50. Prince - Prince: The Purple One has given us some decent album covers in his time, but goodness knows what got into his head with this one. He looks like the thinner cousion of Ron Jeremy.
49. MC Hammer – ‘Look Look Look’:
He ditched the baggy trousers, became a preacher, but continued to make awful albums will equally naff covers. This 2006 one is cringe-worthy.
48. Queen – ‘The Miracle’:
The four members of Queen merged into one fat head. How nice. We reckon we could knock up a better front cover on Photoshop in five minutes. Blindfolded.
47. Orion – ‘Reborn’:
He looks like a gimp in camp Elvis drag. Very disturbing.
46. The Prodigy – ‘Experience’:
In the early nineties The Prodigy were too busy frying their heads with fistfuls of ecstasy tablets to bother with artwork. The music was ace, but ‘Experience’s cover was truly pants.
45. Vanilla Ice – ‘To The Extreme’: Like many acts on the list, Vanilla Ice has made producing dire album sleeves, into, well, an art form. This 1990 release is perhaps the pick of the bunch.
44. Razorlight – ‘Razorlight’:
ARRRGGHHHH!!! A black and white photo of Johnny Borrell – get it away from us!! Please!!
43. The Kinks – ‘Schoolboys In Disgrace’:
There’s something a tad disturbing about a cartoon boy baring his red raw arse after a good spanking. The artist should be shot. A disgrace.
42. Tori Amos – ‘Y Kant Tori Read’: Good old Tori turned dominatrix for this album sleeve. Some people may find it sexy, we don’t – we’re scared she’s going to spank us to oblivion.
41. Ice T (Iceberg) – ‘Gangsta Rap’: Nope we don’t want to see Ice-T (or Iceberg as he wants to be known) straddling a naked woman on the front cover. The truth is we’re a bit jealous of him. The c*nt.
40. Prince – ‘Dirty Mind’:
One of two Prince albums in our poll and it’s another howler. Horrible photo, bland greyscale and just shit.
39. Kenny Loggins – ‘Keep The Fire’:
The background looks like one of those shite airbrush paintings you can buy off people in the street in Tenerife, while Kenny himself is pretending to be some kind of deity. Hmmmm.
38. Rob & Fab – ‘Rob and Fab’:
Poor Rob and Fab. They were outed for faking the vocals on Milli Vanilli records, then they released this steaming turd of a record – which the duo did apparently sing on – to widespread distain.
37. Crosby, Stills & Nash – ‘Live It Up’:
Wtf? Giant sausages on sticks… on the moon. With men climbing up them. Surely the result of taking way, way too much LSD?!
36. Kaiser Chiefs – ‘Yours Truly, Angry Mob’:
The cover to the Kaisers’ second album was almost as bland as the music it contained... Wait, what’s-his-name is winking! Man, they’re so cool.
35. Butthole Surfers – ‘Brown Reason To Live’:
They had a revolting name and their artwork always bordered on the macabre. Clever that. At least it’s got us still talking about them 25 years down the line.
34. Village People – ‘Renaissance’:
They tried to get all arty on us, but they spectacularly failed. Stick to what you know best lads, like ‘Y.M.C.A’.
33. Michael Jackson – ‘Bad’:
It’s the best selling record of all time, but ‘Bad’ sadly bares the image of Jacko in the early stages of his plastic surgery makeover. For that reason alone, it’s bad.
32. Bob Dylan – ‘Saved’:
Mr Zimmerman’s 1980 album featured pretentious artwork of the highest calibre. It’s a good job his career didn’t need saving.
31. Any Bonkers compilation:
Perhaps it’s the chavs who blare this happy hardcore shite out at deafening levels on public transport? Whatever it is, the hideous cartoon artwork reminds us of those moments of woe and the god-awful music it contains.
30. Jermaine Jackson – ‘My Name Is Jermaine’:
His name be Jermaine. He’s a bad ass motherf*cker and this is one bad ass piece of album artwork. OW!
29. The Beatles – ‘The Beatles’ (The White Album):
An amazing album that’s for sure – in fact, one of their best. But the cover?? Well, it’s just lazy. Worse still, it probably put ideas into Hard-Fi’s heads.
28. El Vez – ‘Son Of A Lad From Spain?’:
The self-dubbed Mexican Elvis decided to parody another musical institution with this release. The idiot.
27. Bee Gees – ‘Life In A Tin Can’:
The ninth studio album from 1973 saw the brothers Gibb being buried in a tin – literally. Funny that.
26. Black Sabbath – ‘Sabotage’:
It’s been said that this is in fact a life size mirror that the Sabbath boys used to snort gargantuan lines of cocaine from. Well, not quite, but it could have been a funny story.
25. Fleetwood Mac – ‘Rumours’:
It’s the 13th best selling album of all time, shifting well in excess of 30million copies. Proof then that not many people judge an album by its cover.
15. Millie Jackson – ‘Back To The Shit’:
Basically Ms Millie Jackson sitting on the bog and taking a shit. In comparison, she makes Peaches seem like a delightful lady.
24. Guns n’ Roses – ‘The Spaghetti Incident’:
A messy front cover on an album that turned out to be almost prophetic for the mess that Guns n’ Roses have now become. If it has been spaghetti Bolognese, it’d be a different story of course.
23. The Frivolous Five – ‘Sour Cream and Other Delights’:
It’s like a very disturbing nightmare. One that you wake up from with heart palpitations and a cold sweat. Get it away from us, please.
22. Mick Ronson – ‘Play Don’t Worry’:
He may have been cool when he was David Bowie’s lead guitarist, but he shred every ounce of credibility he had with this 1975 effort. Dire.
21. A Flock of Seagulls – ‘Dream Come True’:
Garish colours. Tacky computerised graphics. Awful comb-overs on the three fiddlers. There’s clearly nothing right with ‘Dream Come True’. Apart from the music, that is.
20. Orleans – ‘Waking and Dreaming’:
Unless you’re a teenage girl pumped full of pheromones, quite why a discerning record buyer would like to see a group of semi-naked men on the front cover of an album is beyond us. Well, me anyway.
19. David Hasselhoff – ‘Night Rocker’:
This 1985 album was massive in good old Germany, where the Hoff is treated like a national treasure. It saw him break from his Knight Rider role and become a fully fledged musician.
18. Eulenspygel – ‘Eulenspygel 2’:
The experimental Krautrock outfit naturally gave us an experimental cover. Sadly though, for vegetarians at least, it’s enough to curdle the stomach.
17. Boned – ‘Up At The Crack’:
Were they trying to be ironic? Were they going for the comedy value? The answer is irrelevant – it’s not big, it’s not funny and it’s definitely not clever.
16 Michael Bolton – ‘Michael Bolton’:
The man who became synonymous with shit hair released this damp squib of a record featuring, well, a fetching photo of himself – complete with chest hair. You disgusting man.
14. ManOwar – ‘Anthology’:
This 1997 compilation album of ManOwar’s greatest hits perhaps belonged to the Eighties for it’s pure cheesiness value. The boys must clearly have worked out to get that authentic Conan the Barbarian look.
13. Heino – ‘Liebe Mutter…’:
We’d never heard of this German songsmith until we stumbled across this tragedy of an album cover. It’s so bad, it’s brilliant.
12. Devastatin Dave The Turntable Slave – ‘Zip Zap Rap’:
Okay, so it’s technically a single, but this cover is so devastatingly bad it needs to be included. Fucking brilliant.
11. David Cassidy – ‘Home Is Where The Heart Is’:
We were spoilt for choice with the amount of dodgy album covers in David Cassidy’s back catalogue, but this surely takes the biscuit. Awful.
10. The Handsome Beasts – ‘Beastiality’:
Just wrong. Very wrong, indeed. We can’t say much more than that..
9. The Beatles – ‘Yesterday and Today’:
A US only release, the original version (above) featured the band holding baby dolls and pieces of meat. A political statement? Were not sure. Macabre? Without a doubt. It’s not Abbey Road, that’s for sure.
8. The Rolling Stones – ‘Dirty Work’:
It may have been the Eighties, but still The Rolling Stones can’t be forgiven for this album shot. What the hell were they thinking?!
7. Tino – ‘Por Primera Vez’:
The Spanish heartthrob’s only solo effort in 1983 has been heralded by many as the worst album cover of all time. Not quite, but it’s definitely up there.
6. Kevin Rowland – ‘My Beauty’:
The former Dexy’s man has sold about 12 copies to date of this turgid covers album. Most people were probably too scared to go to the till to buy it. Commercial suicide.
5. Europe – ‘The Final Countdown’:
Everything about this cover wreaks of Eighties cheese and tackiness. The Swedish hair rockers may have produced one of the songs of the decade, but their artwork left a lot to be desired.
2. The Coup – ‘Party Music’:
Released in June 2001, just before the terrorist attacks of 9/11, The Coup touched a raw nerve with their album cover depicting The Twin Towers being bombed. Okay they may not have forseen the true events three months later – but despite this, there’s little doubting it’s in very poor taste.
1. Hard-Fi – ‘Once Upon A Time In The West’:
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.
Tags: Beyonce
They might be the two biggest female artists on the planet, but that doesn't excuse Lady Gaga and Beyonce from having to create good album artwork.
While both have opted for stunning photographs on the covers of their new albums - Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way' and Beyonce's '4' - they seem to have forgotten the importance of typography, which in both cases looks like the handy work of IT student.
To mark these disappointing efforts, Gigwise has cast our eyes back at some of the worst album covers ever, featuring the likes of Prince, Toris Amos, Michael Jackson and Hard-Fi.
Let us know your thoughts on the list and if you can think of any more in the comment form below – Facebook users can comment straight away.