boring album covers from albums that really deserved better

I have never heard this band

From their loins sprang The Hold Steady, so approach with utmost caution.

n e way the whole thing with the b-boys is the whole profundity/banality overlap

What's profound about that cover? All I see is a goofy pic.

I mean, goofy cover pics can work perfectly fine for certain artists and albums, but if Pet Sounds is supposed to be a serious album, then the combination of the album title and the cover pic really don't convey that.

http://prod-assets.mog.com/amg/pop/cov200/drf500/f501/f50181xzz2j.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_GSZ2DMhXSG0/R5EGErkKJRI/AAAAAAAAAQw/6SukA6D6byA/s400/Black-Sabbath-Vol-4-309224.jpg
^used to think this was some cheap retrospective

http://cdn.pitchfork.com/media/2568-dna-on-dna.jpg
automatically bored by bar-over-eyes photos

bite your tongue:

http://img366.imageshack.us/img366/4044/fatlanta.jpg

http://www.beatles-history.net/images/beatles-white-album.jpg

Autechre, Tri Repetae

http://bp2.blogger.com/_6_kFMqOA4NA/SFkoP2EMUrI/AAAAAAAAA7I/gd37LVy40eY/s1600/Autechre%2B-%2BTri%2BRepetae%2B%2B%2B%2B(front).jpg

Yeah, I get it. It's all like, "It's all about the music, maaaaan." But could you at least have picked a better color? I'd prefer white, honestly.

there are some dope covers on this thread u ppl are crazy

Truly.

The Dylan cover is excellent. The New Order cover is better than the album.

http://geordierussell.instone.net/Jukebox/Img/S/The%20Stone%20Roses.jpg

http://www.limpers.com/members/zazz-albums-48-friday-picture437-radiohead-bends.jpg

this one doesn't really deserve a better cover perhaps but I like to think the content is fairly more interesting than this:

http://www.snapme.ca/files/imagecache/display/files/salon_images/Crystal_Castles_-_Crystal_Castles.jpg

the Girl Aloud Chemistry one is a good example. (didn't hear the album, but it looks very uninspired)

I think all Autechre album covers look pretty clinical and boring. It's fitting, though, since their music is clinical and boring too.

I don't get the Stone Roses album cover - why does it have lemons and the flag of France in it?

Dutch flag, Luxembourg's if you stretch it a bit. France is stretching (or rather, turning) it a bit too far. Your question remains valid though ;)
A lot of the posted ones aren't boring imo, they're ugly, but that's a different story. Perhaps boring = uninspired?

Saying the White Album needed a more interesting cover is sort of missing the point...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_uSp9N8a5HhE/SPKBuaZzWUI/AAAAAAAAAC4/TdP_DaWvTq4/s320/Junior+Boys+-+Last+Exit.jpg

bears repeating that half these covers are dope, u guys are nuts

i think the Stone Roses one is both ugly AND boring.

the original point of the thread was covers that you would/could hardly remember.

having difficulty coming up with another example myself though. considered and rejected this:

http://graveyardshiftshane.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/the-avalanches-since-i-left-you.jpg

this image seems a little lighter (which is better) compared to my copy of the album.

That Avalanches cover really does not reflect the album at all.

http://www.progreviews.com/reviews/images/SM-Third.jpg

that avalanches cover reminds me of another cover. off to the relevant thread, as the other's not boring at all :)

Though I get the simplicity that Bedhead was going for, any album cover by them is boring by any standard. Also "Nowhere" by Ride gets my designer girlfriend angry about how shitty the packaging is.

lol mookie

what the hell covers do you people think are "interesting"???

i never realized there was something on the white light/white heat cover....do they even print that on the CD?

Brain Capers, so dirty and articulate, deserves art along the lines of a murky-but-well-executed watercolor of a pub. Aqualung meets Muswell Hillbillies.

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s11869.jpg

Instead, it looks like an invitation to a Halloween mixer at a Virgina sorority in 1962. Is there a story behind this?

http://sano-shijuku.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/king_crimson_-_three_of_a_perfect_pair.jpg

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd900/d922/d92203v925j.jpg

I always liked the minimalist phase in King Crimson covers. It suits Fripp's mindset. But the MoB. Yeah. I think they were going for the hard/soft juxtaposition of chain link and flowers. On the other hand, if they chose it 'cause they thought "clematis" sounded dirty, I got even more respect for them.

the MoB one could've been used for Tindersticks' Curtains as well. (which itself is an excellent cover that works, i can see why it doesn't work here though)

the semi-hidden skull, come on, it's rad!

Shit, I totally spaced on that!

In my defense, tho, I've never owned (or even seen) a copy of WL/WH with the skull.

I've got one but it is really hard to make out. Blends in with the ringwear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dream_Theater_-_Six_Degrees_of_Inner_Turbulence.jpg

http://www.mikeportnoy.com/aboutmike/images/disc/97f.jpg

The Bends OTM

All Radiohead albums. All REM albums.

^Teenage me wants to point out a couple of exceptions to this, but if we're being real this is 100% true

so many hat hut and ecm releases. idk what you call that boring aesthetic but i hate it. the plain text ones are particularly crap

Offramp by Pat Metheny Group is truly the pits insofar as the cover is concerned

^Teenage me wants to point out a couple of exceptions to this, but if we're being real this is 100% true

― J. Sam, Tuesday, December 1, 2020 11:57 AM (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'd like to know what teenage you said.

REM especially, seemed to love grotty, non-descript album covers with ugly fonts. Even Murmur, which isn't too bad, has really horrible writing on the front. I wonder what these albums would have looked like had they just been images without lettering?

Radiohead too. I getthat their resident artist is supposed to be some genius commenting on the STATE OF THE WORLD, but is there a less iconic classic album cover than OK Computer?

big fan of Turn Left by Pat Metheny Group & Offramp

the bends is terrible to look at and i don't really like the king of limbs cover but otherwise... idk radiohead album art is good, cf. amnesiac

i love the collagistic artwork of mid-period r.e.m. while acknowledging that yeah most of their album covers are at least kind of boring

almost every pat metheny album cover is bad, it's very funny. i think the ecm house aesthetic is great though

ECM covers are boringly good. HatHut’s are lazily ugly.

Pomenitul otm about the jazz visual minimalists. If you're going to have minimalist design, maybe don't use giant orange type?

Regarding Radiohead,

is there a less iconic classic album cover than OK Computer?

I never really thought about it before but this is really remarkable. Probably one of the most lauded/talked about albums of the past 30 years, and it is really hard to imagine someone wearing this awful, boring art on a t-shirt or having a poster or something. Contrast with DSOTM which is sort of the OK Comp of its time and yielded one of the most iconic images in music merch, love it or hate it.

I like the art for Kid A and Amnesiac but it's really the gestalt of the colors and composition that appeals -- once I look closer and really analyze it, I like it less and less.

I thought the WL/WH cover with a black on black photo of Billy Name's arm tattoo was like a Pop Art icon.
Much better than the soldier lightshow thing which I thought was the main alternative, certainly what I saw around in the UK when I was getting into the band.

I think Syro is merely okay overall but that really has a dismal cover given RDJ's past form.

It is funny that there's a prominent goat's ass on the cover of one of The Greatest Albums of All Time.

(...and aside from Mike Love, it also features the posterior of a member of the Bovidae animal family)

(v proud of that joke, my Venmo user name is ____)

become one of the weirdos who has been hacked by mike love

Steve Harley - Timeless Flight

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3b/Timeless_Flight.jpg/220px-Timeless_Flight.jpg

https://www.markknopfler.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/BrothersInArms-400x400.jpg

my folks has the VHS of the brothers in arms videos and l thought that dobro looked so fucking cool and mysterious as a 5 year old or whatever

Yeah I think that’s a cool album cover, I liked it as a kid

Pet Sounds did *not* deserve better.

xp Even boring covers can be iconic and very memorable!

Also:
- Always thought Grouper's covers were meh ... Dead Deer is at least vaguely creepy but otherwise they don't do much for me
- The two 2019 Big Thief album covers could have been promo shots

Brothers in Arms is peak mid-80s "elegant, restrained" aesthetic, sorta Vaughn Oliver for the mall record store, to stand out next to the Crü and Fat Boys album also on the endcap rack. Graceland, True Blue would be other examples.

just shooting the shit here, but: what if the digital age has destroyed certain possibilities in album covers? like, small text. things that are hard to read or need to be examined closely. you can include that on an album cover, now, but no one's going to be able to read that in the corner of the corner of a streaming platform

maybe this is what autechre is getting at with their recent covers. cover art converging toward machine-readable icons