Believing, as we do, that you can’t judge a book by its cover, what follows is a list of albums we consider great despite some garish cover art. Feel free to weigh in with your contributions to the list or any disagreements you may have. Ciao.
Neil Young – Zuma
When Zuma came out, Neil Young was coming out of his infamous ditch period, a dark and creatively fertile stretch of albums. Zuma, a more upbeat country tinged album is considered one of his greatest, but unlike the striking and more artistically considered album art of the previous albums, Neil seriously miscalculated with this one. What are we looking at here? A mediocre black and white sketch of what appears to be a pelican-eagle hybrid riding the back of flying naked women over desert terrain. And there’s a pyramid. Maybe there’s some brilliant connection between the music and the image, but it’s an eyesore. Only the idiosyncratic Young would compromise such an upbeat album’s broad appeal with a cover that says, “Put me in a bargain bin.”
Beatles – Magical Mystery Tour
In 1967, it seemed The Beatles could do no wrong. Sgt Pepper had solidified their status as popular music’s most ambitious and capable innovators. What would they do next? Of course, their subsequent music was immaculate. The Magical Mystery Tour EP, which would would later be expanded to a complete album with the addition of contemporaneous A and B sides, is as good as anything they did. However, the EP was released in support of the disastrous Magical Mystery Tour television movie, a masturbatory hour of improvised scenes and half-baked ideas. The EP’s cover, in its original and revised form, has more in common with the film than the music. As difficult as it is for me to write such blasphemy, for a moment, The Beatles seemed completely out-of-touch
Black Sabbath – Sabotage
The last great Sabbath album to feature Ozzy (sorry Technical Ecstasy fans), Sabotage saw Sabbath indulging a number of disparate whims effectively. The album featured two of Sabbath’s greatest rockers, (Symptom of the Universe and Hole in the Sky), ambitious studio trickery, and atypical, keyboard-driven songs. Unfortunately, for all the thought and planning that went into the music itself, the cover is garbage. The band strikes a lazy pose, echoed on the portrait behind them in a black, foggy room. It looks worse than it sounds on paper. What was the photographer saying to them? “You! On the left! Try to look more stilted. Red pants, can I get a little belly peeking out of that leather jacket? Beautiful. Something’s still not right. Can we get Ozzy in a dress?”
Kinks – Lola vs Powerman and the Moneygoround
Driven by the success of “Lola”, one of the Kinks biggest hits, Lola vs Powerman and the Moneygoround was something of a comeback for The Kinks after a handful of brilliant but under-appreciated albums. Eclectic and eccentric, the album was unapologetically honest and cutting, targeting the music industry as well as people of deplorable character in general. The cover is abysmal, featuring the bizarre and unappealing image of two faces spliced together. By all accounts, Ray Davies was really hoping for a hit with this album. Why he’d jeopardize his chances with such a poorly conceived cover, we’ll never know.
Pearl Jam – Ten
Here it is, folks. The worst cover on this list. Ten was one of the biggest albums of the grunge movement, and Pearl Jam has proven to be the most enduring of those bands, continuing to enjoy popularity and success well into their second decade. While most of the grunge elite were breaking up and falling apart, Pearl Jam was just getting started. So what the hell were they thinking with this cover? It features the band high-fiving under pink light in front of a massive sculpture of their name. It screams early nineties, but believe me folks, it was even shitty back then. The worst part has to be the group high-five. A high-five? Preposterous.
