20 Very Strange Album Covers (and Boy, How We'll Miss Them!)
Like just about anyone over age 30, I miss album covers. I am of course referring to the big ones that covered vinyl records (LPs). The ones that cover CDs are only about 14% as big, and those that covered cassettes only 7%; this reduction in size since the mid-1980s was the dying of the album cover, and that death is now nearly complete with the advent of MP3s.
It is rather sad that today's kiddos won't know the unique joy of album covers, except perhaps as a relic. Yes, today there are music DVDs and music-video-on-demand, but the visuals on an album cover -- in part because the artist only had that one shot at a static visual to work with -- were an entirely different experience.
Album covers made hunting at the record store interesting. They gave you a reason in addition to the music to buy new albums. And they gave you another reason to criticize albums and artists you'd never listen to or buy ... at least not with your friends' knowledge.
Sometimes the mood of an album cover paralleled the mood of the music on the LP inside. Sometimes there was no apparent correlation.
Sometimes the cover made you wonder, at least for thirty seconds, like Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy album cover.
Sometimes the cover made you really feel, like the rebellious "grrrrrrrrrr!" you felt with The Clash's London Calling cover.
Sometimes it just made you gawk, like The Car's Candy-O (or Sheena Easton's A Private Heaven, or Madonna's Like a Virgin, or Blondie's AutoAmerican... this gawking list, since I am recalling from my LP album era around ages 9-16, is particularly long.)
But the reason I really miss album covers is because -- like no other visual media before or since with the possible exception of public access cable TV -- they could make you laugh and/or furl your brow and go, "What in the heck (or "hell" if you were with friends and trying to be cool) were they thinking when they created this cover?!?!?"
Some strange and disastrous album covers could be found in my own collection, particularly those by big hair bands. But I discovered plenty in my parent's album collection (witness the Ferrante & Teicher album cover above; this didn't even come close to making the "20 Very Strange Album Covers" list below, but it did alternately make me laugh and fascinate me as a young boy.) Still others I came across in my grandparent's, aunts' and uncles' collections. Many more were discovered in the bins of record stores -- and laughed at, questioned and enjoyed by friends and I.
In particular honor of these strange and disastrous album covers, therefore, I give you below twenty of the strangest and most disastrous I can find.
As you gaze, chuckle and/or shake your head in astonishment at these, ask yourself the same questions we'd ask flipping through the bins in record stores or our parents' 22-year-old record collections:
"Was that cover meant to be hip, artistic, provocative or inviting?"
"Why in the world didn't SOMEBODY stop them? Didn't anybody see that cover and have the guts or courtesy to say, 'Hey Tino, you don't look so caliente in that pose?"
20 Strange and Disastrous Album Covers
Please feel free to post a comment after checking these out ... I'd love to hear if you've actually heard any of the music on these albums before and your thoughts on it? Or if you greatly appreciate any of these above and find them quite ... good? Or your favorite (good) album covers? Or others you recall that were just as strange and disastrous?