The Sun-Sentinel, South Florida’s most infotainious newspaper, is running a poll on the worst album cover of all time. Anyone who has been connected to the internet for more than 10 minutes has probably already seen most of these before, but if you consider yourself to be a connoisseur of truly awful album covers, you might find something new [1] in this list.

As with any list of this kind, you will probably agree with some entries, disagree with others, and wish like hell that there was some way to perform memory surgery to make you forget you’d seen the remainder. For myself, I didn’t really find the ‘cheap giggle’ covers all that entertaining [2], but there were enough genuinely quirky and oddball covers in the collection to make it worth browsing.

Just for the fun of it I’ve compiled my Top 5 best-of-the-worst album covers below, but if you get a chance, you should look through the original list to see which 5 you’d pick out as your best-of-the-worst.

5. Space Escapade, Les Baxter

At my Number 5 slot I’ve gone with Space Escapade by Les Baxter.

There are many things to love about this album cover, not the least of which are the multi-coloured alien women wearing scanty clothing. You can add to that list the attractive brown and green space suits worn by our space lads — perfect, we can only imagine, for impromptu escapades on possibly hostile worlds. And let’s not overlook the fact that they’re drinking wicked-looking extraterrestrial concoctions through clear plastic helmets without somehow spilling any of it on their uniforms.

Yes, Space Escapade has it all, including a phallic shaped spaceship in the background, as well as a sort-of-purpley-pink chick who looks like she can’t wait until the delicious humans drink the stupefying potion so the serious brain-sucking can begin. The lesson? Multi-coloured alien women are all alike — far more interested in a space lad’s mind than in the blaster-sized bulge in his interplanetary trousers.

4. All My Friends Are Dead, Freddie Gage

At Number 4 we have All my friends are dead, and with a title like that it’s hard not to feel sorry for our man, Freddie Gage. Until, that is, you see the picture below the title.

Seriously, one look at that picture and I found myself wondering whether or not the original title for the album might have been, All my friends are dead… Now it’s time for my enemies too! Aha ahahahahaha! [3] 

Either way, I can’t help thinking that Freddie here maybe knows a whole lot more about why all his friends are dead than he’s letting on, and if I were the police investigating this bizarre series of unexpected deaths, I’d start paying attention to the fact that the only thing that ties all of these corpses together [4] is… yes, that’s right… one Mr Freddie Gage!

Still, maybe this isn’t entirely Freddie’s fault. Some of the blame for this album cover has to go to the designer who chose to place a phrase like “All my friends are dead” in a rather playful font on a bright blue background. That’s not simply wrong, folks, that’s just plain evil.

3. Understand Your’e Swede, Jimmy Jenson

At Number 3 we have the cover I struggled most to justify including in my Top 5, and yet every time I look at it I immediately understand why I think it’s so wonderfully awful.

It’s not just the misspelling in the title, it’s not just the fact that if you spelled the title correctly it still wouldn’t make any sense, and it’s not just the fact that whoever did the album art decided to establish its essential Swedishness by depicting a guy with a sack and an axe and 43 children — it’s the combination of all of these things that make Understand Your’e Swede a true legend in the worst album cover stakes of all time.

Not only that, but Jimmy Jenson has passed onto future generations the pleasant past-time of wondering just what the hell he was getting at. Understand You’re Swede sounds like an angry indictment against all those Swedes who have spent years foolishly attempting to deny their inner Swedishness, while Understand Your Swede would presumably only make sense to the small percentage of the population who actually own one.

An outstanding effort either way, Jimmy Jenson!

2. The Many Facets Of Roger

At Number 2 we have The Many Facets Of Roger, along with a lingering concern about the sexual identity crisis Roger was experiencing when he recorded this album.

Sadly, the album wasn’t titled The Many Different Open-Necked, Navel-Plunging, Hairy-Chest-Revealing Shirts Of Roger, so in each photo of our man demonstrating one of his many facets, we also get another opportunity to admire his glittery, spangly, chest-exposing-and-wide-blue-panel-ey wardrobe choice for that entirely fabulous day. And what can I tell you? After squinting at this album cover for a number of minutes I found myself hoping and praying that this was just what Roger wore in off the street when he turned up for the photo shoot, since that would add a whole other dimension of amazingness to Roger, not to mention his many facets.

And what about the many facets of Roger themselves? I can’t be the only one who has tried to figure out exactly what each of these facets is trying to communicate (from left to right, top to bottom):

1. Girls just wanna have fun
2. This is Serious Roger. No, really. Yes, I know the shirt isn’t helping, but I mean it. Look, just ignore the damn shirt, I’m being really, really serious! Oh, for the love of… Forget the fucking shirt for just a minute and pay attention to… stop looking at the shirt!!
3. Mwaha!! I bet you weren’t expecting me to be hiding in your closet!
4. I call this facet, “And Another Thing, Roger.” I like to use it when I think of more than 1 thing at a time.
5. I… I only wish I could show more than 6 of my many facets… Facet Number 47, for example, is illegal in 12 different countries.
6. It’s crowded in my brain, can I use yours?

1. Orion Reborn

And here we are at my Number 1 best-of-the-worst album cover of all time, Orion Reborn!

The only place to start with this cover is with a quick lesson in ultra-coolness. Pick the least cool person you know — the person who is so uncool you’re surprised he or she simply doesn’t spontaneously combust in social situations [5]. Okay, now… imagine that person wearing a mask…

I’m right, aren’t I? That person suddenly looks cool!

Yes, it’s a simple fact of life that wearing a mask automatically makes you look cool, and there is no-one in the world who looks more cool wearing a mask than Orion up there.

But the coolness doesn’t end with the mask. Oh hell no! Orion combines that mask with a blue satin shirt with pouffy pirate sleeves, a pair of matching blue cummerbund pants, a rock-’n-roll-god-of-the-1950s hairstyle, a fists-on-hips stance and an optional devil-may-care sneer, and what he delivers is pure sensory coolness overload. Seriously, you don’t just want to own this man’s album, you want to wake up one morning and find out you’re even half as cool as he is.

In fact, when you look at the complete package — particularly the hair and the sneer — it’s hard not to suspect that maybe Elvis didn’t leave the building after all, he just put on a mask and was reborn as Orion.

And there you have it

So what do you know, it’s surprisingly difficult to arrive at a list of 5 favourite album covers out of a potential pool of 50 candidates, many of which are just as wonderfully bad as any of the others. In the end, I had to cut more than a few worthy contenders from my list to arrive at the final 5.

Which leaves me wondering… If you did happen to take a look at the entire Sun-Sentinel list, what would you pick as your best of the worst, and why? Or, heck, what do you think of the list I’ve selected above?

As always, the comment section is the place to have your say!

Until next time,

Murray @ Midnight