Worst looking CD/LP artwork

[pjme]

To me it is all very clear:

Fürchte dich nicht and Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied. 

A joyfyl, slightly funny, happy photograph for often joyful music.

[KevinP]

I don't know if this one's been posted already, but I just saw it on the Internets and thought, "What?"

Just goes to show how little care companies put into their cover art. This is a photograph of the fifth violin sonata.

[pjme]

Et voilà! Welcome Bach, in the 21st century.

[Madiel]

We are again straying into "I don't understand it, therefore it's bad" territory.

Which is both a logical fallacy and contrary to the title of the thread. "What?" is not a statement of poor quality.

[Peter Power Pop]

I don't know if this one's been posted already, but I just saw it on the Internets and thought, "What?"

Just goes to show how little care companies put into their cover art. This is a photograph of the fifth violin sonata.

Exactly.

[Peter Power Pop]

We are again straying into "I don't understand it, therefore it's bad" territory.

Which is both a logical fallacy and contrary to the title of the thread. "What?" is not a statement of poor quality.

My "What?" was a short-hand way of saying "What on Earth does that photo have to do with the music?"

[Madiel]

My "What?" was a short-hand way of saying "What on Earth does that photo have to do with the music?"

I know. That's exactly my point. Whether you understand the relationship to the music has nothing to do with whether the cover looks bad.

Plus I've lost count of the number of times that an explanation of the cover has been revealed by someone else later on.

[AnotherSpin]

You can safely bet that without such cover, few people will be interested in guitar pieces by 19th century female composers.

[pjme]

Stunning! So bad it makes me sad.
And it is not funny.

[Brian]

I can't tell if you are speaking ill of the composers and their music, or the performer, or the record label for choosing the photo?

[Pohjolas Daughter]

I can't tell if you are speaking ill of the composers and their music, or the performer, or the record label for choosing the photo?

Um, he changed his original posting quite a bit.

PD

[Brian]

Um, he changed his original posting quite a bit.

PD

 
not sure what to say or think then

(Except that I think the cover is fine.)

[DaveF]

Not a bad cover as such, although fairly unremarkably artistically, but the title - seriously?  I wondered if it was a contemporary quote, but doesn't seem to be.

[DavidW]

Not a bad cover as such, although fairly unremarkably artistically, but the title - seriously?  I wondered if it was a contemporary quote, but doesn't seem to be.

Sounds like a good name for a punk rock band "Queen Mary's Big Belly."

[Brian]

It would certainly make me stop and look in a CD store!

...if CD stores still existed 

[DavidW]

It would certainly make me stop and look in a CD store!

...if CD stores still existed 

It is funny that I see record shops but not cd stores!

[pjme]

I can't tell if you are speaking ill of the composers and their music, or the performer, or the record label for choosing the photo?

Worst looking CD covers = record label + performer + art direction etc.
Mrs. Mathiessen isn't well advised artistically. The photo is just cheap and vulgar.
The music may be -at least - interesting. 

[DaveF]

Sounds like a good name for a punk rock band "Queen Mary's Big Belly."

Lead Belly... Bellowhead... they would be following in a fine tradition.

I'd always imagined that Bel Edifice et Les Pressentiments was a French girl band.

[AnotherSpin]

 
not sure what to say or think then

(Except that I think the cover is fine.)

It would be interesting to get an opinion on the cover from the artist herself.

[pjme]

" Long-awaited news of a Tudor royal birth winged its way to London on 30 April 1555. A male heir had been born: a pledge of dynastic fertility after decades of royal stillbirths, miscarriages and marital misadventures. This was surely a sign of God's pleasure with Mary I (1516-1558) and a vindication of her mission to restore Catholic religion, reverse the doctrinal experiments of the previous two decades, and return England to its historic place in Europe. The bells of London accordingly rang out while Te Deum laudamus, the traditional hymn of thanksgiving, was sung by the city's choirs.

The festivities came to an abrupt end on 1 May. Yesterday's news had been a mere rumour: there was to be no royal birth, not yet at least. 'It turned out otherwise to the pleasure of God', wrote the merchant-tailor Henry Machyn, assuring himself that the birth would happen 'whenever it pleases God'. At thirty-nine years old Queen Mary was superannuated by sixteenth-century obstetric standards, but her pregnancy was generally deemed credible and she had not yet come to term by 1 May. The summer months drew on, but still no news. Long after the original due date, Mary eventually gave up hope, withdrawing from Hampton Court to Oatlands Palace in the first days of August.
There would be no apotheosis in 1555, but it had been tantalizingly imminent. This disc explores the musical traces of an extraordinary year of hopes raised and dashed. The music performed here resonates with the circumstances of the mid-1550s, even if some of the items were composed outside Mary's own reign; some pieces stemmed from the royal ceremonies in which Mary participated as queen; and some of the music sung here can be directly tied to the specific events of 1554-5, including a newly-reconstructed Litany which was performed during Mary's assumed pregnancy. The viewpoint shifts from the streets of London and its suburbs, through the ceremonial grandeur of the royal palaces and their chapels, to the intimacy of the queen's birthing chamber."

Read (much) more at https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_SIGCD464



1875 engraving of Mary.
Not bad, I'd say....