boring album covers from albums that really deserved better

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?

Roger Dean wanted to show off his new airbrush I think.

Love love love this album, but could never figure out why they let the graphic design intern into the cache of rejected promo photos.
https://img.discogs.com/u6F_qHf1fotTK7SLjapHhBtms14=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-1575508-1503244025-9512.jpeg.jpg

i actually love the wishing chair art, it makes me want to get into 10,000 maniacs

Drift Series 1 by Underworld

I liked the cover with the smiling dog, felt bold and unlike anything they've done

https://underworldlive.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Drift-Series-1-Artwork.jpg

however it was quickly noticed that there was a pretty glaring photoshop mistake (look at the "R" in DRIFT) and I think that maybe in response to that they released the boxset with this cover:

https://d1rgjmn2wmqeif.cloudfront.net/extra/2000/ReleaseFormat-418501-95991.jpg

which looks like a temporary cover, I can't believe a band with such a focus on graphic design let something like that through

oh and I guess LCD Soundsystem's American Dream deserves to be here, I was 100% convinced that was a placeholder up until the album actually came out

brad - you should get into them if you haven't! Start w/that album and "Hope Chest" (their early stuff); it's terrific, no one else has songs like that.

Something like 8 out of 10 Go-Betweens LPs deserved better covers. (Seems like the sort of thing I might have posted before, but it doesn't look like it.)

I mean, goofy cover pics can work perfectly fine for certain artists and albums, but if Pet Sounds is supposed to be a serious album, then the combination of the album title and the cover pic really don't convey that.

― Tuomas, Friday, July 31, 2009 3:56 AM

http://i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb272/TeN523/PetSoundsCover.jpg

Also, goats aren't pets.

Did this album actually have a photo session, or did they just reuse a promo shot from the Beach Boys appearance at the state fair?

I assume that mike love was being so annoying that they all decided to wrap it up and just go home early

It is funny that there's a prominent goat's ass on the cover of one of The Greatest Albums of All Time.

(...and aside from Mike Love, it also features the posterior of a member of the Bovidae animal family)

(v proud of that joke, my Venmo user name is ____)

become one of the weirdos who has been hacked by mike love

Steve Harley - Timeless Flight

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3b/Timeless_Flight.jpg/220px-Timeless_Flight.jpg

https://www.markknopfler.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/BrothersInArms-400x400.jpg

my folks has the VHS of the brothers in arms videos and l thought that dobro looked so fucking cool and mysterious as a 5 year old or whatever

Yeah I think that’s a cool album cover, I liked it as a kid

Pet Sounds did *not* deserve better.

xp Even boring covers can be iconic and very memorable!

Also:
- Always thought Grouper's covers were meh ... Dead Deer is at least vaguely creepy but otherwise they don't do much for me
- The two 2019 Big Thief album covers could have been promo shots

Brothers in Arms is peak mid-80s "elegant, restrained" aesthetic, sorta Vaughn Oliver for the mall record store, to stand out next to the Crü and Fat Boys album also on the endcap rack. Graceland, True Blue would be other examples.

just shooting the shit here, but: what if the digital age has destroyed certain possibilities in album covers? like, small text. things that are hard to read or need to be examined closely. you can include that on an album cover, now, but no one's going to be able to read that in the corner of the corner of a streaming platform

maybe this is what autechre is getting at with their recent covers. cover art converging toward machine-readable icons