40 year career is Ragged Glory.

Great band, awful album covers.

I think Murmur is a good cover but every single one that followed is awful (and they are my all-time favourite band).

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/1/19/Dr.DreTheChronic.jpg

http://www.ugo.com/music/hip-hop-album-covers/images/entries/Doggystyle....

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y141/ccproph/wackcovers/doggpound.jpg

This is awful on so many levels.

... a return to the day when album covers had the tracklisting on and a picture of the band standing in a group holding their instruments (apart from the drummer who was just holding his sticks), and then on the back one of those fluffy articles usually penned by John Peel or the editor of Rhythm and Blues magazine or some such about how great the band is.

http://www.vandergraafgenerator.co.uk/quietz2.jpg

A brilliant mix of ambient/jazz/folk/classical/avant-garde/psychedelia on the inside

A bunch of pseudo-Dali meets Athena nonsense on the outside

...great musicians are necessarily graphic designers. In fact, as we have just shown, there's plenty of evidence to show that musical ability and graphic ability might be mutually exclusive.

It seems that musicians refuse to believe this, though :-(

Great album, terrible sleeve, terrible haircut.

... most of you have already google imaged "worst album cover ever " but if you haven't it truly is an eye oener.

This is main contender

[URL=http://img181.imageshack.us/my.php?image=worstalbumcovers07qm6.jpg][IMG]http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/361/worstalbumcovers07qm6.th.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Bryter Layter. Wonderful music, my favourite of his three, but that sleeve ... dear God.

An appallingly literal take on the album title, but not even using proper pets! How many of us own a goat as a pet for God's sake?

never tell that they were all on mind expanding drugs 'tho

American for patting, as opposed to the heavy kind disallowed at swimming pools

What were they thinking:

.

Thats because he chased some of his fathers/DELETED ON LEGAL ADVICE

Absolute cack - what a great album, what a cheap and nasty cover (no doubt that's supposed to be the point) - If this took more than 3 minutes to knock up I'd be amazed...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31FGAVWA8YL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

I was sure that'd work - sorry!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/40/Work_of_Heart.jpg

This must be one of the worst covers of all time...surely?

A great album. The sleeve, however, looks as though someone drew it on the back of a napkin during their coffee break. As album sleeves go, this was something of a let down after the amazing work by Hipgnosis on previous Pink Floyd albums.

To some hardened Floyd fans, the album itself was a thorough disappointment. I was behind the counter in late 1979, many copies of this record were returned the day after release by unhappy listeners.

The sleeve belongs at the tail end of the era when prestigious acts could leave both their name and album title off finished sleeve designs. Original copies of The Wall were identifiable only by a clear plastic sticker attached to the shrink wrap. (In later years, the logo on this sticker became part of the CD cover). Similarly, the cover for Wish You Were Here was totally obscured by a Smell The Glove-style black shrink wrap. Again, only a sticker (insisted upon by the US arm of the record company) identified the album. Once out of the protective wrapper, these and many other albums of the era gave nothing away as to the record's name or the maker of the record. Led Zeppelin's 4 symbols (or whatever you wish to call it) doesn't even have the band's name on the spine of the album.

The heads, however, didn't need telling. We just knew, man. We knew.

Worst album cover I've ever seen was (I think)a "best of" type album by Family.It was a hand drawn illustration of the band as afootball team,depicted in action on the pitch.
It has been burned into my brain for many years.It belonged to a friend I haven't seen in a long time,and I've never seen another copy of said album.Sometimes I wonder if it wasn't some awful dream.

but my favourite shitty cover

...that Percy didn't have some sort of approval over the artwork and, if so, the fact he signed it off only reinforces my opinion that musicians don't necessarily make good graphic artists.

It could of course be a deliberately 'fourth form' idea in an ironic way but somehow I doubt it

Excellent album and all that, but the sleeve looks like one of those paintings that serial killers turn out in jail to show that the're not just about blood and gore, but that they have a tender side as well.

I lay the evidence before you, oh Word jury, and you be the judge...

Dirty Work was very much 'of it's time'. I always quite liked Flashpoint for it's graphic simplicity, could almost be a FAC sleeve. Steel Wheels is inoffensive enough; if a little dull and pointless.

BUT... No Security and A Bigger Bang are indisputably a pile of poo

...no Bridges to Babylon?

How about The Beatles' White Album ? Interesting album, but not much effort went into the album cover!

Listen chaps (and chapettes, if there any reading this). Just about every artist with a body of work has one or two album covers that fall into the category of bloody awful. It is no big deal to find a bad example.

But what we should be looking for here are those artists who (for whatever reason - useless record labels, entrenched misogyny, total lack of style, inability by band members to focus during daylight hours etc) have never had any good covers at all. To my mind, the outstanding band in this respect is Golden Earring.

Do not get me wrong. I think Golden Earring are a rock treasure. They have been around as long as the Stones, and certainly have their fair share of great and good albums and tracks. I have most of their albums in fact, and regard the lack of critical respect for their work as a real failure in rock archaeology. But I have to admit that Golden Earring have only themselves to blame for this outcome. Why? Because they have the longest sequence of crap covers in rock history. Well over 30 albums into their career, it is hard to think of any album cover by them that would ever make you want to play whatever is inside. Go on Amazon and check them out if you don't believe me.

What they have is an endless sequence of vaguely unpleasant and sexist covers of half-nude or occasionally nude women (eg Moontan, Grab It for a Second), or crummy group shots (most of the early albums, most of their live albums), or half assed pseudo-Hipgnosis covers (Contraband, Bloody Buccaneers) or even a black hole (The Hole). Not one of their covers has a modicum of charm.

Not even when album covers were worth looking at (ie the time of LPs)could GE muster a half-way decent cover that told you anything interesting about their personalities or artistic sensibilities. Which is a great way to write yourself out of rock history. A real tragedy.

Can anyone match this run of visual rubbish?

Yes you are right brutus, the Earring covers are pretty cack as a whole, except, maybe, Switch which is old prog style artyfarty but not all bad.

For truly terrible stuff, have a look at the first two albums covers from prog rockers Flash - the band formed by guitarist Peter Banks when he left/got booted from Yes. The first is a shot of a woman showing only her not very attractive knickers. The second shows half of a topless woman from neck to navel.

The band weren't too bad if you like 2nd division Yes, but they never took off, and many have blamed the dreadful album covers.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flash-Out-Our-Hands/dp/B0000CD5JZ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=...

The Mighty Diamonds "The Right Time".

http://media.pias.com/mogwaidownload/The-Hawk-Is-Howling.jpg

It's not even a hawk.