You can’t always judge something by its cover, but let’s be honest, a good record deserves one. Album covers don’t make music better, but they can sure make it easier to connect with. Some artists hit the mark musically but totally miss it visually.
Maybe the artwork was rushed, or maybe the band went with an idea that didn’t land.
Either way, these five records are solid from start to finish; they just deserved a cover that made a better first impression.
5 classic records that deserved better album covers
1. Led Zeppelin - Presence
Of all the Zeppelin covers, Presence is the weakest by far. It features a photo of a family seated around a black object (called "The Object"), boxed around a white frame, and nothing else. This differs greatly from the heavy designing behind their previous albums, instead relying on minimalism.
Simple covers aren't inherently bad, but one can't help but notice that it follows the exact styling of Pink Floyd's legendary Wish You Were Here, which only came out half a year earlier. This makes the choice feel more like a copy than an artistic statement to match the heavy record.
Furthermore, the idea was an egotistical dive, as the band supposedly was "so powerful, they didn't need to be there." Presence was ironically the band's worst-selling album, making their move that much more off the mark. A more direct or visceral image would’ve done it justice.
2. The Replacements - Tim
This record is a cornerstone of '80s alt-rock: scrappy, emotional, and full of hooks. But the cover is a haphazard construction of faces, silhouettes, and what looks like a dimly lit hallway of a dentist’s office. It’s vague, dark, and doesn’t say anything about the band or the songs.
Specializing in drunken honesty and teenage confusion, the group deserved something with more personality and bite. Luckily, the 2023 remaster gave the album a much cleaner sound and used a simple photo of the band for cover art, ditching the stark coloring of the past.
3. Beck - Mellow Gold
Beck's breakthrough was bizarre in the best way as a collage of folk, noise, and hip-hop that somehow worked. "Loser" made him famous, but the rest of the album is even stranger and smarter. The cover, though, looks like a Five Nights at Freddy's animatronic prototype.
Looming over a desert red haze, the scrap-metal sculpture doesn’t match the cleverness or the personality of the record at all. For an album that built a whole world out of junk culture, the art feels like it missed the joke.
4. Self - Ornament & Crime
This album got two chances at a cover, but somehow failed both times to achieve its potential. The band put out a Self-branded red fingerprint online in May 2003 to tease the album, which got turned into a fan cover by Rafe Heltsley that was made official once everyone else started using it.
Self's creativity is nowhere to be found in this cover, though, falling flat as a clunky array of fonts and low-resolution website extractions. Hopes were high when, long after the LimeWire leak, Ornament & Crime was announced to be released with a new cover. But they once again gave the job to someone else.
Andy Suriano of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fame worked with the band leader for a soundtrack, prompting them to pick up some of his old drawings from 2008 and slap text on them before calling it a day. The art's not bad this time, at least, but it's still a ways from matching the album's soundscape.
5. Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan
One of their most accessible albums, Swing Lo Magellan traded some of the heady, art-school complexity for warmth and space. It’s full of strange but lovely melodies and moments of real emotional clarity. The cover is a simple photo of three people facing each other amidst the trees.
This type of selfie-esque artwork is extremely common nowadays, used by Sabrina Carpenter, Gracie Abrams, and a few others that you can find at Target. However, Dirty Projectors demonstrated that this type of artistry had not yet been mastered in 2012.
With awkward cropping and a black gradient consuming half of the image, the cover on its own simply isn't that great. Within the album's context, it’s got zero of the elegance or intricacy that’s in the music. For a band so visually and conceptually rich, this one just feels tossed off.
Sometimes a great record speaks for itself. But when the cover feels like an afterthought, it can dull that first impression. All five of these records are worth hearing, even if you might not guess it at first glance.