boring album covers from albums that really deserved better

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.

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).