WTF Album Covers: Sensitive, Caring, Clueless

The latest batch of WTF album covers I’ve discovered runs the full gamut of clueless, offensive, bewildering, and just plain weird. I’ve started sharing stuff like this on Facebook on a daily basis so if you’re into bad album covers, lousy art, and strange records in general why not Like the WTF Records official page on FB? There’s plenty like these with many more to come.

–Joe Wallace

This film was apparently made in 1969 (snicker if you must) and features a decent soundtrack, but that cover! That title! We must remember that in 1969, people had much stranger ideas about what it meant to be “respectable” or “decent”. Apparently, who you chose to have sex with–with regard to not having the same kind of plumbing as you–was really, REALLY important back then. Another argument in favor of the notion, right or wrong, that before the Internet, people were just dumber.

What is this album cover trying to say, exactly? Are those canes supposed to represent something? Or maybe this album is about the risks you take looking for love with a caning fetish? Who knows, but damn. How’d you like to see THIS stern, Charles Bronson-esque face hovering over you in the dark?

Is there a genre of album covers called “Head In A Jar”? I’m still doing research on that. I’ll get back to you. In the meantime, here’s the best example. Remember that old movie, Donovan’s Brain? The disembodied brain that still lived, exerting psychic influence over people to do the brain’s evil bidding? This album cover could be titled, “Donovan’s Dumbass”.

How long did it take anybody to realize just how much this album cover really, really sucked? Was it a gradual awareness like dawn breaking across an autumn sky, or did these people wake up one morning, look at what they had unleashed upon the world, and just start screaming until the ambulances came?

WTF Records: Can Heironymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?

What do Anthony Newly, Joan Collins, Playboy Magazine and the Marx Brothers have in common? Watch the vid to learn more–just another entry in the new Turntabling WTF Vinyl series:

WTF Album Covers: Leona Anderson Music To Suffer By

by Joe Wallace

I stumbled on this image of the album cover for Leona Anderson’s Music To Suffer By on The Magic Whistle. WTF is going on in this picture? This one’s suitable for framing–at least in MY house where bad album art has a special place of love and reverence.

There’s nothing quite like the joys of an especially wretched piece of album art. The ones so wrong-headed you can’t even begin to describe them are my favorites. Music To Suffer By from Leona Anderson is definitely one of those. Can you hear the discussion between Anderson and the artist? “Well, miz Anderson, the guy with the violin is, you know, gonna KILL you here with that lighter as you’re trying to sing with cobwebs coming out of your mouth. GET IT?”

If YOU get it, please by all means, let ME know what this is trying to say. I think maybe I’m still drunk from a week last Thursday and that’s why I can’t wrap my head around it.

WTF Album Covers: Before Lil’ Kim, Lil Wayne and Lil Jon…

Before Lil’ Kim started a “mee too” bandwagon longer than your arm, here was Lil’ Richard, toiling away in some miserable little studio. And NOT the Lil Richard responsible for the utterly unlistenable “Hos on My Team”…

The REAL Little Richard would be outraged to have his identity linked in any way to an album cover so dim-witted. Just chant “duh” and go into a trance with me here as you view this thudding failure…

We’re still fixated on the me-too factor. There are far too many people with “lil” in front of their names…can’t you come up with something on your own? Apparently not if your name is:

Lil Romeo, Lil Zane, Lil Fizz, Lil Flip, Lil Troy, Lil Wayne, Lil Bow Wow, Lil Mama, Lil Jon, Lil Boosie, Lil Scrappy, Lil’ Rob, Lil Whyte.

Here’s one that’s currently unclaimed, our gift to some aspiring wannabe out there who just can’t rub two brain cells together to think up a clever stage name:

Lil’ Dumbass.

WTF Album Covers: Ronnie Ronalde

by Joe Wallace

Sometimes, these WTF album covers are chosen simply because I haven’t had enough caffeine yet when I see them and they just…set…me…off. This one was discovered during a particularly bad decaffeination headache. I snarled at the computer screen. “Yodel…OR whistle. You can’t do both at once, jackass”.

I’m on my second cup now and feeling much better. But this record still sucks. If you listen to this after seeing both the word “yodeling” and “whistler”, there’s simply no hope for you.

WTF Album Covers: Satan Has Been Paralyzed

..and REALLY ought to consider a lawsuit.

Seriously, is this guy a contestant on The Price Is Right? Born-again Christian preachers clearly know nothing about how to design album covers. But then again, neither do their polar opposites:

Somebody PLEASE call the record company version of Doctor Kervorkian. It’s time for Van Halen to die as a musical entity. Please.
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WTF Album Covers Ludacris Chicken N Beer

Some complain that a staggering majority of rap albums are insultingly stupid, repetitive, sexist, and that the genre is piled to the sky with “me too” copycats. But I defy ANYONE to find anything “me too” about a rap record with cannibalism front and center on the cover.

The way Ludacris is poised to devour that human leg on the cover of Chicken N Beer is worthy of any Romero film, and while the image alone escalates the WTF factor as high as it could possibly go, the fact that the album is called CHICKEN N Beer makes it that much more bewildering.

Shouldn’t it really be HUMAN FLESH N BEER instead? Damn, boys, put some more thought into these titles…don’t fool around now, give us the cannibal rap and stop teasing.

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WTF Album Covers: Skillet and Leroy The Okra Eaters

Somehow I keep finding these “adults only” albums featuring poorly photographed humans from Earth in sexually compromising positions, making unfunny statements with cartoon speech bubbles. Ever since I found a Blowfly record in the dollar bin, these albums are now constantly turning up when I go vinyl shopping.

The most horrifying thing about this album cover apart from the nyuk-nyuk “lookit,we made a sex funny” vibe are the safari suit and the green checked pants. I want a pair to wear on stage now, thanks. When the alien archaeology teams land on this plant in a hundred years, they will find these records and wonder just who the the hell Sanford and Son were. Hell, some high school graduates are wondering that RIGHT NOW.

–Joe Wallace

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