Worst looking CD/LP artwork

[Jo498]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conchita_Wurst

[Madiel]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conchita_Wurst

It is definitely not Conchita.

It's simply Cecilia Bartoli with photo manipulation and/or makeup. I mean for goodness sake, if we can turn Andy Serkis into Gollum we can make Cecilia look like that cover.

[Jo498]

It's not Conchita but looks inspired by his/her look. (Certainly not by any historical likeness of a Castrato.) I also think it is Bartoli with a fake beard (or photoshopped).

[Ken B]

The cover only makes sense if it's her.

It looks like her, look at the nose.

Go to her site and see videos promoting the album showing her with such a beard.

[pjme]

Although it is hardly a "worst" cover, I never liked the 1960 album cover for the Ormandy Carmina Burana.  It looked to me like the artist arbitrarily clipped pictures from various magazines then sloppily glued them to a canvas:

Indeed glued together and it is called "collage".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collage
I do like that cover !

Couldn't find much about the artist - Philip Featheringill

"CBS Masterworks was making the most intelligent jackets in classical music"

Agreed. And on that note does anyone have any information other than what I have collected about their superlative collage artist Philip Featheringill? I've always enjoyed his work. Apparently he was a mover and shaker in jazz before he settled on doing covers for Columbia Masterworks."
source: http://shellackophile.blogspot.com/2014/06/columbia-lp-covers-1954-57-study-in.html

[Jo498]

The cover only makes sense if it's her.

It looks like her, look at the nose.

Go to her site and see videos promoting the album showing her with such a beard.

It still doesn't make sense because it makes Bartoli look like Conchita Wurst, not like anything close to Farinelli.

[Biffo]

Indeed glued together and it is called "collage".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collage
I do like that cover !

Couldn't find much about the artist - Philip Featheringill

"CBS Masterworks was making the most intelligent jackets in classical music"

Agreed. And on that note does anyone have any information other than what I have collected about their superlative collage artist Philip Featheringill? I've always enjoyed his work. Apparently he was a mover and shaker in jazz before he settled on doing covers for Columbia Masterworks."
source: http://shellackophile.blogspot.com/2014/06/columbia-lp-covers-1954-57-study-in.html

I don't know who the quote is from but I beg to differ. I have no examples of Philip Feathergill but I do have other Masterworks covers.

The Szell 'Original Jackets' Mozart box only has one disc - Mozart Piano Quartets' - that is definitely a Masterworks issue and it would qualify in the 'Work Artwork' category. Pity I can't reproduce it here.

The Ormandy OJ box has four examples, three are completely unremarkable though one has a nice photo of Ormandy and Shostakovich. The album of Tchaikovsky 5 has a gruesome cover. The small print says it is 'Concert at the Academy of Music - Eugene Ormandy and The Philadelphia Orchestra'. Oil painting by Martin Jackson. Commissioned by Columbia Records in honor of the 60th Anniversary of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Shame the artist decided to use only one colour - brown.

Bernstein's NYPO Mahler cycle has more bad art. Symphonies No 1 - 5 have truly hideous covers - photo collages by various artists. The rest of the covers are not original and  fairly unremarkable photos of Bernstein apart from No 8 which is an internal view of the Royal Albert Hall and the forces involved in the concert performance that preceded the recording.

The original LP issue of No 7 had a fine photo portrait of LB.

[Madiel]

It still doesn't make sense because it makes Bartoli look like Conchita Wurst, not like anything close to Farinelli.

I think (or at least I thought until this conversation showed this is far from clear to everyone) we can safely conclude that the art department was merely trying to convey the concept of crossing gender boundaries rather than trying for the kind of literal approach you're referring to.

For one thing, most people wouldn't have the faintest idea what Farinelli looked like (I had to Google whether there are portraits), so making Bartoli look "close to Farinelli" is not going to be a successful marketing strategy. Bartoli still needs to look sufficiently like Bartoli, because Bartoli is a star now and Farinelli is a name people are aware of from centuries ago.

For another, Bartoli is female moving towards male. This does not apply to either Farinelli or Conchita Wurst.

[Ken B]

I think (or at least I thought until this conversation showed this is far from clear to everyone) we can safely conclude that the art department was merely trying to convey the concept of crossing gender boundaries rather than trying for the kind of literal approach you're referring to.

For one thing, most people wouldn't have the faintest idea what Farinelli looked like (I had to Google whether there are portraits), so making Bartoli look "close to Farinelli" is not going to be a successful marketing strategy. Bartoli still needs to look sufficiently like Bartoli, because Bartoli is a star now and Farinelli is a name people are aware of from centuries ago.

For another, Bartoli is female moving towards male. This does not apply to either Farinelli or Conchita Wurst.

Indeed. Some of the comments here are getting very Magritte: céci n'est pas une Bartoli.

[Jo498]

There was a reasonable successful movie about Farinelli some time ago and the  album has the title Farinelli, so I certainly would not have found it absurd for Bartoli to pose in a powdered whig and 18th century garb.
The only common thing between a neutered male and a bearded female is that they are "gendernonconformist", in other ways they are opposites. In any case, anyone who has had the misfortune to have seen Conchita Wurst in action (and it was somewhat difficult to avoid this on German TV a few years ago) cannot help being reminded of her by that cover.
I am not buying it although admittedly I got somewhat disenchanted with Bartoli's "concept albums" already some time ago after having dutifully bought at least three of them (Vivaldi, Gluck and Steffani).

[geralmar]

Bernstein's NYPO Mahler cycle has more bad art. Symphonies No 1 - 5 have truly hideous covers - photo collages by various artists. The rest of the covers are not original and  fairly unremarkable photos of Bernstein apart from No 8 which is an internal view of the Royal Albert Hall and the forces involved in the concert performance that preceded the recording.

The original LP issue of No 7 had a fine photo portrait of LB.

The jacket cover for the 6th symphony, posted earlier in the thread, seemed to feature a decapitated garden gnome.

[Madiel]

Indeed. Some of the comments here are getting very Magritte: céci n'est pas une Bartoli.

I came so very close to writing that exact French sentence.

[Florestan]

In any case, anyone who has had the misfortune to have seen Conchita Wurst in action (and it was somewhat difficult to avoid this on German TV a few years ago) cannot help being reminded of her by that cover.

Indeed.

The cover doesn't fit either Bartoli or Farinelli (we might never know what he looked like, but for reasons obvious enough we know for sure he didn't look like that). As far as I am concerned, this is indeed THE worst CD artwork I've ever seen. Bad taste on stilts.

[Jo498]

I don't think we need to be more suspicious about contemporary paintings of Farinelli than of those of Handel or Telemann.

[Madiel]

I don't think we need to be more suspicious about contemporary paintings of Farinelli than of those of Handel or Telemann.

We can be suspicious of him, though. Would you buy a used aria from this man?

[j winter]

quote author=geralmar link=topic=239.msg1233577#msg1233577 date=1568867171]
...Columbia's line of hideous "newspaper" themed bargain records:



I had (and still have) a number of these L.P.s and it was very difficult to distinguish one record from another without studying the jacket cover.  Very annoying when attempting to quickly locate a particular album in the series.

Actually, I have a sentimental attachment to those... they were the editions I first encountered and acquired as a kid, so I "imprinted" on many of those recordings.  I collected them, and thought it was neat to build a "set" with matching covers -- I still like to use those covers when I rip these to mp3... the big newsprint letters show up nicely on my phone screen, and it's just a nice bit of nostalgia for me....

Still, I totally get why you dislike them, they aren't the most aesthetically interesting things in the world... I just encountered them at the right time, I guess....

[Alek Hidell]

I always kind of liked those CBS Masterworks covers, too. The big bold headline fonts made you (well, me) want to listen to the music because the cover made it seem so dramatic and important.

[Alek Hidell]

Don't recall if this one has been mentioned or not, but here's one I love to hate:



Apparently the whole series, as it was released one disc at a time, featured photos like this. It looks like someone took a photo of Harnoncourt, made a copy of it, then made a copy of the copy, spilled water on it, and then made another copy. Keeps the budget down, I guess.

[Peter Power Pop]

Don't recall if this one has been mentioned or not, but here's one I love to hate:



Apparently the whole series, as it was released one disc at a time, featured photos like this. It looks like someone took a photo of Harnoncourt, made a copy of it, then made a copy of the copy, spilled water on it, and then made another copy. Keeps the budget down, I guess.

I think I know the series you mean.

I went looking for those album covers by simply searching for "Harnoncourt". This, believe it or not, was the first response:

[André]

 

Amazing !