This Week’s Ugly Covers – A Toilet Trifecta!
One thing a record cover should never show is… A TOILET! Sounds obvious, yes? Well, think again...
What you have below are three (count ‘em, three) examples—from three different decades, nonetheless!—of toilet bowl misuse by unthinking (or insensitive? or tasteless?) record cover designers.
The first one caused a bit of a stir way back in 1966, to the point where it went through various redesigns. An otherwise classic & great record by the
Mamas and the Papas, titled “
If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears”, was initially issued with this cover:
First things first: how do you get from THAT title (“If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears”) to THAT cover?!? What’s the connection? Why would anyone in their right mind think that showing the artists in a bathtub, NEXT TO A TOILET, would make us rush to buy this LP? “Makes no sense at all”, as Hüsker Dü used to sing… Someone eventually came to their senses and made changes to the later album pressings:
But we’re still left wondering: what’s the connection, anyway? The picture just doesn’t make any sense.
Fast Forward to the late 1970s, as we’re knee deep in the disco craze. By now you’d think that record execs and album designers would have gotten the message: NO TOILETS ON RECORD COVERS!
Nope, nothing doing. Some genius came up with this picturesque porcelain product placement platter. This was for a record by the otherwise forgettable disco outfit named “Satin”:
The sexy legs thing? OK, not a problem; this is a DISCO record after all, so it’s a given that something provocative needs to appear somewhere on the cover.
But the rest of the cover is pure filth… "in efry sense of ze vord", as Freud would say. Again, I have no use for a toilet on a cover; plus, the picture obviously shows the interior of a public toilet room, with dirty floor & all. Not sexy. Another flushable cover.
But wait… we’re not finished yet with the toilet thing, no sir! Fast forward again, this time to the mid-80s. Millie Jackson, one of our favorite R&B ladies, does us the disservice of producing this classic ugly cover:
Need I say more? OK, so Ms. Jackson had a naughty/nasty streak and used lots of raw language in her songs. But did it have to come to THIS? Showing Millie in the act of producing raw sewage?!?
No wonder this cover regularly appears on Worst Album Cover lists all over the world…
So, bottom line: toilets on record covers? Just say no… and flush before you leave.
