13 ms·

Museum of Bad Album Covers

194 points by gscott 6y ago

throwitaway1235 6y ago
Black Sabbath: Born Again featuring Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan. Universally panned cover and horribly produced but I always felt the songs were underrated.
kolinko 6y ago
The interface of the website is very fitting ;) If you're the author, can you change two things: - change font size to default - move navigation to the top, so that "next" button is always in the same spot
- GrayShade 6y ago
  And get rid of the stripey background image. It's not terrible on my monitor, but it's prone to flicker on LCDs: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/inversion.php#invpattern http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/inversion.php#invpattern. But I have a feeling that the site is older than consumer LCDs.
- pdw 6y ago
  Best viewed in 800x600 resolution.
  - Freak_NL 6y ago
    Zooming in to 150% or 200% works though, even with the pixel-aligned stripy background.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  I'd prefer them to change two other things: the design and the layout.
  - krapp 6y ago
    Hacker News: Websites were so much more creative in the old days before standard templates and layouts made everything so generic and bland. Each was a work of individual art and craftsmanship. Also Hacker News: (adjusts bifocals) WTF even is this mess?!
    - Hamuko 6y ago
      Hacker News: more than just one person.
jjgreen 6y ago
I used to work in a record shop which had this beauty on the wall constantly looking at me, gave me nightmares ... http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/handsomebeasts.jpg http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/handsomebeasts.jpg
- sodimel 6y ago
  TIL about the official "the handsome beasts" website. http://www.thehandsomebeasts.co.uk/about.html http://www.thehandsomebeasts.co.uk/about.html
  - bjarneh 6y ago
    > For websites designed at reasonable prices click this banner.
    - atdrummond 6y ago
      Doing so provides proof that the site is an honest relic of its time, rather than an homage; 1 website in his portfolio uses/d Bravehost and all (but the two bands’) fail to resolve to site intended.
- jamesbfb 6y ago
  My first job while at Uni was at a record store, aptly named “rare records”. It always surprised me the random shit (usually with equally random cover art) that used to sell for big dollars.
  - jjgreen 6y ago
    That horror was something of an exception, most of the stock was rare Northern Soul, I made a lot of tapes ...
- jansan 6y ago
  Holy shit, I need to erase this from my memory.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ChrisRR 6y ago
I feel like they've missed the point that a lot of those covers. A lot of them are exactly as cheesy, grotesque or as minimalist as they intend to be. Does that make them bad if they serve the purpose they were designed for?
- TheGallopedHigh 6y ago
  If they were designed to be just that: bad; then aren’t they filling their purpose by being in this museum?
- INTPenis 6y ago
  Maybe true but there are a large number of Covers that were made genuinely to look cool in a Disco era. Here in Sweden we have this thing called "Dansband". That is a treasure trove of cringey album covers that I believe were mostly genuine. One of the bands is even called Junix, I remember finding a tape of them in a car once. It actually said UNIX but I can't find any reference to this old band name now, they're all called JUNIX.
  - sniglom 6y ago
    I hope you have seen this page: http://katastrofalaomslag.blogspot.com/ http://katastrofalaomslag.blogspot.com/
    - eitland 6y ago
      Firefox warned me that it blocked a cryptominer on that page. I would have thought Google would block that on their properties so it surprised me. Edit: On Virustotal most say "Clean" but some say "Unrated".
      - ce4 6y ago
        the website is not encrypted, could've been some other party too that did the injection. Are you at a public wifi hotspot?
keyle 6y ago
I almost feel bad when something like this get on top of hn because, you know it will do well, and you feel for their bandwidth bill.
- distances 6y ago
  In my experience most simple virtual hosts don't bill for traffic, but rather just come with a capped bandwidth. So probably no extra costs I'd assume.
- eznzt 6y ago
  There are other host sites available besides AWS and GCP.
makach 6y ago
Webpage from 1998 salutes you!
kome 6y ago
ahaha!! i love that website, so genuine and wholesome! and also super fast and to the point. and it is more entertaining than the endless scroll of boredom of the eternal september.
wodenokoto 6y ago
This reminds me of "Gallery of Shame" talk from a computer games festival/conference, I saw on YouTube some time back: "Love them or hate them, the covers of some games leave a lot to be desired. Ashens has found a goldmine full of really, really bad ones. Really." https://youtu.be/wFF9O73iwko https://youtu.be/wFF9O73iwko
- erk__ 6y ago
  He has even written not one, but two books about very bad games, that you have probably never heard off.
BattyMilk 6y ago
This just brought back almost 20yr old memories of the Rock and Roll Confidential Hall of Douchebags which is sadly no longer online but does exist in the archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20060819005942/http://www.rockandrollconfidential.com/hall/ https://web.archive.org/web/20060819005942/http://www.rockan...
- at_a_remove 6y ago
  I recollect the "brick-wallers" and the train track photos, yes. I always thought they were a little hard on the bands who had not a lot of money or inspiration, and "hired" photographers (or just cousins with cameras) for covers, but they did have some very, uh, interesting covers in the mix as well.
unnouinceput 6y ago
Sooo, museum of "my taste is all that matters", huh? Because different strokes for different folks.
- matsemann 6y ago
  Isn't that also true for a "normal" museum? As in, they showcase what they think is pretty/good/whatever, and the museum's curator's taste may be different than mine.
Fnoord 6y ago
First one coming to mind is Nirvana's Nevermind. I guess cause I bought it for a friend's birthday. She specifically asked for me for that album, so all I did was buying it. But it was weird, especially as I was a young boy back then (IIRC around 11 y.o.). I doubt it'd be OK to publish an album cover like that nowadays, and frankly, I agree. Bad is subjective though. I mean, look at all the Thunderdome covers. Terribly cheesy if you ask me, but youth found it cool I guess. Then again, some people would say Lords of Acid's covers are bad (or "satanistic") whereas other would say "kinky". That's the problem with the term 'bad'; its too open for interpretation. Imagine a website with "bad news articles". Same problem.
- antientropic 6y ago
  What? The Nevermind cover is generally considered one of most iconic of all time...
  - Fnoord 6y ago
    Iconic? Iconic of what? Its a naked baby. The baby gave no consent for being photographed naked (as nobody age < 18 can give legal consent for such). A naked picture of a baby belongs only to the parents, not the entire world. Only thing it has going for it, is that when the album was released there was no widespread Internet usage among civilians. With no Internet as we know it today available, that makes an eventual outcry about the picture less likely, and more difficult to organize. But I for sure remember it being controversial back then.
    - the-smug-one 6y ago
      There really is no particular reason that a picture of a clothed baby is any less private than that of a nude one, in my mind. Did you not see nude children at the beach as an 11-year old child?
      - Fnoord 6y ago
        Terrible analogy. Picture is different than live. Intent is different, too. CD cover was completely unexpected for me. Ignoring your own children, do you normally take pictures of nude children on a beach? Would you commercialize a naked picture of your baby son?
fumblebee 6y ago
Can we have a Museum of Bad Webpages? I'll kick us off. http://www.peterserafinowicz.com/brian-butterfield/ http://www.peterserafinowicz.com/brian-butterfield/
- avhception 6y ago
  https://securescrypt.com/ https://securescrypt.com/ If you click through on the links, you'll be rewarded with a whole network of equally bad websites full of probably fraudulent companies, fake cryptocoins and what not.
- eitland 6y ago
  This is bad in more than one good way I think: http://dhmo.org/ http://dhmo.org/ From the page: The causative link between Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) and Cancer is currently not established, although a significant amount of evidence seems to suggest that DHMO at least plays a role in the formation of cancer... ... What is known about these cancers is that Dihydrogen Monoxide is found in detectable and biologically significant levels in virtually all tumors and other cancerous and pre-cancerous growths.
- mattkevan 6y ago
  I'm sad that the death of Flash will mean the demise of one of the greatest websites of all time. As far as I'm concerned, the Web peaked in 1999 with this site and it's all been downhill since. If you can view it with Flash, it's much recommended. Turn the volume up and whatever you do, don't skip the intro: http://superior-web-solutions.com http://superior-web-solutions.com
- wgx 6y ago
  Does it count if it's an intentionally-bad parody, like this?
  - fumblebee 6y ago
    I had the same thought when I posted it. Probably not, is the answer.
- 6y ago
achairapart 6y ago
It's a shame that most of these records are not available on Spotify, and - I think - it's the same on most of the others streaming services. You know, I really wondered how bad was the music behind the bad covers. But this made me realize - even more - how limited and not inclusive are these streaming service catalogs, in spite of their claims.
- acomjean 6y ago
  My friends father had a ton of jazz records. He lamented in the mid 80s that he couldn’t replace most of them with cds as they weren’t being re-issued, and some were very good. Getting stuff recorded was harder back then so there was less content coming out. I can’t imagine most of those are on streaming..lost to the ages. A lot of it won’t be missed but there are probably some hidden gems too
  - ojnabieoot 6y ago
    Maybe not “most” depending on how that is defined, but a lot of blues/jazz/R&B from those days can be found on YouTube if it isn’t on Spotify or Apple Music - there are many channels that upload recordings of old EPs/LPs. I listen mostly to 50s-70s jazz and YouTube has proven the most reliable. That said, Apple Music has a decent catalog of jazz, including many smaller artists - it’s actually the bigger names (whose estates have meaningful control over their body of work) that are sometimes patchier. Apple Music is also very good for finding new artists, and they put good work into their jazz playlists (even if the choices are maybe a bit anodyne). Spotify used to be horrible for jazz - apparently it’s gotten better, but I remember signing up for a free month and being extremely disappointed.
- ojnabieoot 6y ago
  One of my favorite albums from the 90s has possibly the lamest cover in jazz history - not offensively bad or distasteful, more along the lines of “high school portrait”: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b4/Groove_Elation_John_Scofield.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b4/Groove_Elatio... If you had shown me this cover without me knowing who John Scofield was, I would have assumed this album was particularly dorky elevator music. But it’s great stuff: https://youtu.be/QBWTJ--Son8 https://youtu.be/QBWTJ--Son8 That said...... there are cases where you can probably judge books by their covers: http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/letmetouch.jpg http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/letmetouch.jpg
eznzt 6y ago
All the Scorpions covers he put there in that site are good. Sorry mate.
jamesbfb 6y ago
Sites like these really reinstate my faith in the internet. Glorious.
rectang 6y ago
Haters gonna hate. If you aspire to do anything compelling and original, you have to take risks, and you have to "commit" as they say in that riskiest of artistic endeavors, comedy. Sometimes the risks don't work out, or sometimes they don't work out for a particular audience.
- cm2187 6y ago
  Correction: “haters gonna cancel”
  - rectang 6y ago
    "No thanks" to the partisan hijack. My original post applies no matter who the artist is or what they aspire to say.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
acomjean 6y ago
Well initially i think these was to protect the record, and let you Id it quickly one purchased. To be fair a lot of there were made before computers. I don’t think people judge records by their covers.. Though some like Led Zeppelin 3 and pyshical grafitti had holes cut into their outer shells making them kinda art like. Then there is the Beatles “white album” and spinal taps “smell the globe” (black album) which I think metálica copied....
- dylan604 6y ago
  Now we're getting into what shade of black did they use territory.
- acomjean 6y ago
  Zeppelin 3 album spinner in action (30 seconds): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajA76b3aeN0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajA76b3aeN0
UweSchmidt 6y ago
Ok I admit some of those are tough to defend, but it's worth pointing out that in the old days most musicians that recorded albums had significant organic validation of their art through live performance. You have to assume these guys http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/stuffparty.jpg http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/stuffparty.jpg had been successfully entertaining audiences for years and likely making a good living of it - and were probably pretty good musicians too. Today, putting out an "album", as well as producing sophisticated album art is so much easier, but the true test is, can it touch the audience artistically and emotionally? Not always the case!
_qulr 6y ago
Not sure why they think The Final Countdown cover is so bad. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
samizdis 6y ago
Sidestepping any consideration of taste or art, I was bemused to find a selection of albums by ventriloquists: http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/hallofsh30.htm http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/hallofsh30.htm
gfrangakis 6y ago
If you had a chuckle at Immortal's Battles in the North album cover, please watch the video for The Call of the Wintermoon [0], which was on their first album, Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism. I'm convinced they knew it was hilarious [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VBdAY8eA9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VBdAY8eA9w
- Legion 6y ago
  Abbath (former lead of Immortal) is a big goofball: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORey8ZYyaQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORey8ZYyaQU Immortal very much was doing the whole black metal imagery thing with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Not parody, but absolutely having fun with it and not taking anything seriously.
- brobinson 6y ago
  And who can forget the crab walk from ALL SHALL FALL: https://gfycat.com/afraidnastyflatcoatretriever https://gfycat.com/afraidnastyflatcoatretriever
AirMax98 6y ago
Gonna have to disagree with Sabotage being included – Bill Ward looks iconic in those red pants!
sickcodebruh 6y ago
Immortal’s “Battles in the North” is generally regarded as a classic black metal album cover from a legendary band. Are there other covers here that are beloved by their intended audience but not understood or appreciated by outsiders?
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Covers as in the album cover, or the music contained therein? Because if the latter, it's probably pretty much every music out there.
- cl0ne 6y ago
  Sacred Son's self titled album is a really funny black metal album cover, but it's probably not appreciated by a lot of black metal fans. https://www.discogs.com/Sacred-Son-Sacred-Son/release/11502853 https://www.discogs.com/Sacred-Son-Sacred-Son/release/115028...
  - sickcodebruh 6y ago
    Yeah that one was a real head-scratcher for everyone. It struck me as almost trolling the black metal crowd, which I appreciated.
aunty_helen 6y ago
Can't seem to find 'Smell the Glove' anywhere, the original that is.
- julienchastang 6y ago
  The best worst album cover of all time. :-)
AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
Fair warning that their #1 worst album cover of all time is the cover of the album "Virgin Killer", and definitely NSFW...
woodruffw 6y ago
A strong recent candidate is Black Flag's "What The..."[1]. It's especially offensive in the context of their original album covers[2] (drawn by Raymond Pettibon), which were instrumental in defining the hardcore punk visual style. Edit: Fixed link broken by HN. [1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0c/Black_Flag_-_What_The.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0c/Black_Flag_-_... [2]: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/78/e3/5a/78e35a6e1a3090ae3dd1b1c4a60c2b07.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/78/e3/5a/78e35a6e1a3090ae3dd1... (CW: illustrated violence and NSFW)
postit 6y ago
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_biO5PERY8v4/SkwIcxMBkQI/AAAAAAAAB1Q/qRnFKhXLSK4/s1600-h/A+Pior+capa.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_biO5PERY8v4/SkwIcxMBkQI/AAAAAAAAB1... https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_see81gLpA20/SiUmjavIZAI/AAAAAAAAAEo/Fha_OUjr7zk/s400/disco4.bmp https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_see81gLpA20/SiUmjavIZAI/AAAAAAAAA... https://i.pinimg.com/564x/94/06/3c/94063c1673c474d8919f28804c78a745.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/564x/94/06/3c/94063c1673c474d8919f28804... https://i.pinimg.com/564x/59/90/e2/5990e27fce190e615ccbf48bde0144d1.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/564x/59/90/e2/5990e27fce190e615ccbf48bd... https://blogs.opovo.com.br/respirandomusica/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2014/01/capas_sertanejo_canhoto.jpg https://blogs.opovo.com.br/respirandomusica/wp-content/uploa... https://terceiramargemorg.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/d2821-img_2430.jpg?w=996&h=1024 https://terceiramargemorg.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/d2821-... I'm going to let you carry this on, but we're all know which music genre can easily win this title.
- Igelau 6y ago
  That second one looks like Borat. Are we sure that Sacha Baron Cohen isn't a time traveler and/or vampire?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sloshnmosh 6y ago
+100 points for a website with pictures that is viewable and clickable with JavaScript disabled! This is how the web should be.
- dhritzkiv 6y ago
  On the other hand, navigation between the different pages is less than ideal, as is navigating away to see a larger image. This could be enhanced with Javascript to bring the relevant content onto the same page.
unicornporn 6y ago
That's nothing. Welcome to Sweden: https://katastrofalaomslag.blogspot.com/search/label/Dansband https://katastrofalaomslag.blogspot.com/search/label/Dansban... Fun fact: the reason that Swedish dance bands[1] dressed so f*ed up is that there was a tax deduction for stage clothes that could obviously not be worn off stage. Result: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/uTKO3VfN8Z3acjfEltK4QO86oBjnx7aFyCf96fSct2VmIMWcS9KbFU43twigtz9nDXQMCW1RTdjanFNkQbuccmce2NM4Y7DYAxwO8jFVpg https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/uTKO3VfN8Z3acjfEltK4... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansband https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansband
- srott 6y ago
  Nothing beats Yugoslav album covers https://www.boredpanda.com/worst-vintage-album-covers-yugoslavia/ https://www.boredpanda.com/worst-vintage-album-covers-yugosl... The music is even worse
Igelau 6y ago
Okay, I'm going to say it. I think Whipped Cream & Other Delights is a great album with a great cover.
dang 6y ago
https://dangerousminds.net/comments/these_are_probably_the_worst_album_covers_ever_created https://dangerousminds.net/comments/these_are_probably_the_w...
jdc0589 6y ago
bug report: you beep using the word "bad" when I think you meant to say "amazing"
cf100clunk 6y ago
Sadly the old "It Crept From The Bins" site (a sidebar to the Phoenix New Times page "Jesus Of The Week") seems to be gone, even from the Wayback Machine. They were doing satire and parodies of album art going back to the early 1990s web, and their work was hysterically funny. Wayback has some snippets of the Jesus Of The Week stuff that caused plenty of exploded heads amongst devout Christians who missed the entire point of the site, which was to hilariously and savagely critique modern artifacts bearing images of Jesus and not that personage.
sandworm101 6y ago
I used several of these in law lectures on content and IP. They are shocking but not actually illegal, which is what you need when teaching about illegal material that you dare not actually show. Two that I used even made the top 10 worst, although I would defend both as good art. Shocking the audience is part of what rock is about.
kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
The Queen cover for The Miracle was pretty cutting edge for the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_42uJoU41y0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_42uJoU41y0
867-5309 6y ago
Scorpions: Virgin Killer, NSFA
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
garganzol 6y ago
Bad? They are excellent!
parisianka 6y ago
So much fun!

194 points by gscott 6y ago

Black Sabbath: Born Again featuring Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan. Universally panned cover and horribly produced but I always felt the songs were underrated.

kolinko 6y ago

The interface of the website is very fitting ;) If you're the author, can you change two things: - change font size to default - move navigation to the top, so that "next" button is always in the same spot

GrayShade 6y ago
And get rid of the stripey background image. It's not terrible on my monitor, but it's prone to flicker on LCDs: http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/inversion.php#invpattern http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/inversion.php#invpattern. But I have a feeling that the site is older than consumer LCDs.
pdw 6y ago
Best viewed in 800x600 resolution.
- Freak_NL 6y ago
  Zooming in to 150% or 200% works though, even with the pixel-aligned stripy background.
Hamuko 6y ago
I'd prefer them to change two other things: the design and the layout.
- krapp 6y ago
  Hacker News: Websites were so much more creative in the old days before standard templates and layouts made everything so generic and bland. Each was a work of individual art and craftsmanship. Also Hacker News: (adjusts bifocals) WTF even is this mess?!
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    Hacker News: more than just one person.

jjgreen 6y ago

I used to work in a record shop which had this beauty on the wall constantly looking at me, gave me nightmares ... http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/handsomebeasts.jpg http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/handsomebeasts.jpg

sodimel 6y ago
TIL about the official "the handsome beasts" website. http://www.thehandsomebeasts.co.uk/about.html http://www.thehandsomebeasts.co.uk/about.html
- bjarneh 6y ago
  > For websites designed at reasonable prices click this banner.
  - atdrummond 6y ago
    Doing so provides proof that the site is an honest relic of its time, rather than an homage; 1 website in his portfolio uses/d Bravehost and all (but the two bands’) fail to resolve to site intended.
jamesbfb 6y ago
My first job while at Uni was at a record store, aptly named “rare records”. It always surprised me the random shit (usually with equally random cover art) that used to sell for big dollars.
- jjgreen 6y ago
  That horror was something of an exception, most of the stock was rare Northern Soul, I made a lot of tapes ...
jansan 6y ago
Holy shit, I need to erase this from my memory.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ChrisRR 6y ago

I feel like they've missed the point that a lot of those covers. A lot of them are exactly as cheesy, grotesque or as minimalist as they intend to be. Does that make them bad if they serve the purpose they were designed for?

TheGallopedHigh 6y ago
If they were designed to be just that: bad; then aren’t they filling their purpose by being in this museum?
INTPenis 6y ago
Maybe true but there are a large number of Covers that were made genuinely to look cool in a Disco era. Here in Sweden we have this thing called "Dansband". That is a treasure trove of cringey album covers that I believe were mostly genuine. One of the bands is even called Junix, I remember finding a tape of them in a car once. It actually said UNIX but I can't find any reference to this old band name now, they're all called JUNIX.
- sniglom 6y ago
  I hope you have seen this page: http://katastrofalaomslag.blogspot.com/ http://katastrofalaomslag.blogspot.com/
  - eitland 6y ago
    Firefox warned me that it blocked a cryptominer on that page. I would have thought Google would block that on their properties so it surprised me. Edit: On Virustotal most say "Clean" but some say "Unrated".
    - ce4 6y ago
      the website is not encrypted, could've been some other party too that did the injection. Are you at a public wifi hotspot?

keyle 6y ago

I almost feel bad when something like this get on top of hn because, you know it will do well, and you feel for their bandwidth bill.

distances 6y ago
In my experience most simple virtual hosts don't bill for traffic, but rather just come with a capped bandwidth. So probably no extra costs I'd assume.
eznzt 6y ago
There are other host sites available besides AWS and GCP.

makach 6y ago

Webpage from 1998 salutes you!

kome 6y ago

ahaha!! i love that website, so genuine and wholesome! and also super fast and to the point. and it is more entertaining than the endless scroll of boredom of the eternal september.

wodenokoto 6y ago

This reminds me of "Gallery of Shame" talk from a computer games festival/conference, I saw on YouTube some time back: "Love them or hate them, the covers of some games leave a lot to be desired. Ashens has found a goldmine full of really, really bad ones. Really." https://youtu.be/wFF9O73iwko https://youtu.be/wFF9O73iwko

erk__ 6y ago
He has even written not one, but two books about very bad games, that you have probably never heard off.

BattyMilk 6y ago

This just brought back almost 20yr old memories of the Rock and Roll Confidential Hall of Douchebags which is sadly no longer online but does exist in the archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20060819005942/http://www.rockandrollconfidential.com/hall/ https://web.archive.org/web/20060819005942/http://www.rockan...

at_a_remove 6y ago
I recollect the "brick-wallers" and the train track photos, yes. I always thought they were a little hard on the bands who had not a lot of money or inspiration, and "hired" photographers (or just cousins with cameras) for covers, but they did have some very, uh, interesting covers in the mix as well.

unnouinceput 6y ago

Sooo, museum of "my taste is all that matters", huh? Because different strokes for different folks.

matsemann 6y ago
Isn't that also true for a "normal" museum? As in, they showcase what they think is pretty/good/whatever, and the museum's curator's taste may be different than mine.

Fnoord 6y ago

First one coming to mind is Nirvana's Nevermind. I guess cause I bought it for a friend's birthday. She specifically asked for me for that album, so all I did was buying it. But it was weird, especially as I was a young boy back then (IIRC around 11 y.o.). I doubt it'd be OK to publish an album cover like that nowadays, and frankly, I agree. Bad is subjective though. I mean, look at all the Thunderdome covers. Terribly cheesy if you ask me, but youth found it cool I guess. Then again, some people would say Lords of Acid's covers are bad (or "satanistic") whereas other would say "kinky". That's the problem with the term 'bad'; its too open for interpretation. Imagine a website with "bad news articles". Same problem.

antientropic 6y ago
What? The Nevermind cover is generally considered one of most iconic of all time...
- Fnoord 6y ago
  Iconic? Iconic of what? Its a naked baby. The baby gave no consent for being photographed naked (as nobody age < 18 can give legal consent for such). A naked picture of a baby belongs only to the parents, not the entire world. Only thing it has going for it, is that when the album was released there was no widespread Internet usage among civilians. With no Internet as we know it today available, that makes an eventual outcry about the picture less likely, and more difficult to organize. But I for sure remember it being controversial back then.
  - the-smug-one 6y ago
    There really is no particular reason that a picture of a clothed baby is any less private than that of a nude one, in my mind. Did you not see nude children at the beach as an 11-year old child?
    - Fnoord 6y ago
      Terrible analogy. Picture is different than live. Intent is different, too. CD cover was completely unexpected for me. Ignoring your own children, do you normally take pictures of nude children on a beach? Would you commercialize a naked picture of your baby son?

fumblebee 6y ago

Can we have a Museum of Bad Webpages? I'll kick us off. http://www.peterserafinowicz.com/brian-butterfield/ http://www.peterserafinowicz.com/brian-butterfield/

avhception 6y ago
https://securescrypt.com/ https://securescrypt.com/ If you click through on the links, you'll be rewarded with a whole network of equally bad websites full of probably fraudulent companies, fake cryptocoins and what not.
eitland 6y ago
This is bad in more than one good way I think: http://dhmo.org/ http://dhmo.org/ From the page: The causative link between Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) and Cancer is currently not established, although a significant amount of evidence seems to suggest that DHMO at least plays a role in the formation of cancer... ... What is known about these cancers is that Dihydrogen Monoxide is found in detectable and biologically significant levels in virtually all tumors and other cancerous and pre-cancerous growths.
mattkevan 6y ago
I'm sad that the death of Flash will mean the demise of one of the greatest websites of all time. As far as I'm concerned, the Web peaked in 1999 with this site and it's all been downhill since. If you can view it with Flash, it's much recommended. Turn the volume up and whatever you do, don't skip the intro: http://superior-web-solutions.com http://superior-web-solutions.com
wgx 6y ago
Does it count if it's an intentionally-bad parody, like this?
- fumblebee 6y ago
  I had the same thought when I posted it. Probably not, is the answer.
6y ago

achairapart 6y ago

It's a shame that most of these records are not available on Spotify, and - I think - it's the same on most of the others streaming services. You know, I really wondered how bad was the music behind the bad covers. But this made me realize - even more - how limited and not inclusive are these streaming service catalogs, in spite of their claims.

acomjean 6y ago
My friends father had a ton of jazz records. He lamented in the mid 80s that he couldn’t replace most of them with cds as they weren’t being re-issued, and some were very good. Getting stuff recorded was harder back then so there was less content coming out. I can’t imagine most of those are on streaming..lost to the ages. A lot of it won’t be missed but there are probably some hidden gems too
- ojnabieoot 6y ago
  Maybe not “most” depending on how that is defined, but a lot of blues/jazz/R&B from those days can be found on YouTube if it isn’t on Spotify or Apple Music - there are many channels that upload recordings of old EPs/LPs. I listen mostly to 50s-70s jazz and YouTube has proven the most reliable. That said, Apple Music has a decent catalog of jazz, including many smaller artists - it’s actually the bigger names (whose estates have meaningful control over their body of work) that are sometimes patchier. Apple Music is also very good for finding new artists, and they put good work into their jazz playlists (even if the choices are maybe a bit anodyne). Spotify used to be horrible for jazz - apparently it’s gotten better, but I remember signing up for a free month and being extremely disappointed.
ojnabieoot 6y ago
One of my favorite albums from the 90s has possibly the lamest cover in jazz history - not offensively bad or distasteful, more along the lines of “high school portrait”: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b4/Groove_Elation_John_Scofield.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b4/Groove_Elatio... If you had shown me this cover without me knowing who John Scofield was, I would have assumed this album was particularly dorky elevator music. But it’s great stuff: https://youtu.be/QBWTJ--Son8 https://youtu.be/QBWTJ--Son8 That said...... there are cases where you can probably judge books by their covers: http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/letmetouch.jpg http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/letmetouch.jpg

eznzt 6y ago

All the Scorpions covers he put there in that site are good. Sorry mate.

jamesbfb 6y ago

Sites like these really reinstate my faith in the internet. Glorious.

rectang 6y ago

Haters gonna hate. If you aspire to do anything compelling and original, you have to take risks, and you have to "commit" as they say in that riskiest of artistic endeavors, comedy. Sometimes the risks don't work out, or sometimes they don't work out for a particular audience.

cm2187 6y ago
Correction: “haters gonna cancel”
- rectang 6y ago
  "No thanks" to the partisan hijack. My original post applies no matter who the artist is or what they aspire to say.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

acomjean 6y ago

Well initially i think these was to protect the record, and let you Id it quickly one purchased. To be fair a lot of there were made before computers. I don’t think people judge records by their covers.. Though some like Led Zeppelin 3 and pyshical grafitti had holes cut into their outer shells making them kinda art like. Then there is the Beatles “white album” and spinal taps “smell the globe” (black album) which I think metálica copied....

dylan604 6y ago
Now we're getting into what shade of black did they use territory.
acomjean 6y ago
Zeppelin 3 album spinner in action (30 seconds): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajA76b3aeN0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajA76b3aeN0

UweSchmidt 6y ago

Ok I admit some of those are tough to defend, but it's worth pointing out that in the old days most musicians that recorded albums had significant organic validation of their art through live performance. You have to assume these guys http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/stuffparty.jpg http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/stuffparty.jpg had been successfully entertaining audiences for years and likely making a good living of it - and were probably pretty good musicians too. Today, putting out an "album", as well as producing sophisticated album art is so much easier, but the true test is, can it touch the audience artistically and emotionally? Not always the case!

_qulr 6y ago

Not sure why they think The Final Countdown cover is so bad. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

samizdis 6y ago

Sidestepping any consideration of taste or art, I was bemused to find a selection of albums by ventriloquists: http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/hallofsh30.htm http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/hallofsh30.htm

gfrangakis 6y ago

If you had a chuckle at Immortal's Battles in the North album cover, please watch the video for The Call of the Wintermoon [0], which was on their first album, Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism. I'm convinced they knew it was hilarious [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VBdAY8eA9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VBdAY8eA9w

Legion 6y ago
Abbath (former lead of Immortal) is a big goofball: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORey8ZYyaQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORey8ZYyaQU Immortal very much was doing the whole black metal imagery thing with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Not parody, but absolutely having fun with it and not taking anything seriously.
brobinson 6y ago
And who can forget the crab walk from ALL SHALL FALL: https://gfycat.com/afraidnastyflatcoatretriever https://gfycat.com/afraidnastyflatcoatretriever

AirMax98 6y ago

Gonna have to disagree with Sabotage being included – Bill Ward looks iconic in those red pants!

sickcodebruh 6y ago

Immortal’s “Battles in the North” is generally regarded as a classic black metal album cover from a legendary band. Are there other covers here that are beloved by their intended audience but not understood or appreciated by outsiders?

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Covers as in the album cover, or the music contained therein? Because if the latter, it's probably pretty much every music out there.
cl0ne 6y ago
Sacred Son's self titled album is a really funny black metal album cover, but it's probably not appreciated by a lot of black metal fans. https://www.discogs.com/Sacred-Son-Sacred-Son/release/11502853 https://www.discogs.com/Sacred-Son-Sacred-Son/release/115028...
- sickcodebruh 6y ago
  Yeah that one was a real head-scratcher for everyone. It struck me as almost trolling the black metal crowd, which I appreciated.

aunty_helen 6y ago

Can't seem to find 'Smell the Glove' anywhere, the original that is.

julienchastang 6y ago
The best worst album cover of all time. :-)

AdmiralAsshat 6y ago

Fair warning that their #1 worst album cover of all time is the cover of the album "Virgin Killer", and definitely NSFW...

woodruffw 6y ago

A strong recent candidate is Black Flag's "What The..."[1]. It's especially offensive in the context of their original album covers[2] (drawn by Raymond Pettibon), which were instrumental in defining the hardcore punk visual style. Edit: Fixed link broken by HN. [1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0c/Black_Flag_-_What_The.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0c/Black_Flag_-_... [2]: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/78/e3/5a/78e35a6e1a3090ae3dd1b1c4a60c2b07.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/78/e3/5a/78e35a6e1a3090ae3dd1... (CW: illustrated violence and NSFW)

postit 6y ago

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_biO5PERY8v4/SkwIcxMBkQI/AAAAAAAAB1Q/qRnFKhXLSK4/s1600-h/A+Pior+capa.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_biO5PERY8v4/SkwIcxMBkQI/AAAAAAAAB1... https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_see81gLpA20/SiUmjavIZAI/AAAAAAAAAEo/Fha_OUjr7zk/s400/disco4.bmp https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_see81gLpA20/SiUmjavIZAI/AAAAAAAAA... https://i.pinimg.com/564x/94/06/3c/94063c1673c474d8919f28804c78a745.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/564x/94/06/3c/94063c1673c474d8919f28804... https://i.pinimg.com/564x/59/90/e2/5990e27fce190e615ccbf48bde0144d1.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/564x/59/90/e2/5990e27fce190e615ccbf48bd... https://blogs.opovo.com.br/respirandomusica/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2014/01/capas_sertanejo_canhoto.jpg https://blogs.opovo.com.br/respirandomusica/wp-content/uploa... https://terceiramargemorg.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/d2821-img_2430.jpg?w=996&h=1024 https://terceiramargemorg.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/d2821-... I'm going to let you carry this on, but we're all know which music genre can easily win this title.

Igelau 6y ago
That second one looks like Borat. Are we sure that Sacha Baron Cohen isn't a time traveler and/or vampire?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

sloshnmosh 6y ago

+100 points for a website with pictures that is viewable and clickable with JavaScript disabled! This is how the web should be.

dhritzkiv 6y ago
On the other hand, navigation between the different pages is less than ideal, as is navigating away to see a larger image. This could be enhanced with Javascript to bring the relevant content onto the same page.

unicornporn 6y ago

That's nothing. Welcome to Sweden: https://katastrofalaomslag.blogspot.com/search/label/Dansband https://katastrofalaomslag.blogspot.com/search/label/Dansban... Fun fact: the reason that Swedish dance bands[1] dressed so f*ed up is that there was a tax deduction for stage clothes that could obviously not be worn off stage. Result: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/uTKO3VfN8Z3acjfEltK4QO86oBjnx7aFyCf96fSct2VmIMWcS9KbFU43twigtz9nDXQMCW1RTdjanFNkQbuccmce2NM4Y7DYAxwO8jFVpg https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/uTKO3VfN8Z3acjfEltK4... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansband https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansband

srott 6y ago
Nothing beats Yugoslav album covers https://www.boredpanda.com/worst-vintage-album-covers-yugoslavia/ https://www.boredpanda.com/worst-vintage-album-covers-yugosl... The music is even worse

Igelau 6y ago

Okay, I'm going to say it. I think Whipped Cream & Other Delights is a great album with a great cover.

dang 6y ago

https://dangerousminds.net/comments/these_are_probably_the_worst_album_covers_ever_created https://dangerousminds.net/comments/these_are_probably_the_w...

jdc0589 6y ago

bug report: you beep using the word "bad" when I think you meant to say "amazing"

cf100clunk 6y ago

Sadly the old "It Crept From The Bins" site (a sidebar to the Phoenix New Times page "Jesus Of The Week") seems to be gone, even from the Wayback Machine. They were doing satire and parodies of album art going back to the early 1990s web, and their work was hysterically funny. Wayback has some snippets of the Jesus Of The Week stuff that caused plenty of exploded heads amongst devout Christians who missed the entire point of the site, which was to hilariously and savagely critique modern artifacts bearing images of Jesus and not that personage.

sandworm101 6y ago

I used several of these in law lectures on content and IP. They are shocking but not actually illegal, which is what you need when teaching about illegal material that you dare not actually show. Two that I used even made the top 10 worst, although I would defend both as good art. Shocking the audience is part of what rock is about.

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago

The Queen cover for The Miracle was pretty cutting edge for the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_42uJoU41y0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_42uJoU41y0

867-5309 6y ago

Scorpions: Virgin Killer, NSFA

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

garganzol 6y ago

Bad? They are excellent!

parisianka 6y ago

So much fun!