Worst Album Covers of All Time (The Definitive List)

[whosebrian]

[Silent Member]

On 7/3/2020 at 8:12 PM, Gocab said:

Looks good to me

 

[Hugh Mughnus]

46 minutes ago, whosebrian said:

[whosebrian]

5 minutes ago, Hugh Mughnus said:

[Hugh Mughnus]

[Plum]

 

Why are you booing me? I’m right. 

 

 

 

[zkom]

 

[Nebraska]

i heard these guys go hard on this record

[Rubin Farr]

Daryl putting in some effort, John half assing it as usual 

[Rubin Farr]

[purlieu]

On 9/17/2019 at 8:11 PM, zkom said:

Just came across this, wtf. Yes, it's a chill out music compilation. Has some Wagon Christ also.

 

Yeah, '90s ambient is more often than not really bad for album covers, but this is a whole new level. 
Here are some favourites of mine:

[Zephyr_Nova]

New Age Radio cover's working for me on a non-ironic level.

[Zephyr_Nova]

On 1/14/2021 at 7:51 AM, Rubin Farr said:

Daryl putting in some effort, John half assing it as usual 

I do wonder about the decision making process here, where they both agreed this was the image they wanted to represent their music.  I know the same could be said for most of these, but Hall & Oates were huge.  Some thought must have been put into it.

[zkom]

22 minutes ago, purlieu said:

Yeah, '90s ambient is more often than not really bad for album covers, but this is a whole new level. 
Here are some favourites of mine:

Psytrance is another genre where you're likely to find horrible CGI covers. Of course suomisaundi artists took the whole thing to a new level and took a complete piss out of it..

 

[purlieu]

Yeah, those '90s ones do have the benefit that unless you had some serious (and expensive) computing power, that was probably the best you could do in 1994. It's why FSOL's art of the same era looks so much better, because they Virgin bankrolling their graphics. Whereas the psy scene really should know better, but keeps coming out with ludicrously busy looking obnoxious cheap looking CG full of Buddhas in space with mushrooms floating round their heads to this day.

[purlieu]

And of course, the most important aspect of a psy album cover: you only have to make half, or even a quarter of it, then just mirror the bits you've made.

[Rubin Farr]

11 hours ago, purlieu said:

Yeah, '90s ambient is more often than not really bad for album covers, but this is a whole new level. 
Here are some favourites of mine:

Sonic Voyagers was the guy from Zen Paradox, my friend had this CD, lol

[zkom]

10 hours ago, purlieu said:

And of course, the most important aspect of a psy album cover: you only have to make half, or even a quarter of it, then just mirror the bits you've made.

Yeah, neon-colors and all kinds of abstract, futuristic, religious and mystic stuff on see through layers so it looks like you're looking at it while tripping on 5 hits of acid.

Reminds me of one internet discussion where people were listing the most ridiculous psy-trance lyrics or speech samples. One of the funniest ones was "Let's go back in the time machine / To ancient India / And smoke Hashish with Lord Shiva"

[Braintree]

I kind of wish I didn't care so much about the artwork so I could use something godawful like that.

[Rubin Farr]

On 2/2/2021 at 4:57 PM, purlieu said:

Yeah, those '90s ones do have the benefit that unless you had some serious (and expensive) computing power, that was probably the best you could do in 1994. It's why FSOL's art of the same era looks so much better, because they Virgin bankrolling their graphics. Whereas the psy scene really should know better, but keeps coming out with ludicrously busy looking obnoxious cheap looking CG full of Buddhas in space with mushrooms floating round their heads to this day.

 

[purlieu]

Yes, that one's the worst of both worlds. In many ways.

[Extralife]

3 hours ago, Rubin Farr said:

 

Haha yeah. This is probably the only Spacetime I don’t come back too either. Music and visuals have not aged well.

[zkom]

This album cover surely was ahead of it's time with the shitpost/meme style in 1977

[hayhook]

Great Album. But I've always despised the cover art.

[Zephyr_Nova]

Oof, yeah that's bad.