moe. - No Doy (1996)

moe. must have realized a bit too late that having a photo of a man with a nail driven through his skull on an album cover was pretty morbid and sent the wrong message about what listening to the band's music might cause you to do to yourself. Their solution of painting the nailed man hazard-cone orange with Prince purple eyes and giving him a big, dopey smile was a fairly inelegant (not to mention ineffectual) fix for this problem.

Gang of Four - Mall (1991)

This album cover would already be pretty lousy if it had come from some rinky-dink pop-punk band or similar, which is what the album cover reminds me of. It's absolutely depressing when it comes from a band like Gang of Four that really should've known better. But then, I think the 90s made everybody kind of stupid when it came to album cover design.

Super Furry Animals - Hey Venus! (2007)

I love psychedelic artwork as much as the next guy but I usually don't like it quite this terrifying. I especially take issue with the really ugly comic book style color job on the figures. This all less suggests psychedelia and more implies some sort of horrible attempt to update the 60s gone hideously awry.

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.

Cerys Matthews - Cockahoop (2003)

This album cover proves that no matter how disastrously bad your fashion sense is, you can always make it look that much more ridiculous if you portray yourself with some artwork as drawn by a 10 year old.

The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

Back in the 60s, drugs caused people to do really stupid things they thought were cool at the time. Thus, we have the Beatles dressed up in goofy animal costumes in front of really awful (and awfully dated at this point) psychedelic backdrops. The starburst motif was honestly silly enough, but the American LP cover shown here just made matters worse with the bizarre yellow/blue cloud texture stuff. Not really a high point from an artistic perspective.

The Polyphonics - Zounds! What Sounds

There's no denying it; this is one of the goofiest album covers I've ever seen.

Velvett Fogg - Velvett Fogg (1969)

As much as I love bare breasts, and as much as I'm not opposed to the concept of the Summer of Love, this album cover manages to make both seem really unpalatable. Let's face it, any album cover that manages to make bare breasts seem like a terrible thing is committing some serious crimes against nature. And what's with the androgynous cowboy thing in the back? Or that ghostly guy? And what's with the feather boas? This cover is starting to make my head hurt. Curse you, 1960s!

Fall Out Boy - Evening Out with Your Girlfriend (2003)

Before Fall Out Boy became mopey, dopey purveyors of emo whining suitable for listening to while wearing your librarian sweater and giant, black-framed glasses, Fall Out Boy were apparently a bunch of misguided dorks leering at an ugly girl while surrounded by eye-searing colors. Well, actually they're still a bunch of misguided dorks, but at least their embrace of the mopier side of life has improved their design skills a tad.

Fireballet - Two, Too... (1976)

Rateyourmusic tells me that this is the last album Fireballet ever released. I suspect this is because putting all of your ugly, hairy male band members on the cover of your album wearing tutus and frolicking around is considered to be a career-ending move in certain parts of the world. Making awful puns on top of that just seals the deal.

Main Source - Breaking Atoms (1991)

"So you see, when you split open atoms by placing them inside this blue sea-shelly thing, delicious jawbreakers fly out! Ha! And they said that nuclear fission was dangerous!"

The Flaming Lips - Hit to Death in the Future Head (1992)

I think it should understood as an unspoken rule that if your album cover has a toilet on it, it's automatically bad. The Flaming Lips gamely try to get around this rule by dressing up their toilet in pretty pastel colors, but it's wasted effort.

Max Bygraves - Viva! Congalongamax Vol. 10 (1975)

That a dorky, middle-aged white guy decided the best way to co-opt/pay tribute to the sounds of Latin America was to wear a hideously gaudy outfit and release a watered down, putrid version of said music is inevitable. That the British public would demand 10 volumes of this sort of thing is just confusing.

The Brothers Johnson - Light Up the Night (1980)

"Louis, could you stop holding that damn spotlight against your crotch?"
"Heheheh, I got your spotlight right HERE!"
"Damn it, this isn't funny, we've been trying to get this photo right for hours."
"Heheheh, I got your photo right HERE!"
"Look you stupid bastard, we need this for the album cover! This could be our biggest one yet!"
"Heheheh, I got your biggest one yet right HERE!"
"Oh fuck this. Let's just go with what we've got."

Bloodrock - Bloodrock U.S.A. (1972)

For the longest time, I assumed that this album cover was depicting a green orc creature standing just off-camera and simply driving his finger through the skull of Perfectly Two-Dimensional Man, which didn't make a lot of sense to me. Then I realized that the orc's fist is acting as a GUN and he's actually firing a bullet through our flat hero's poor cranial cavity. Does this make me feel stupid, being bested by an album cover? Not really, because it's drawn so shittily that they couldn't even convey what they were trying to get across correctly. If anything, it doesn't answer WHY we should care that the guy is getting his brains blown out in the first place. Maybe it's because of his hideous fashion sense, but I get the sinking feeling that's not it.

Milton Babbitt - Music of Milton Babbitt (2003)

When it comes to artwork, bargain-basement compilations provide an endless source of mirth, bad design choices, and eye-searing pain. Since the whole point is to shove out a product with as little effort as possible, silly things like graphics designers fall by the wayside. It doesn't matter if you're a groundbreaking composer in the field of electronic music: as long as they can slap a nasty picture of you with severe contrast problems on an album cover with some MS Comic Sans and a few doodles the record label's daughter made in the margins of her notebook, then drench it all in colors that would make Lisa Frank vomit, it's all good. I mean, if NOFX can have a man and sheep having sexual relations on an album cover, certainly we can have Milton Babbitt cavorting in a weird checkered universe with some flowers, butterflies, and floating text bubbles.

The Rolling Stones - Dirty Work (1986)

If anybody really needed to be convinced that the Rolling Stones were all washed up by the mid-80s, this cover should've been a huge wakeup call. The preponderance of pink and the bizarre dinner-mint colored chair would've been ugly even when this photo was actually taken place, but the real kicker lies in Mick Jagger's canary-colored crotch shot. Rather than being tittilating and shocking, like it would've been in the past, it instead just comes across as irritatating and mildly disgusting. "Jesus Mick, close your damn legs up. What if your kids see?" Oh how harsh it is to see rock's sex gods in decline.

Scorpions - Fly to the Rainbow (1974)

This is just goofy. If the rainbow banner and weird-ass pink helmet weren't bad enough, the guy is standing on two miniature prop planes. Gay pride and aviation make for a weird combination to begin with, so adding metal to mix just makes me think that Scorpions were high on something when they came up with the idea.

Brainticket - Cottonwoodhill (1971)

Brainticket aim to expand our minds, show us what it's really like to drop some acid and take a journey into the center of your mind. If this album cover is any indication, the experience is rather ugly. The young woman screams, shouting "OH GOD THESE COLORS ARE MAKING ME WANT TO RETCH" as she sees and feels sensations not unlike being flushed down a toilet. Meanwhile, an unidentified white mass on the right side is knocking on the gold divider. "Excuse me, could you tone down the screaming a bit? I'm trying to sleep. Also you accidentally left a few pieces of your brain on the couch when you were over last night. You really need to get that thing covered up."

Dschinghis Khan - Moskau (1979)

Dschinghis Khan are nothing if not a democratic little group. They have something for everybody! There's the dashing, bat-winged sultan, the black-garbage-bag-and-rope wearing pirate, the charming red flight attendant, the head on a green end-table, the extra from a third-rate sci-fi movie, and the canary lady! Together, they form a band whose one goal in life is to sing about Moscow and nothing but! Who said Germany didn't favor multiculturalism?