So, there’s this page on X as well as Facebook that’s all about sharing, let’s just say, very questionable album art. It doesn’t have to be bad, it doesn’t have to be weird, heck, it even doesn’t have to be flat out are you seeing this [shirt]? But it can. And often is at least one of that, but bad is just a matter of taste.

The page has been around for nearly 10 years now and amassed nearly 30,000 followers since its launch in December of 2013. However, two years ago, it announced that the page had run its course and that it was fun while it lasted. There was a seemingly brief return as per nostalgia, sharing some of the older stuff and considering a resurrection of the page, but it's been radio silence since then.

As you’ve probably understood by now, the page shares old album cover art that asks more questions than it answers. These are typically albums from older generations of music, back when deliberate posing while mom snaps a picture in your living room, your backyard or with a view of the creek outside your house was considered the bees knees. And while the '60s-'80s aesthetic (maybe even '90s) has aged well for the most part, there’s this other entire contingent of wow album art that we just can’t help but appreciate, but not for the usual reasons as it aged as well as the economy.

So, what makes an album cover bad? Let’s flip this around and start from what makes it good.

An article on Creative Review explains that the music on the album as well as what the album looks like physically have a symbiotic and vital relationship. While a record becomes famous because of the music on it, there can’t be an album without a cover. And it doesn’t really have to be anything—it just has to be there. It’s the first contact people have when looking up songs.

And while there is a claim that cover art can elevate the brand of the musician, it can go the other way too—the music can elevate the album artist. By proxy, folks speculate that it can go the other way—if one is bad, the other can become tainted by it.

Folks on a “music nerds” subreddit—one for a music critic named Fantano—have raised this question. The general consensus is the above statement, but bad albums can have good art. However, because of the little attention bad albums get, the artwork gets forgotten just as fast. And good albums, even if their art is bad, tend to still make it memorable.

One Redditor in the same thread pointed out that Radiohead’s The Benders album is great, but the album cover art is oof. They’ve seen bad albums with better cover art than that.

Others, however, were quick to joke about it and it’s a question of if it’s actually that bad or just a little bit. One thing’s for sure—The Benders does have a very meme-like aesthetic.

The conclusion most reach when it comes to what makes album art bad is the sheer fact of it being not fit for what the album is. It can be too weird, cringe or cursed, plain or uninspired, poorly photographed or crafted, inappropriate for what the album stands for (thematically or content-wise) or, if it doesn’t fit any other criteria, it’s all a matter of taste. And that includes poor taste, but that already alludes to the above.

And that’s pretty much what Bad Record Covers is all about. You've got inappropriate wording, Christian cringe, sponsored albums, trying to be relatable, being too self-aware, just being too much in general, and you don’t even know how funny this one really is. A lot of it is religious, family, or a product of its time. The rest is something that we all wish we could have listened to in order to bring context as to why we’re laughing.

Another side of what might make album art bad (or good, depending on how you look at it) is the controversy that it spurs. And there are a lot of examples in history.

These can include album covers that display explicit nudity and sexuality, takes a taboo spin on religion, glorifies violence or flat out infringes on copyright. Other themes in album cover art that can get flak are politics, tobacco, cultural offense, plagiarism and indecency.

Alice Cooper’s Love It to Death (1971) is one that stirred quite a bit of controversy as the original art featured Cooper himself sticking a finger out of his zipper, making it look like a part of him is exposed, but later versions airbrushed it out.

Slayer’s Christ Illusion (2006) takes a jab at religion, specifically Christianity by portraying Jesus Christ as a zombie all the while body parts are scattered around the figure.

There are also more tame cases, like Richard Pryor’s self-titled album from 1968 which featured Pryor himself in the style of a National Geographic cover. He later got 2 letters about it—one from NG suing him for defamation and the other from the Grammy awards nominating the album for best cover.