Scorpions - Virgin Killer (original cover) (1976)

This cover stands head and shoulders above any I've ever seen. It's in such bad taste as to render the cover difficult to even look at. It plays off of societal taboos in a way that's crass and exploitative in the worst possible sense. It features a naked preteen posing suggestively with a broken glass starburst over her genitals. My friends, this is Virgin Killer.

How does an album cover like this come about? Apparently, the band's record label asked for a shocking cover, and they sure as hell got one. They got one so bad that even the band themselves started to have second thoughts about what they had done. The fact that the cover got pulled and replaced with a generic group photo of the band suggests that the record label figured that out perhaps just a tad too late.

So congratulations to you, Scorpions. You somehow managed to make the worst album cover ever. I hope you're proud of yourselves.

Bay City Rollers - Rock 'n' Roll Love Letter (1976)

Featuring quite possibly the ugliest group of teen heartthrobs ever. Not only do I resent their horrible faces, I also resent that they attempted to do the 80s feathered hair look about four years before the 80s actually began. Their outfits, of course, are too horrible to even mention.

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.

Anna Russell - In Darkest Africa

I like how she goes for the old-school colonialist approach to how those horrible African savages would treat such an upstanding, white British woman such as herself, then completely half-asses it by making them wear those bizarre tartan skirts. I mean jesus, if you're going to be stereotypical, at least get your fucking stereotypes right.

The Reverend Gusta Booker - The Day Death Died!!! (1983)

You can never use too many exclamation points!!! This goes double if you're making profoundly nonsensical statements!!! They lend your album's title that touch of class and elegance that it needs to make people want to listen to it!!! It's great!!!

Jim Post - I Love My Life (1978)

I don't know, Jim, something about that thousand-yard stare and sour look on your face make me think you're deluding yourself. You want to come across as being sexy, I'm sure, but you can't bring yourself to go that extra mile, can you Jim? You simply can't reconcile your desires with what you already know about your sad, horrible little life, can you? Let's face it, Jim; you don't love anything. You just want to die.

Don & Seymour - Don & Seymour

The look of rage on Don's face in this image is pretty stunning. "So I'm playing guitar with a sock puppet. YOU GOT A FUCKIN' PROBLEM WITH THAT, ASSHOLE?!" Given Seymour's typically jolly appearance (being a puppet and all), what's coming to mind is a very surreal, musical version of good cop, bad cop, where Seymour happily serenades you and cracks jokes and Don angrily cracks the guitar over your head and dumps your body in a drainage ditch.

(As the watermark mentions, this is an image from Bizarre Records, a bunch of guys who've been doing this way longer than I have, and even partially inspired me to start this.)

Ray Thornley - Ray Thornley Entertains, Vol. 1

For supposedly entertaining others, Ray looks extremely non-plussed. His slight sneer and uncomfortable body language suggest that he really doesn't give a rat's ass about any of the people he's entertaining, and to be quite frank he probably hates what he does from an aesthetic standpoint. Given the bizarre electronics on his organ, it's entirely possible that he doesn't even play the organ himself, choosing instead to merely program the machine to do his bidding, causing the sham that is his pathetic existence to be revealed even further. But hey, recommendations from The Organist don't come every day, so I suppose you have to do what you have to do.

Tony Tee - Time to Get Physical (1988)

I really don't know what's more pathetic here; the fact that Tony clearly needs the two huge guys to hold up his barbell for him (which isn't even that heavy by the looks of it) or the fact that the woman in the weird spandex/technicolor diaper arrangement looks like she's about to kick Tony's ass.If rap is a game designed to make its participants seem as masculine as possible, Tony has lost. Big time.

Mylon LeFevre - Weak at the Knees (1977)

You know, the term "fashion disaster" doesn't seem nearly damning enough in this instance. This guy's outfit is so outrageously bad that it seems like it needs a new term to describe it. Maybe we should start calling extreme cases like this one "fashion holocausts." It's impossible to get too hyperbolic with this outfit, after all.