Out of place album covers... music doesn't match the artwork.

From a forum thread on awful classical album covers

Holst, The Planets
Richard Wagner, Die Walküre

 

I honestly thought that was Suzi Quatro on that cover!! Shows how little I know about the Edgar Winter Group.

 

Under this pop-art cover was one of their heavier, more progressive outings...

 

Yes, the cover is now iconic but it must have taken one long acid trip to come up with it and think it's cool.

 

Agree, seems pretty fitting to me.

 

A Monty Python CD from 1971?

 

Well, the actual LP did say Another Monty Python Record....

 

Looks like a character from Grace Metalious' PEYTON PLACE

 

Ditto. I think this cover would've been chintzy and trite if the album had been called War Pigs, but the title Paranoid gives the picture a whole new, creepier meaning. It does evoke being jumped late at night by a paranoid schitzo, clad in his self-made armour and railing against his demons (war pigs, iron men, boot-clad fairies), which just might include you if you don't get out of there...

 

I think this cover fix in with the first Cait O'Riorden lineup......they did sound more traditional, and there's somewhat of a music connection between Irish music and sea tunes.....they even had the instrumental on their first album called "Sea Shanty."

The cover would be out of place with the albums after this one.

 

TG liked to play with preconceptions. Of course the "giveaway" is the title "20 Jazz Funk Greats" when there are only about 11 tracks on the album. And it also has a title track which is about as funky as TG got.

There was also another cover which was included in a boxset of their albums and had a dead body placed in the grass in front of them.

 

This cover is definately at odds with the album's title. I was never sure what they were trying to do with this release?

 

Painting is "The Raft of the Medusa", by Théodore Géricault (French Romantic period). I had actually known this when I bought the CD way back in the later(?) 1980's as I had take an Art class so I already knew the painting / period.

I think I might have even bought the record on the strength of the cover as it might have been before I got into the Pogues heavily - it was a total blind buy given that it was pre-Internet sampling. After hearing it though, I expected more emerald green fields on the cover versus something so heavily French Romanticism.

 

Anyway, this is perhaps the most misleading cover I'm aware of offhand:



It looks like it might be soft jazz or easy listening tailored for an evening with that special someone, but instead it's a 77-minute blast of shrieking Japanoise. Almost makes Metal Machine Music seem like Coney Island Baby.

 

That's cool......I'm not much of an art expert. I knew the Pogues' music going into this album, so I just made the sea connection.

 

No worries. I actually don't think it's too out of place anymore since the album is now 25+ years old and Art class is long behind me But when I saw this thread it was the first one I thought of as I remembered my first impressions at the time.

 

I've mentioned this one elsewhere, but when I bought The Notorious Byrd Brothers, I was expecting to hear the beginning of their country-rock period, not the most psychedelic album in their catalog. Guess I should have paid more attention to Roger McGuinn's groovy mustache.

 

Marcella wears sandals, though. So Carl and his Passions get a pass on this one.

 

If someone claimed that was the actual guitar that opens "The Man's Too Strong" I would not disbelieve him.

 

Nope, fits the title track perfectly. Plus, milk is part of any psychedelic breakfast.

 

How about this one...

 

This was also the first one that came to mind for me, however not being relatively new to the Beach Boys I figured there was a back story that perhaps I was not familiar with. Very very creepy cover though. I was given the LP a few months ago and thought for sure that it must be some overseas super-cheap re-release and was astounded to find out that this was the real cover.

 

Given that it is a North American themed image and that the album contains a powerful track from the North American themed project, Smile, I do not find it a stretch. A more generic white album type of cover might have suited the collage style of Surf's Up. Still, I think that the band was trying to play to what they thought was the biggest strength of the album rather than conceding that the band had quite a few different styles of rock on the album. Though, of course, Smile was to contain many different styles of rock music. So, ultimately, I fail to see the problem with the cover for Surf's Up unless one has a problem with the music intended for Smile.

 

Chaos UK Short Sharp Shock from 1984

 

Hard rockers aren't supposed to do album covers like this!!