Brilliant albums with horrible album covers

Fine example. There’s a few really great Miles Davis albums with covers that I really dislike, now that I think of it.

 

maybe the worst one yet- Sleep Dirt, by Frank Zappa. A cover and title so ugly that I never even considered buying the record. Only to recently learn in the pages of this Forum that it's, ah, brilliant.

 

Live Evil cover:
Sure, but if you want to meet a guy who looks like evil incarnate, that's your guy.

 

The artist was Mati Klarwein.
Also did “Bitches Brew” cover

 

This one makes me queasy. All those toys spray-painted black, and the women look very uncomfortable being there. (Brilliant album? Well it had a hit single, and anyway nobody bought albums back then.)

 

Klarwein also did the cover for the Hooteroll LP, by Jerry Garcia & Howard Wales. Which I'll not post in this topic page, because that painting is not ugly at all, at all.

 

Wow looks like she ... missed the toilet?
Is that the real cover??

 

Yup.

The cover is supposed to show a girl whose phone number was scrawled on the men's room wall with a message akin to "for a good time call".

She's trying to erase the phone number and gets caught.

There are more sinister readings to the scared expression on her face, too, but I always thought it was just a mix of her anxiety about the phone number on the wall and getting caught in the men's room...

 

I don't think it is a horrible cover, but I always thought that the cover of All Things Must Pass was kind of underwhelming compared to what was within its grooves.

 

No
The cover was brilliantly appropriate

 

Here's a parody courtesy of amIright.

 

Agreed, I've always liked that cover art!

 

I've literally just noticed the "double vision" down at the bottom of the wall/screen there! And she's wiping off what looks like "dirty white boy"....

EG.

 

Good eye - I never noticed either!

I had the 1st 2 Foreigner albums but never bought a copy of this one. IIRC, I taped it off the radio, and that was good enough for me as a 12-year-old.

My music-buying budget was tight, so if I had a taped copy, that allowed me to use those $$$ elsewhere!

 

The bedroom eyes under bangs.

For SP that's actually very "sophisticated".

 

I really like this album, but would hesitate to call it brilliant. The artwork however, really disturbs me.

 

Have you listened to the lyrics?

 

I think she's cleaning off graffiti!

 

I love Portishead but actually think all 3 of their albums have terrible covers, especially Dummy.

 

Have to disagree, the still from ‘To Kill a Dead Man’ fits the aesthetic of the album perfectly.

 

I guess that's just a shadow under where she's sitting, but it looks like something else

 

Fun fact - the model on that cover is an actress who later played in the movie Heathers. I was surprised when I found that out. Not surprised by the fact per se, but that I didn’t know it till about a year ago.

 

Ha ha - that whole cover clearly leaves itself open to interpretation!

Seems like "Head Games" is one of those "it'd be hard for a mainstream artist to pull off today" covers, as it's too potentially tawdry.

I don't say this as a condemnation of current attitudes - just an observation!