Now That's What I Call Album Covers... From Hell

This idea started its life yesterday when we were sent a PDF (and we love our PDFs) containing two dozen of the most appalling album covers ever created by people. It made me curious - was this the sum total of human artistic ineptitude or could there be more out there? Was there an internet stuffed with giddy-making album abortions? The answer was a resounding Yes! and thanks to sites like this and this I am able to bring to you this collection of brutally horrible cover art.

We start with this scary piece of lycra-clad awfulness. I shudder to think what type of physicalness "Tony Tee" has in mind as his woman (?) unzips his shell suit and his two burly gentlemen friends look on. Tony actually looks like he might be asleep in that picture. Imagine waking up and discovering that you are surrounded by muscular black dudes and that your legs have shrunk.

Next we have a square-jawed man who has borrowed someone else's hair and his wife who appears to be Matt Lucas from "Little Britain".

You would've thought they could've waited until his suit had been finished before arranging the photo-shoot.

Here we have so much terror in one small place. The woman delighted to be hanging from the ceiling, the old guy playing the saxophone in a cow's stall and - best of all - he's called Dick Stable. Don't be thinking the extra "i" makes a difference. He's Dick Stable - one up from Dick Wobble. But one down from Dick Vibrate.

Interestingly, there are six people on that cover and only one pair of legs. And we don't even know they work - she might be hanging there because Dick has hidden her wheelchair.

I imagine the target audience for the next recording was fairly specific. Mainly members of the immediate Rosenblatt family and those who are turned on by the sight of a Brillo pad on a cheese slice.

I wonder if that hat goes up and down like the central column of the Tardis.

Below we have a settee that has been placed next to a stream. Of course I'm joking - it's a woman with a thyroid problem who has been doing something else before sitting down to sing. I don't want to hear her sing - I want to know what she was doing before. It could've been something as mundane as finding a rock that would support her weight or something as exciting as actually getting to it.

Don't even get me started on the font crimes committed above. It is literally too much to bear.

I wonder what "Uncle Bud" experienced in hospital. Going by the clues on the album cover we may be able to piece something together. From the top down, we see him making a lasso and perhaps snaring his intended target. Then we see him packing an ass before happily riding away. Perhaps he wasn't actually the patient in hospital - maybe he was only visiting his special friend to find out whether the ointment is helping sooth the fricative burns.

Though that drawing could easily be a slightly older Dennis Brent. Not that he'd ever be hospitalised with anal traumas. Oh no.

Imagine you are a stern looking woman with a fairly dull name and hair that looks like two previously written off wigs welded together to make a death trap. It would probably look something like "Linda".

Although that might be Clare Balding in drag.

There was a meeting somewhere which bandied about ideas for long playing records. Someone stood up and said "Let's release a collection of our ideological enemy's favourite dance tunes". Someone else said "Yes - lets".

The main man's hair is so utterly and completely unbelievable that I am perfectly willing to believe that the balloons are growing out of his head. Maybe that's why everyone else looks so miserable - they have been forced to adopt the standard Soviet snip while this happy-go-lucky son of the politburo can be as gay as he wants to be.

But never mind a gay Russian, this next piece suggests that God himself bats for the well-dressed team. Why else would the hotline be pink?

Sadly, I don't think "Jerry Irby" will be going to gay heaven with a jacket like that. Not unless the almighty is a fan of Everton mints.

Big hippyish letters, a good hippyish slogan and lots of hippyish flowers. This must be a hippyish album, right? Oh wait, it features the least groovy looking group of people ever assembled. There is being swept along by a trend and shamelessly trying to cash in on a movement. When the staff of a 1950s building society decide to embrace free love in stereo you know they're just in it for the money. And the sex, obviously.

Who picked these three photos? More precisely, who picked the one on the right? Is relaxed flexibility a generally recognised indication of musical ability?

And last but not least (for this sojourn at least) we have... well it speaks for itself really.

I may be back with more. Or not. It depends on how long it takes me to recover from the things - oh! the things - I've seen at bizarrerecords.com and their ilk. "Joyce" for one thing...