CTTE is great because its so simple---Didnt like Hand cannot erase album cover---

But was never crazy about Trespass Nursery Crime or Foxtrot not great art---from my Fav band.

How dare you? Male naked butts are a staple of progressive rock covers! 

Agreed. That's why I keep mine always behind me .

that album cover made me scratch my head and say "what were they thinking?"

Yes - Going for the one (why? ...again)

Hawklords - 25 Years on

IQ - Frequency

Tangerine Dream - Bootleg Box set 1 (very representative of the music...)

The Tarkus artwork always looked a bit naff to me

(ditto VDGG's H to He Who Am the Only One)

 

I'm going to expand the tendency of the latest posts to the outer circle of the realm of PA:

Not a great album, only the closing track is excellent; the rest is decent.

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/siLLy_puPPy/baaad-album-covers/" rel="nofollow - https://rateyourmusic.com/list/siLLy_puPPy/baaad-album-covers/

Some that are on PA include:

That's just a sample. For more see the list.

Stardust We Are - The Flower Kings

Meddle - Pink Floyd

Pictures At An Exhibition - ELP

90125 - Yes

I dunno. I  just picture him defoliating with a toilet brush 

That cover's fine. One can do much, much worse when it comes to "shirtless band pix." Like that Orleans album (not gonna post it!).

RIP Ronnie Montrose. That first record is outstanding, and Paper Money is a worthy follow-up. No sophomore jinx with those guys.

They really dropped the ball when it came to the US release (Europe got a different cover). A fine album, too.

I expect there are worse but it wasn't that fine when I had to carry that record into school back in the day.

I'm with you on this one. Not a fun cover to look at.

Argo2112 wrote: Surprised no one said Tarkus, although that's one that might be so bad , it's good.

 

Someone did

To me this is a great cover in terms of design and is Pictures At An Exhibition

The worst ELP cover has to be Welcome Back My Friends . Totally says 'couldn't be bothered'.

Tormato must also a slam dunk in any ones book.

Love Beach.   (And there are worse outtakes as well. And it's not a well taken photo...)

Hemispheres. (I suppose it's in the title...)

Going For The One. (I know these two have been mentioned but ... butt...)

Talk. (Even if this was marketed well which it wasn't that would mean even more people would be annoyed at another Roger Dean -less cover. Pop group - quite good - with access to the single best artist for album covers (alone), decide against that and do this one...)

Abacab. (And there are 4 versions. C'mon guys it's not exactly the In Through The Out Door art...)

It...just makes me uncomfortable..

 

Progheads really need to get over their fears of becoming gay because they'd like album covers featuring male buttocks ...

Grow up for  prog's sake.

 

Would you think these album artworks as good if it was females' buttocks on the covers??

No, better:

I prefer this one, and also Zep's Houses of the Holy, over the ones aforementioned.

 

What makes this a bad album cover to me is his petulant stance.

 

 

 

 

I just feel very inadequate looking at that.

I suppose the theme is 'oh sh*t punk is happening and we aren't going to get away with another Roger Dean cover'

Is this real? As in, you DIDN'T just make this in MS Paint as a joke for this thread...?

bump

Hi,

Careful ... you might be told you don't listen!

(It's a close up on an ear under water ... a take on a line about not listening according to the Hipgnosis book! You can see it better on the English LP setting as it is clean ... the American version is badly reproduced and the cover is more difficult to figure out.)

He never said he didn't know what it was.

Just goes to show that our imaginations sometimes take over and lead us to either like something or not. It's hardly the worst album cover out there. An album like Close To The Edge deserves a better album cover for instance. In fact it would look much better with the Kansas album cover for Point Of Know Return!

I just hope the godawful Gong album cover was Saved by the Music. 

The worst album cover I have ever seen, although the music is fantastic.

http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=3890" rel="nofollow - http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=3890

This album cover is one of my favorite album covers. As you can see...

That's about all I can think of off the top of my head.

That's one of my favourite album covers :)

Of course, we cannot forget Spinal Tap's "Smell the Glove!"

This thread sure is interesting, because I personally consider Foxtrot to have an exemplary prog rock artwork!

I don't find these albums cover you mention bad, they never bothered me in any way. 

point well made, but "great" is all IMHO, right?

I really don't understand the deal with male nudity on Hemispheres and GFTO. Both are good covers (better than 2112 , also with male buttocks in the innergatefold and the kimonos on the back cover), though neither would be in my top 50 artworks.

No major problems with the Whitehead (incl VdGG and Le Orme) artworks either, even with the strange sense of perspectives , but the oddest Whitehead is Pawh Hearts, IMHO.

Duke & Trilogy are indeed poor (though there is a direction in Duke's gatefold art), Sabotage is awful and Fugazi is semi-sordid (but it isn't a good album, let alone great).

.

I've always found H to HE to be Whitehead's strangest, most intriguing piece. 

I still see it as a pair of lungs with a pocket watch attached, lol.

"What's wrong with being sexy?" 

Bless your heart, you remembered!!  

I once played in a Spinal Tap tribute/satire band, sort of a Mobius strip of bad....It was an amazing experience! 

The ultimate cover selected was, of course, the "black" cover....Spinal Tap confronted Metallica over their appropriation of the concept!!  

https://www.metalinsider.net/columns/remember-when-spinal-tap-confronted-metallica-about-a-certain-album-cover" rel="nofollow - https://www.metalinsider.net/columns/remember-when-spinal-tap-confronted-metallica-about-a-certain-album-cover

obviously it's all subjective. 

The ATTW3 cover is great, I agree. 

Another album, along with Hemispheres, that I had to take to school in a brown bag for fear of people taking the **** as to why I had a guy's butt on an album. 

Still, the inside photo is amazing.

yeah, I can understand with the late-70's context, but still make an issue 40 years down the line

Do you find the following threatening your heterosexuality?

I didn't have a problem with it then and don't know - it was just schoolboy humour.

I've always been one to appreciate art and its history. To me, album covers were a sort of extension of the art history ... with multi media added to the whole thing, which made it even more different, but not any less "meaning" about the cover.

I kinda side with Hipgnosis, whose covers were always a sort of "editorial" about the music itself ... and it meant it right and then some, although it is hard to figure out what it might be considering covers like Flash 1 and 2, which I keep thinking were Sherry who used to post here on Flash's behalf for a long while. Not that it makes any difference, but I wonder if in some ways, that was the great inspiration for a lot of the music, and to me, that is valid, even if some of us might find it distasteful, however at the time, both Playboy and Penthouse were doing their picture spreads, and in my book, these 2 covers were far more exciting than the pictures in the magazines.

All in all, to me, a lot of the covers are sheer non-sense and its meaning is just bollocks! And, too many of them, are just an ego thing, and basically keeping up with the live concert idea of "sexiness" and "this and that" which was not existent and it was just a fabrication in our minds by a media trying hard to sell you an album.

There was a film, I think it was called LOOKER ... but I'm not sure right now as I have not found it again, and in it was a detailed breakdown of how the EYE saw images, and sure enough it gave us a great example of a girl surfing, and where were our eyes centered in there ... 2 places mostly, and in many ways it really defined a lot of advertising ... no wonder that film has disappeared ... it was a major point in how things were done to entice your money! Prostitution of the highest order in many ways!

It doesn't bother me if it is a man or a woman ... let it be ... but there are certain things that you can imagine real quick from history ... how a church did not want to emphasize sex by making the member bigger (you know the statue!) and then all the paintings for the previous hundreds of years that had satyrs in them were oversized men, even with horns, which you know was more of a church idea than a reality, anyway.

To me, for example, the Guru Guru cover is not ... whatever ... it was a way to say that the music was RAW and no fake stuff here ... and that was what Guru Guru was all about, even though I have been told that Mani is a well known "nudist" ... and whatever, but it many ways, it was not the only time that he mentioned sexual innuendos into the band's music ... like Chuck Berry didn't either ... what a crock ... and in those days, the TV and pictures could not have shown anything below the belly, because it insinuated something not right, or improper ... I call it more evangelical bullpoop by the same folks that still define what you should see on American TV ... people whose morals are so hypocritical as to be insane and most of them should be disgraced from their roles and mandates ... sort of like the majority of the educational system folks that run the local schools ... many of which are ... totally out of touch and time, and continue to hide under the floor boards!

My only comment, is how TODAY, so many bands do not work more with other artists to create something more valuable ... the day of the DAW, means that changing a note is more important than the album ... and many of these folks don't know, or understand, what art means to many of us, and its important role in our lives ... but I don't think that folks in America can help it ... for 40 to 50 years one party has consistently taken away the money for a lot of the arts from educational systems, because it was well known that the "arts" make people become more liberal and "anti-establishment" .... guess what the result is ... 

Sad statement about the arts and what the music in many of these albums is all about. In most cases ... NOTHING!

I actually consider "Fugazi" to be the best album Marillion ever made. It is the only album I like of them. The album cover also shows the covers of the Peter Hammill albums "Fool's Mate" and "Over"; the albums lie somewhere on the floor.

About the naked male rear view: At least the ass is only painted in the mentioned albums. On the Guru Guru album "Hinten" it is a real male ass (probably the ass of Mani Neumeier).

What about this album cover:

Or this one:

I am certain you can see Mani's testicles in the last one.

yup, germans have been known to make some of the worst & tasteless albums covers (Birth Control anyone??)

But what I mean about Fugazi (besides not liking the music on it - the lesser of the Fish-era albums, IMHO) is the sordidness of it all is that I've always considered the Jester as a junkie in that sleeve . On top of it, the first two Marillion albums didn't get released as a gatefold sleeve, which kind of ruined the whole ensemble thing (full view)

With me it is the other way round - I consider "Script for a Jester's Tear" to be boring and "Misplaced Childhood" to be cringeworthy even. I am not a fan of Marillion at all; only "Fugazi" strikes a nerve with me. It is the album where Fish mostly resembles Peter Hammill with his singing, though the first few seconds of the title track of "Script for a Jester's Tear" are clearly a bow to Peter Hammill's song "Autumn" from his album "Over". For comparison:

Fish is known to be a huge fan of Peter Hammill.

In response to the question, the biggest one for me would have to be Yes' Going For The One. I mean, who wants to see that dudes butt. Not me, that's for sure.

Cboi Sandlin wrote: For example, the Dark Side Of The Moon cover is nothing genius, it is just a prism, but because the album is so great, the album cover has also become iconic. That's just a thought.

Sometimes the genius of great artwork is utter simplicity, but then again what is and what isn't great art will always be subjective.

Love the band. Love the albums. Hate the covers!

Arguably best album with worst cover - ever!

Different strokes for different folks. I love that cover art. It’s one of my favourite DT covers. 😄

This site never surprises me; I LOVE H to HE's artwork!!!

No arguing with tastes, is there?!

Also: David Bowie - Diamond Dogs

The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds. Advanced, sophisticated pop and feeding goats?

The Beatles - Rubber Soul. Never really been a fan of that photo actually. The close-up seems almost a bit agressive, and it is a bad representation of the music.

This cover is quite ugly, but the songs sound like this:

I actually would've agreed with you at one point, but I think the style of this cover fits well with songs like Misunderstood, the title track and disappear. I think they have far worse covers out there, but not all of them are good albums in my opinion so they might not fit the thread. I think Falling Into Infinity is a pretty awful cover for an album that I actually dig quite a bit, especially considering it came from the same guy who did Dark Side of the Moon, Peter Gabriel 3, Animals to name a few