Stories Behind Deliciously Bad Album Covers

October 10, 2011 12:07 PM

The Museum of Bad Album Covers has been featured on the blue before, but did you ever wonder who those people on the covers were and what the heck they were thinking? Mental Floss has the stories behind 10 of the best of the worst.
posted by Oriole Adams (27 comments total)

Ah Mental Floss. We love you.
posted by closetphilosopher at 12:15 PM on October 10, 2011

And now you know

the rest

of the story.
posted by tommasz at 12:18 PM on October 10, 2011 [3 favorites]

I was really hoping for the story of the album covers. Most of these are just more information about the artists. I didn't really learn what they were thinking about when they made the album covers.
posted by oneironaut at 12:20 PM on October 10, 2011 [11 favorites]

So bad album covers are either the result of 70s-era drug-fueled orgies, or church. Good to know.
posted by Navelgazer at 12:26 PM on October 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

I was expecting more stories that started with "Bob brought some LSD to the shoot."
posted by bpm140 at 12:30 PM on October 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Those were more stories about the performers, rather than "what the HELL is going on in the 'Julie's 16th Birthday' album cover" explanations.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:34 PM on October 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

So bad album covers are either the result of 70s-era drug-fueled orgies, or church.

or both. just look at Joyce. you can tell she's a rampaging demon when the clothes come off.
posted by fetamelter at 12:36 PM on October 10, 2011

No Ferrante & Teicher, no credibility!
posted by octobersurprise at 12:36 PM on October 10, 2011

I would've expected the Scorpions Virgin Killer and Orleans Waking and Dreaming to be on this list.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 12:39 PM on October 10, 2011

I was sad, since "badness" pretty much boiled down to "male nudity" and "poor hairstyles choices of the late 60s/early 70s." I hold on to my dream that there is worse, far worse, out there....
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:40 PM on October 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Understand Your'e Swede, for example.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:41 PM on October 10, 2011

XD I looked up that Orleans one (and went "Yes, that was the one I thought it would be") and then I happened to catch the name of one of the songwriters and it was Marilyn Mason and I was like "WAIT WHAT" and then I reread it more carefully and thought "Wait, why the hell not?"
posted by fetamelter at 12:44 PM on October 10, 2011

OK, the Orion story was pretty amazing. I'd love to a Boogie Nights style biopic about that.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:45 PM on October 10, 2011 [2 favorites]

Understand Your'e Swede

Wherein the strapping foreground figure is returning with his hatchet from a long day in the woods chopping paper lunch bags off the trees. Manly work, that.
posted by echo target at 12:52 PM on October 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

I was hoping they would have the story behind "04", by the Handsome Beasts.
posted by Flunkie at 12:53 PM on October 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

For the most part this just enhances the depression I felt when I first saw these album covers.
posted by randomkeystrike at 12:55 PM on October 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Good god, looking at these old covers I realized I was smelling the aroma of vinyl. It's amazing how album artwork (especially the bad covers) are so uniquely effective at triggering that kind of memory.
posted by crapmatic at 1:12 PM on October 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Pawn shop owners shot to death? Guy lost an arm? OH MY GOD I AM NEVER MAKING FUN OF ANYTHING AGAIN
posted by scrowdid at 1:26 PM on October 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

The missed this one, my all-time favorite.
posted by Danf at 1:27 PM on October 10, 2011

They, up there.
posted by Danf at 1:27 PM on October 10, 2011

Understand Your'e Swede

Much better was the Jimmy Jenson follow up album: Punctuatio!n
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 2:23 PM on October 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Surely the top ten should include "A child's introduction to sex"?
posted by onesidys at 2:46 PM on October 10, 2011

It doesn't look like a Trapper Keeper! It represents partying and redemption!
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 3:37 PM on October 10, 2011

Jim Post isn't completely obscure, I hope; he is regionally known as a folk artist. One of his other intrusions into national consciousness was this Wendy's commercial. Aside from his Mark Twain song cycle (it's much more about river culture than it is him playing Twain -- he's no Hal Holbrook), there's Galena Rose.
posted by dhartung at 3:49 PM on October 10, 2011

Well, this is a rather neat discovery, but a Canadian band I like called Radio Radio totally did a tribute to the album cover for "Por Primera Vez (For the First Time) by Tino" in their video of the song Guess What? Go to 3:38 if you want to skip the song.
posted by Vindaloo at 4:58 PM on October 10, 2011

> So bad album covers are either the result of 70s-era drug-fueled orgies, or church. Good to know.

sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.
posted by lester at 8:10 PM on October 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Right -- I just got determined enough to see if I could find an explanation for the John Bult one. And I found it! Apparently, the cover of "Julie's Sixteenth Birthday" is supposed to be a picture of a father consoling his daughter about a 16th-birthday that didn't go quite the way she planned, rather than anything more nefarious.

I haven't quite made up my mind as to whether knowing that helps matters or not, but there it is.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:37 AM on October 11, 2011