Controversial
1. Mayhem: ‘Dawn Of The Black Hearts’ – On one of the most bootlegged metal albums of all time, Norwegian band Mayhem decided to use a photograph of their deceased frontman, Dead, shortly after his suicide. The cover pictured the singer slumped beside a shotgun and a knife after taking his own life in an unparalleled display of glory-hunting, suicidal gore.
Appalling and in very poor taste, the less said the better. In fact, I won't even post the cover, I feel that strongly about it, what a disgrace.
If you have to, you can find an image here (warning: the cover and image is beyond offensive, it is just wrong)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_Of_The_Black_Hearts
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Weird
1. Gong: 'Acid Motherhood' – Gigwise says: "While the majority of albums on this list are weird, this goes a step further; it's just plain wrong. Naked, pregnant female bodies with Jimmy Savile-esque faces, it's as twisted as you can possibly get. Made four decades into Gong's career, who says rockers mellow with old age?"
I think it is a funny cover, maybe we should make a new category....
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Worst
1. Hard-Fi – ‘Once Upon A Time In The West’: Here is what Gigwise had to say: "Seemingly in a bid to make some kind of deep cultural comment about the rise of downloading, Hard-Fi decided to ditch the record sleeve altogether. The result? A pretentious mess."
The cover art of the album has received both good and bad criticism. It has a yellow background with the album title at the top, and NO COVER ART written in large, white letters below. Top cover art designer Peter Saville has described it as "a 'White Album' for the digital culture."
When asked about the cover art, Richard Archer said, "We all sat down as a band with our manager and thrashed it out over beers. The record company wanted a picture of us coming out of a helicopter... We said no."
"At the end of the day do you want the same old boring stuff? or do you want something different?"
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Best
1. Nirvana: ‘Nevermind’ - Gigwise has this to say: "A stunningly original idea and an undoubted classic. The swimming baby chasing the American dollar was a defining image of the nineties and summed up the endless rat race of contemporary society perfectly – an innocent baby corrupted by money."
Nevermind is the second studio album by the American rock band Nirvana, released on September 24, 1991. Produced by Butch Vig, Nevermind was the group's first release on Geffen Records, which signaled its move away from Seattle-based independent record label Sub Pop. Front man Kurt Cobain sought to make music outside of the restrictive confines of the Seattle grunge scene, drawing influence from groups such as the Pixies and its use of loud/quiet song dynamics.
Despite low commercial expectations by the band and its record label, Nevermind became a surprise success in late 1991, largely due to the popularity of its first single, "Smells Like Teen Spirit". By January 1992 it had replaced Michael Jackson's album Dangerous at number one on the Billboard charts. The album has been certified ten times platinum (10 million copies shipped) by the Recording Industry Association of America. Nevermind was responsible for bringing alternative rock to a large mainstream audience, and would subsequently be regarded as one of the best rock albums of all time.
The album's tentative title Sheep was something Cobain created as an inside joke towards the people he expected to buy the record. He wrote a fake ad for Sheep in his journal that read "Because you want to not; because everyone else is." Novoselic said the title was inspired by the band's cynicism about the public's reaction to Operation Desert Storm. Cobain grew tired of the title as recording sessions for the album were completed, and suggested to Novoselic that the new album be named Nevermind. Cobain liked the title because it was a metaphor for his attitude on life and was grammatically incorrect.
The Nevermind album cover shows a baby swimming toward a US dollar bill on a fishhook. According to Cobain, he conceived the idea while watching a television program on water births with Grohl. Cobain mentioned it to Geffen's art director Robert Fisher. Fisher found some stock footage of underwater births but they were too graphic for the record company. Also, the stock house that controlled the photo of a swimming baby that they subsequently settled on wanted $7,500 a year for its use, so instead Fisher sent a photographer to a pool for babies to take pictures. Five shots resulted and the band settled on the image of a three-month-old infant named Spencer Elden, the son of the photographer's friend Rick Elden. However, there was some concern because Elden's penis was visible in the image. Geffen prepared an alternate cover without the penis, as they were afraid that it would offend people, but relented when Cobain made it clear that the only compromise he would accept was a sticker covering the penis that would say "If you're offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile."
The back cover of the album features a photograph of a rubber monkey in front of a collage created by Cobain. The collage features photos of raw beef from a supermarket advert, images from Dante's Inferno, and pictures of diseased vaginas from Cobain's collection of medical photos. Cobain noted, "If you look real close, there is a picture of Kiss in the back standing on a slab of beef." The album's liner notes contain no complete song lyrics; instead, the liner contains random song lyrics and unused lyrical fragments that Cobain arranged into a poem.
I agree, this is a great cover- but the best of all time? Not in my book.
This has been an interesting glimpse into the fascinating world of album cover art. The Gigwise selections, while certainly up for debate, omitted some classic album covers and certainly showed me a few that I have never seen before. But where are some of the classics, like "Cheap Thrills," by Janis Joplin (with cover art by R. Crumb), Yes covers by Roger Dean, Santana's first album (with the wonderful ink lion), Zeppelin covers like "Zeppelin 2" or "Physical Graffiti," or any Molly Hatchet album cover? I could go on and on and on.....
Look for another series about album cover art coming very soon to the blog!
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