When it come to album covers, it’s a lot easier to make a bad one than it is to make a good one — which is why Rolling Stone had no problem coming up with 50 stinkers for its Worst Album Covers of All Time list.
Rolling Stone explains its process for choosing the albums this way: “We skewed toward major artists with the resources of professional graphic designers who really should have known better.” It also says there was “no mercy for the album’s music actually being good.”
Among the choices was Bon Jovi’s biggest album, Slippery When Wet. When two previous ideas for a cover were rejected — including one that would have shown a buxom model in a wet T-shirt — the photographer just sprayed some water on a black plastic garbage bag. Jon Bon Jovi wrote the title in the water drops with his finger.
Billy Joel‘s last studio album, 1993’s River of Dreams, also makes the list, because its cartoon-like cover was painted by his then-wife, Christie Brinkley — “showing why she’s better known as a model than as a visual artist,” as the publication snarks.
Michael Jackson‘s 1995 album, HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I, makes the list for featuring a 10-foot-tall statue of Michael that makes him look like a war hero. Thirty-foot replicas of the statue were then placed around the world to promote Michael’s subsequent tour. Rolling Stone notes that while some artists might have commissioned such a sculpture ironically, MJ “believed he deserved to be rendered on an epic scale.”
But these three acts are in good company: Other artists whose albums made the list include Rod Stewart, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and even The Beatles.
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