Chumbawamba - Tubthumper (1997)

I've talked before about 90s album cover design and its failings. Here, we see it in action. Any ape with a new copy of Photoshop could've made this fucker in about 30 seconds. Take a photo of a baby, throw a pukey pink color filter on it, paste on a big mouth, put it on a color-fill background, and there you go, instant shitty album cover.

With this cover, we also see that babies must be a recurring motif for Chumbawamba.

Sebadoh - Bakesale (1994)

I can't really fault Mrs. Barlow for taking this photo of her one year old son. She probably had no idea that, years later, he'd decide to use this candid photo as the cover to one of his albums. If anything, this just proves a point about baby photos; if you thought they were embarassing stashed in an old photo album in your mother's house, they don't become any less embarassing when you put them on the cover of a mass-produced album so that the whole world can see it.

Birth Control - Operation (1971)

Tying in with the previous album cover of theirs that I've covered, if you don't use birth control, apparently a giant grasshopper will, uh, eat a bunch of babies for some poorly-defined reason. I'm not sure if this is a step up from a dayglo fetus in a dumpster yet or not, but at least you can give these guys credit for sticking to a theme. Even when it feels like their theme was inspired by taking a shitload of drugs.

The Human League - Reproduction (1979)

"Hey, Bill! Come over! We're having a dance party! Just be sure to bring a few babies to throw on the floor! You wouldn't believe what a great surface they create for dancing! After you crush a few under your heels, it feels like you're flying!"

Bonnie Prudden - Fitness for Baby and You

a.k.a. "Here's another completely pointless activity you can force your child into to make you feel better about being a housewife with a dead-end life desperately trying to beautify yourself for a husband who probably doesn't give two shits about you and is most likely cheating on you with that cute girl down at the office."

Birth Control - Believe in the Pill (1972)

Believe in the pill or you'll end up dumping your malformed neon-pink fetus in a trash can next to some rotting food and a busted pair of aviators. This seems like a reasonable enough message, except for actually, you know, providing us with an image to go by. I guess we should at least be thankful that the band didn't try to go down a Chumbawamba-esque route and make the fetus look more realistic or actually have it be a real fetus.

Celine Dion and Anne Geddes - Miracle (2004)

"Uhm, Celine? The baby's dead, Celine, you can stop cradling it now. No, holding it like that won't make it come back. Celine? I know it's very sad, but you have to just let go. Celene? Celene?"

Chumbawamba - Anarchy (1994)

For the approximately zero people in the US who care (myself included), apparently Chumbawamba were an anarchist punk rock group before they decided to poison our ears by singing nonstop about getting piss drunk in pubs and falling flat on your ass an awful lot. At this early stage in the game, Chumbawamba decided to merely assault our eyes by showing us a photo of a baby being born. A rather ugly, bloody, cheerless photo of a baby's head sticking out of it's mother's uterus, to be precise. It's supposed to be the miracle of birth and all that, but let's face it; it's a pretty ugly miracle.

Paul Simon - Surprise (2006)

The fact that this is a poor album cover should be fairly obvious. The cheapass fonts, the awful contrast between the blue whatever-it-is up top and the giant, staring baby eyes down below. All of it just screams lousy. What makes this album cover really go the distance, though, is the fact that it looks like a terrible album cover from the early 90's. I can literally imagine some lousy, second-string pop grunge act like Live using this cover back in the day, not a famous pop star using it a couple years ago. I like you and all, Paul, but give me a fucking break here.

Various Artists - Sleep Baby Sleep

Sleep looks like the last thing on this baby's mind. Perhaps a more apt subtitle for the album would've been "songs to bring your baby down from its 36 hour amphetamine binge." And why the hell does the headboard look like it's floating in midair? And what's with all the swirling images above our baby's head? This baby needs to get into detox, fast.