boring album covers from albums that really deserved better

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.

Does anyone like Tortoise TNT? MNLWND is fantastic, and then they went with that...

I love the covers for Kid A and Amnesiac so much, especially the latter. Just this weird book floating in a void. And it's cool that they made the actual book the packaging for the deluxe edition. The rest of their covers are definitely zzz though, especially AMSP. That album deserves a better cover and title.

I really like OKC’s cover but it might just be aesthetic Stockholm Syndrome on my part.

Also whoever said in the Mass Romantic thread that every New Pornos cover art is terrible is OTM.

i like the toy soldier cover for WL/WH, always thought it looked more like how the album sounds than the skull cover. its funny how between the banana and the skull, for such a Serious band 2/4 of VU album covers have a packaging gimmick

Every Autechre release since Quaristice has had a simple, clean, distinct, and deeply boring aesthetic. I don't really get it as they're obviously into the visual side of things, though they also have the playing in the dark thing going on.

Also whoever said in the Mass Romantic thread that every New Pornos cover art is terrible is OTM.

This is mostly true, except I love the Brill Bruisers cover and the one from last year is just fine, not offensively bad like most of them. Challengers is the single worst album cover of this century though.

it is really hard to imagine someone wearing this awful, boring art on a t-shirt or having a poster or something

oh man, you did not know my college social circle in the early 2000s

the version with the "Fitter, Happier" lyrics in variously sized capital letters was hung above many an iMac and required art-history textbook

fair enough, and i was in college in that era too so i probably hung in a dorm room or two that had that poster. doesn't mean it's a good aesthetic choice though! (unlike most dorm room decor)

I think R.E.M.’s classic covers (up through Monster) are really good—mysterious but friendly; iconic without trying too hard.

(But I may not know what “boring” means, as this thread appears to lead off with some of the all-time great LP covers.)

New Adventures also great!

surely the autechre ones are supposed to be boring and ugly as some kind of statement or challenge or injoke or whatever (the new ones are nice enough). or maybe they actually think they’re beautiful, I wouldn’t put it past them

It's funny that this thread starts with, imo, one of Springsteen's better album covers, when he's had so many bad ones. To me, the album of his that really fits this thread - great album, boring cover - is The River. They didn't even bother to do a new photo shoot! They just used one of the outtakes from the Darkness on the Edge of Town photo shoot, and you can tell.

if you go to the tdr site - https://www.thedesignersrepublic.com/autechre - there's a bit of info (not much) on some of the projects: repeatable elements, infinite variation, blah. suggests more thought was given to the 'meaning' than the actual look. xp.

xp I was having the same exact thought, Lily Dale. Was thinking that the poster who cited that one didn't know what was coming in the next decade!

across the board for me all album covers that are:

[singer songwriter's name]
[image of singer songwriter]

are the most boring. I want the music to transport me. A plain reminder of the mundane way the music is being delivered undermines the transportive effect of music. Especially if the ingredients themselves are cliche.

Bruce album covers peaked with Nebraska and Born in the USA and immediately plummeted back down from there to various levels between "fine, I guess" (Western Stars) and "offensively terrible" (Tom Joad).

Definitely a line between covers that are good while doing boring/plain as an aesthetic choice and covers that are bad because they are boring (or were going for something else but the results are boring.) Faust IV and REM I would put in the former category, Radiohead I would put in the latter.

haha, i had an OK Computer t-shirt but it did NOT do me any favours.

I'm not really into 'ugly' album art. Amnesiac, In Rainbows and Kid A all look very ugly to me. The fonts and colours on these albums actively distress me. Kid A looks like what used to happen if you download a bad pirated preview of a Marvel film that hadn't come out yet. Amnesiac too, just no.

As Lavator Shemmelpennick says , the best album art should be recognisable from far away, and look good on a badge, a poster, or a t-shirt: Screamadelica, Dark Side Of The Moon. Always been a fan of Green Day's 'Dookie' cover too. But vague, diffuse, collagey artwork does little for me.

I don't mind deliberately crap album art like Tortoise's TNT; even What's The Story (Morning Glory), which I always admired for its brazenness more than the music.

Agree that Syro album 'art' or anti-art underwhelmed me. It was supposed to be some sort of pranksterish coup, but I just found myself shrugging and hoping I wouldn't spill coffee on the sleeve.

Got to say, Autechre have made some of my favourite album art, but as has been said above a lot of it is conceptual. Chiastic Slide's deconstructed, minimalist interpretations of modern architecture. Oversteps' attempts by human beings to create a perfect circle. The awesome 'knot' on Draft7.30. Even Untilted, with its multi-coloured paint spill is eye-catching to me.

The only one I really dislike is Confield though. Why is the main picture squeezed into a little oddly-shaped box?

i just picture confield in my head when i think of any of their late 90s / 00s albums tbh

blue note is celebrated for its design. what they did with the unique opportunity they were given here remains inexplicable, maybe offensive

https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/disp/687f0a39329929.5606aec910e5a.jpg

Quaristice and Exai have pretty cruddy artwork too. i didn't realise TDR didn't do a whole bunch of their covers

that monk/coltrane cover looks straight out of 1998 downtempo hip hop

untilted is my fave autechre art easy, it's beautiful

not so much 'boring' as 'WTF'

https://i.ibb.co/z6Mtkdh/51-FPOu-C5j-HL.jpg

I like the new Autechre sleeve designs, fits their aesthetic well

the Eno/Cale record Wrong Way Up definitely fits here. big "graphic design is my passion" vibe there

Godbluff by Van Der Graaf Generator is another one, it's not bad its just...black

I have an actual answer for this:

"Here's our hot major-label debut, full of eclectic jams and incredible songwriting... how do we make sure it looks like something even your grandmother would find too stodgy?"

https://img.discogs.com/PnwfsYlxtsub2Opn70Nl5z6gjoo=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-13077425-1547652074-1334.jpeg.jpg

They really jazzed it up for the promo poster!

https://images.eil.com/large_image/10%2C000%5FMANIACS_THE%2BWISHING%2BCHAIR-590277.jpg

how about Close to the Edge by Yes? what exactly happened there?