Top 5 Worst Covers

tomswift2002

Well-Known Member
So this is the opposite of the Best Covers. What albums covers would you say are the Top 5 worst?

5. Offering (just too dark)
4. Christmas Collection (aside from the snowflakes, what’s Christmasey about it?)
3. The Singles 1969-1973/1974-1978 (I would’ve preferred the inside photo on the cover.)
2. Reflections (why do Karen and Richard look so down?)
1. Horizon (Karen & Richard look bored and what’s with the over exposure? And no title on the front?
 
Horizon (Karen & Richard look bored and what’s with the over exposure? And no title on the front?

The copy I’ve got has the logo on the front as a sticker.

Two of your choices are actually my favourite covers. The more times goes by, the more I love the Offering cover because it reminds me of the magic I felt when I heard the album for the very first time. Even the noise of the audience chatter at the beginning of Your Wonderful Parade gives me chills and that same feeling of excitement I felt back then. Same goes for the whole album A Song For You. The opening strings of Aurora are another example. None of the albums after Horizon ever gave me that feeling.
 
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I think Horizon is their best cover. It shows their melancholy side, which goes against the overly-saccharine image they'd had up to that point. The photo shows them looking their best as well (and Karen's voice in that album is at her very best).
 
5. Offering
4. The Singles
3. Close To You
2. Carpenters
1. A Song For You

It's not that I hate them, it's just that they lack any sort of creativity. Fortunately, album covers in most of these cases does not affect sales!
 
"Song For You" and "Offering" are the only two that makes me cringe and Richard was correct in saying that SFY looks like a damn valentine! I agree with Carpe, I actually don't mind "Close To You" and it marks time in their early history similar to the first album cover by "America" a year later. My only regret was that their now famous "Carpenters" logo had not yet been designed, never cared for the lettering style or font that actually ended on the cover. Oh, I also never embraced the brown/gold color scheme on the Singles 69-73 cover, it's a little too dark and "Rainy Days and Mondays" looking for my taste and could have used more contrast to make it pop in the record stores.
 
The colouring / shading of Karen on the cover of her solo album makes her look not very pleasing to look at - somehow takes the naturalness out of the look - probably out of the expression in her eyes - and distorts her mouth. I don’t think it was a very nice photo in the first place.

Another photo that I don’t like is the ‘Lovelines’ cover photo which, for some reason, is probably the photo used the most to represent Carpenters. It’s on the cover of ‘With the Philharmonic Orchestra’, ‘Only Yesterday’, ‘Their Greatest Hits’, ‘Lovelines’, etc. To me, Karen looks about 20 years older than she was in this photo session. She looks like she’s got a bad wig on, too. There are countless photos they could have chosen instead, where she looks really nice.

I don’t particularly like ‘Voice of the Heart’ because I believe Karen looks very unwell, and thin. I always thought her eyes looked glazed as well, and when I read that Itchi Ramone had slipped a dose of something in her drink before the session, the glazed look made sense.

The way that Karen has her eyes closed and her head resting on ‘As Time Goes By’ reminds me of her death, so I don’t like that one much. She looks pale and thin, although she looks great in other photos from that session.

I didn’t ever like the cover of ‘A Song for You’ because, when I bought it when I was about 13, it seemed like a waste of an opportunity to have a nice photo on the cover.
 
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