Hang the graphic designer
"Hang the graphic designer, hang the graphic designer, hang the graphic designer..."
I was just looking at the advert for Cat Power's new album, "Jukebox" on the back of this month's mag. It struck me that it may well be a covers album but, once again, Ms Marshall has managed to release a product with a spectacularly under average cover. "The Greatest" may well have been an amazing album which won many plaudits... but none of them were for the cover - a cheap and tacky affair with, let's be charitable and call it, a "gold" charm bracelet with a pair of little boxing gloves hanging from it. All this presented on a vomit inducing cerise background with boring grey writing. Mmmm... classy. I also note that there are other issues of the album available with a different cover.
So what do we have for the new album. Well, the boring grey is back, put this time as the background field for a picture of Chan Marshall (seemingly on the way to the osteopath after a particularly nasty Health and Safety incident - bend the knees, then lift from the hips and knees while keeping the spine straight, silly!) presented as a mis-aligned RGB colour separation. Is it just me or does that look just a wee bit pants?
It put me in mind of another excellent album from a few years ago with a woefully amateurish cover - "The Roads Don't Love You" by Gemma Hayes. In a Stalininst airbrushing out of history the original cover has been replaced with a nicely understated cover with Ms Hayes looking coy and not a little sexy leaning on a lamp post on a street corner. However, the original was rather less aesthetically pleasing - apparently put together by a 7-year old by tearing a photo of Hayes out of a music magazine and sticking into a scrap-book. No, we're not talking Peter Blake pop-art collage or postmodern Sagmeister design, we're talking cheap looking and amateur!
It made me wonder whether anyone had any other favourite miserably "C minus, must try harder" album covers lurking around in their record collections?
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This is dreadful
The Rolling Stones' 'No Security'
http://s274.photobucket.com/albums/jj273/Patrick_Crowther/?action=view&c...
Hmmm... I don't fancy yours
Hmmm... I don't fancy yours much! I'd forgotten that one.
Magical Mystery Tour...
...always been one of my favourite Beatles' albums, shocking sleeve though.
Fantastic collection of bad album covers here.
Slightly Off-Topic
But I thought I'd design the sleeve for the next Cat Power album, to save her the trouble. This also took two minutes.
Wonderful....
...but the cat isn't exactly putting much into that.
Do you think...
...that Van Morrison has upset the graphic designer?
This is worse though
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000002GNM.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
Bad album title, worse cover.
Mick Jones still has the DIY ethos
An album cover straight from the local jumble sale
Bandwagonesque by Teenage Fanclub
a record I love, an album which I can count on to cheer me up whenever I hear it. But not an album whose sleeve I can more than glance at without developing a migrane...
More than likely there's a measure of irony in using a design this shoddy, especially when you consider that Creation produced some iconic sleeve designs but it could be the reason that the fannies never really made it big is that lots of folk were just put off by this diabolical eye-offender.
It's...
..a classic in design simplicity.
Pre-Screamadelica simple 3 colour design.
Sorted.
I know Van riled the photographer on this one
There's a podcast-worthy HORA from Steve Rapport, the photographer involved in the tortuous creation of this highly welcoming sleeve, which I've recently passed on to the powers that be at The Word.
Don't tell me...
...did he ask Van to remove his tiara?
That is without doubt a man whose facial expression...
is asking "Have you done something to my harmonica?"
Twigged
perhaps someone had just twigged that his album title wasn't meaningless at all. It's an anagram of "POP? CHEAP COSMIC EMOTIONS!"
Van
I sense a sub thread here - terrible Van album covers (has there ever been a good, or decent one)? Can I chime in with the cover of 'Sense of Wonder'. Van doing his best Orson Welles sherry salesman impersonation is one of the funniest things I've seen on a cover.
Hopefully someone more technically savvy than me can upload a copy here so that all may share in it's awfulness.
Gary
A Sense Of Wonder
I tried and failed to upload the Sense Of Wonder sleeve. You can see Van in all his becaped glory here.
His worst one has to be Days Like This,
the one where he's walking the dogs with his missus; it looks like an amateur pap shot.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/97/Days_Like_This.jpg
Squeeze
Squeeze are one of my favurite bands, but over the years they have made some God awful covers. Here is an assorted selection (the album covers I've missed wheren't much better either).
Maybe that's why...
they never sold more records... people thought the music had to be as awful as the covers. But I'm in total agreement with you... at their best, Squeeze were brilliant.
Mostly horrible
Especially "Squeeze" but I have to take issue with the design for the Cool For Cats album. Sure, it's a bit bright, spiky and angular but it's not a bad pastiche of the 1950s design style of the era which the title takes the mickey out of, like get hep with the beat, daddio! Check out any 50s rockabilly album or Stray Cats cover design to get the references.
A few more...
http://s274.photobucket.com/albums/jj273/Patrick_Crowther/?action=view&c...
http://s274.photobucket.com/albums/jj273/Patrick_Crowther/?action=view&c...
http://s274.photobucket.com/albums/jj273/Patrick_Crowther/?action=view&c...
http://s274.photobucket.com/albums/jj273/Patrick_Crowther/?action=view&c...
...
That No Sercurity one is really, really terrible isn't it.
Makes Cat Power look like Sgt. Pepper.
judging buy the results
of the Fantacy A&R thread, they should sack all the graphic designers and art directors and just use the ramdom photo generator. Much better results and a damn sight cheaper. Though none of these coveres comes close to the abortion that is the 2012 Olympic logo. Some grown up actally "designed" that? For HOW MUCH???
Fart Power
Surely on the sleeve of her latest album, Cat Power is carrying on the covers theme and about to 'let one go' in tribute to Johnny Fartpants from the Viz?
Ptoom, Honk, Parp,etc.
vis a vis viz
The cat power cover put me more in mind of Viz's ongoing photo feature of pictures sent in of celebs (how shall I put this) being caught un awares from behind....
Packaging......
Is that the funny looking download that doesn't play anything on double clicking?
A graphic designer writes...
The sap responsible for the following has been banished from the Graphic Designers' Guild and has had their black poloneck and expensive spectacles confiscated:
http://rocksquad.files.wordpress.com/2007/02/bon_jovi_have_a_nice_day.jp...
Are you sure that wasn't the work of...
Jon Bon Picasso himself?
REM
Most, no ALL bar Murmur, have been dreadful.
My God, You're right!
I'd never considered them collectively before. Great band, shit sleeves.
(No subject)
Holy bouncing rabbits, Batman...
Yes, the Rush one is a bit of a clunker, isn't it? Worse than that, it led to the use of large inflatable rabbits popping out of 10 foot tall top hats as part of the stage show. Shudder.
And what happened with Big Generator? Was Roger Dean out down the shops when Jon Anderson called to commission a new album cover?
And that Marvin Gaye cover's just disturbing. Urrrgh...
I agree about the Marvin Gaye cover...
but what a great story behind the album title. Maybe Macca's next album should be called "Here my dear 2"
Oh yeah, THAT Marvin Gaye album...
...forgotten about that!
I don't think Roger Dean's...
aquarium fantasyscapes would have gone down too well with the shoulder pad and stick fruit in your bottled lager generation in the 1980s. I think he probably thought it was minimalist and cool, rather than the half-arsed botch job that it is.
Unquestionably, beyond doubt, no arguments
The worst cover of all time.
Behold.
http://hiphopselection.blogosfere.it/images/600px-Dr.DreTheChronic.jpg
You want bad album covers?
You've got bad album covers, 100 of 'em.
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/djlanda/the_100_worst_album_covers_ever/
David Crosby
I never thought the sleeve to If I Could Only Remember My Name was that bad. There surely must be worse out there.
The worst sleeve ever has to be by a German band called Birth Control c. 1972 which featured an eel inside a condom on the front and an egg yolk in a diaphragm on the back.
Pardon?
An eel inside a condom?
Diaphragm?
Ooh me poor head. I need a lie down.
Bloody hell...
I'd like to say
well done on finding that. I couldn't be arsed Googling Birth Control and thinking of suitable terms to narrow down the thousands of results. But being reminded of it in all its ugliness, I'm not sure I should.
Young
Yes, he is the business.
But, the less said about this the better...
[img]http://human-highway.com/pages/album/ER.jpg[/img]