There's a running joke on Instagram right now involving the song One Last Breath by Creed so I looked up the album it's on and remembered that they had the worst cover art ever
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I got it for Christmas that year. I was 11 years old. First time I can remember being profoundly disappointed in a new music release. We gave Creed WAY too many second chances after the admittedly banging ‘My Own Prison.’
I will continue to stand with their debut album. Like 7 or 8 terrific songs there. I choose to believe they never made any other music sometimes and that's comforting.
In fairness, the follow-up (the name escapes me at the moment) had a couple of decent songs, too. But ‘Weathered’ was just absolutely disgustingly bad all the way through. But yeah, ‘My Own Prison’ is honestly one of the better rock albums of the era, not that that’s saying very much.
Yup, have it too. Sure I guess if you want to be generous. (I don't.) That's the one that starts with "Are You Ready" and "What If" and just never is that good again after the first two tracks. I used to put the CD in my car and stop it after that.
I never saw the CDs in the wild and now it’s on streaming but I don’t want to actually hear it—I want to just keep the wonder of what it could sound like
I hadn't bothered looking it up until now, but it turns out this is a mock-up someone sent over after adding the horrible stock figures as a possible fix for otherwise "empty" art from a professional. They just...used it.
The story goes that this was the crude mockup the artist sent for layout approval, but Steve Harris said “I love it, we’re using it as-is” and the poor guy never got a chance to finish rendering the details
IIRC, story goes that was Derek Riggs rough Poser composition for approval, so he could then paint it. And Maiden or their management just went 'that's fine, job's done', much to Riggs' dismay.
The cover would have probably been fine if they just used the painting behind the tree, which is mostly blocked out by the terrible faces tree. But the font and italics for the album title are heinous.
There are a lot of things about ‘Pablo’ that are very deliberately trolling, to be fair. “Lift Yourself” was the first song Kanye released after this album, too. So I would hesitate to include that example here, especially since all of his album art up to this point was great-to-immaculate.
I wouldn't call it trolling, but it's by a Belgian post-modernist artist, so yeah, "performative irony", sure.
Still awful. The fact it was intentionally made that way doesn't change it. And coupled with West's psychotic breakdown later that year, I'm not sure if HE viewed it that way at the time.
The lumberjacks are also a bit dodgy in this fictional world since the dude in that back is standing in front of a tree that's been chopped to fall right where he is. Either that, or that tree has a mouth. I'm not sure which is preferable.
what the fuck, i can find no additional information on the entire internet more than this and 20 year old posts on creed fan forums talking about it. i need to play the creed myst game
This sold like 4M copies in a month! We've got to hold examples like this in our back pockets to counter the folks who want to argue that they have no choice but to use genAI for their album covers
It would’ve been better looking if they’d done some coloring on the photoshopped faces. The iris and pupils of their eyes shouldn’t be visible in a wood carving
I genuinely love how awful rock/nü-metal/rap-rock album art was back then. Like, it's so bad, but it's ridiculously charming, probably because it reminds me of a simpler, happier time. I just love how terrible it is. Also this album sucks ass. 😆
I screaming with laughter in school as we George Carlin'd our way through a rant like "THAT'S NOT WEATHERING THAT IS CHISELING AND YOU DON'T EVEN DO THAT TO TREES, YOU CARVE TREES, SO EVEN THAT'S NOT WEATHERING, HAVE YOU READ A BOOK THAT ISN'T THE CLIFF NOTES BIBLE YOU FAKE VOICED FUCK"
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You're the hero we need in this incredibly specific situation.
"C.R.A.P. principles? Who needs em? Put everything center frame, and layer it."
"But sir, that'll look like shi-"
"I said LAYER it!"
Operative word being "tried".
I was 100% sure people were just joking about a fake cover
It's the entire era, right?
(Also I hate this album art but imo one of the best names for an album like ever)
There's also that one by the guy from Wu-Tang Clan.
Still awful. The fact it was intentionally made that way doesn't change it. And coupled with West's psychotic breakdown later that year, I'm not sure if HE viewed it that way at the time.
“Yeah boss, real fuckin sexy, just like you asked for.“
hath been
TREED