Rolling Stone has followed up its list of "The 100 Best Album Covers of All Time" on Thursday with "The 50 Worst Album Covers of All Time" on Friday.
Limp Bizkit tops it with Presents Chocolate St★rfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water. But after that it's quite a number of iconic acts starting with Roger Daltrey at two with his second album, 1975's Ride a Horse.
Crosby, Stills and Nash are fourth with 1990's Live it Up, and Ted Nugent is fifth with his women-demeaning cover for 2007's Love Grenade, which is record label pulled.
Further down you'll find:
- 14) Yes - Going For the One -- "Singer Jon Anderson said the lines on the cover intersecting with the [naked] man’s torso represented 'points of the anatomy relative to our development,' which means that either we don’t understand the artistic concept or he doesn’t."
- 16) Bob Dylan - Saved
- 18) Scorpions - Lovedrive -- "This isn’t even the worst Scorpions LP cover — that would be the original art for the German metal band’s Virgin Killer, featuring a naked 12-year-old girl, which is why we won’t be compiling it here. This is a fitting companion piece, since the bubblegum image is basically a 12-year-old boy’s vision of what happens in the back of limousines."
- 20) Van Halen - Balance
- 21) Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Love Beach
- 24) Billy Squier - Signs of Life
- 25) Bon Jovi - Slippery When Wet
- 27) David Crosby - If I Could Only Remember My Name
- 30) Ozzy Osbourne - Down to Earth
- 37) The Beatles - Revolver
- 40) Rod Stewart - An Old Raincoat Won't Ever Let You Down
- 41) Metallica (aka "The Black Album")
- 42) Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers - Hard Promises -- Petty once said, “You know what was the worst thing about the whole Hard Promises ordeal? We spent so much time fighting about the price that we didn’t realize it was a real boring album cover. Since then, I’ve always been real particular about the album covers. I still cringe when I see Hard Promises.”
- 47) Queen - The Miracle
- 48) Chuck Berry - Berry Is on Top
- 49) REO Speedwagon - Nine Lives
- 50) Billy Joel - River of Dreams -- "This cover was painted by his wife, Christie Brinkley, showing why she’s better known as a model than as a visual artist. We’re not saying that this cover art led to their divorce a year later and Joel never making another studio album, we’re just observing that both of these things happened after she perched a tiny cheetah on his naked shoulder."