WTF Album Covers by Britney Spears

I know what you’re thinking. And you’re right. There’s no real point in wasting time pointing out that a Britney Spears album cover is crap. The contents are crap, the “artwork” will be wretched as well. But there’s something really galling about Britney Spears aping Johnny Rotten. Behold:

This image really irritated conservatives in Britain at the time…but who cares? Such narrow-minded folk are born to be tormented by people like John Lydon, it’s the natural order of things. And then there’s this:

Dunno if this is the promo artwork for a single, an album or some other nonsense–I can’t be bothered to investigate Britney Spears for a second longer. But I am amused that somebody somewhere thought it would be a good lark to put her on the cross…see, people instantly associate the crucifixion imagery with Jesus and Christianity, but in a historical context, the lowest of the low got crucified.The dregs. Common, dirtbag criminals and people the Romans didn’t think enough of to put into forced labor.

And musically speaking, that’s exactly what’s going on here. Britney has at last found her place with the rest of the human refuse in the music industry. I know that sounds a bit harsh, but it makes me laugh. As does this:

At first I thought perhaps this was Britney’s final freakout–that this artwork was an ad for some kind of new white supremacist tea party nonsense. But we would have heard about that by now. Nope, this has to be something else. It’s not an ad for her new gig at Hats Unlimited, so it MUST be an album cover.

A stupid, stupid album cover.

“Hey look, folks, my head can be used for more than just a battering ram. It’s also a HAT RACK. Now buy my single.”

–Joe Wallace

Vinyl Road Rage–Austin and Beyond

by Joe Wallace

Brain fried from far too much driving. Here’s a gallery of images I’ve collected along the way, with some snarky commentary free of charge. I have gathered these images between Springfield, Illinois and San Antonio, Texas–and I’ve paid the price, let me tell you–my retinas are seared for life in some cases.

The name of this John Denver Album, in case you can’t read the type, is “I Want To Live”. Sorry matey, but you should have taken the bus.

I love this album cover. He looks like one of those plastinated dead bodies currently causing all the fuss on the museums. The bananas don’t look plastinated, though. Just very ripe.

… Continue Reading

Seriously Bad Album Covers

We here at Turntabling are proud of the little collection of WTF album covers, but Nick DiFonzo’s book really takes the cake. Seriously Bad Album Covers displays 50 years and over 250 pages worth of the worst album covers ever. This import features a whopping 225 covers with a variety of wretched concepts, butt-ugly musicians and rotten excesses. Any vinyl junkie should add this to their collection of vinyl-related ephemera. This is hours and hours of entertainment just waiting to be had.

One day we are hoping that Taschen dedicates one of their luxuriously assembled editions to awful art, but until then this tome is probably THE authority on crapola covers.

WTF: Denmark Vs. Sweden

Crap album art isn’t always about the thing itself. Sometimes a merely nauseating album cover can reach dizzying new lows when compared side-by-side to equally barf inducing artwork. Submitted for your approval, all the way from Denmark–the cover of Laid Back’s Keep Smiling album. This isn’t the most rotten thing ever made, but let’s call this artwork…uninspired:

Now compare it to the utterly goofy and craptacular cover for this Swedish nonsense– Kjell Kraghe’s Vind I Seglen. This album cover takes the seafaring them to a similarly fucktarded new low. We’re faced with a serious chicken-and-egg question here. Which wretched cover came first? Was this some kind of harmonic convergence of dumbass graphic design? Or was somebody thinking, “No way is that OTHER windmill-and-wooden-shoes country going to show US up in the dumbass graphics department!”

This album cover reminds me of Beavis and Butthead episode where Butthead delivers a stunning critique of a bad 90s music video by merely uttering the phrase, “Look at his FACE!” That’s all we really need to say here, isn’t it? Except those two sails placed so perfectly in symmetry next to this hambone Ricky Schroeder lookalike makes it appear this guy has some kind of freakish protruberances connected to that suit of his. 

So perhaps these are both, on their own,  merely lame-o record covers. But viewed side by side they give me the horrors. We know Sweden and Denmark are capable of better than this…but then again, we haven’t even started looking at the bad death metal album covers from these two countries. Just you wait, this stuff looks tame (well, it IS tame) by comparison.

WTF: Porter Wagoner’s The Bottom of the Bottle

Porter Wagoner may have been one of the legends of country music, but the dudes who approved the artwork for his records were clearly smoking Jimson weed for this one. Just WTF is going on with this picture, anyway?

Wagoner looks like he’s contemplating drinking this rotgut in spite of the fact that there’s a little man inside. “Hey Porter, over here! Look, you don’t wanna drink this. I just wee’d inside this bottle and it smells like a homeless shelter. Fer chrissakes, Porter…DON’T DRINK MEEEEEEEEE!”

The expression on Porter Wagoner’s face is priceless. It’s a cross between “Goddamn, I really want to tie one on here,” and “I wonder if free will is an artificial construct of the human mind or if it’s a crucial part of what makes our all-too-brief existence what it is?”

Or perhaps it’s kidney stones.