Is the Internet's "Worst Album Cover Ever" Really That Bad?

Search for “worst album cover ever” and, at least in my searches, you keep seeing the same cast of characters, heavy metal covers especially. It made me wonder: is that the result of lots of people judging independently, or is it a handful of covers that someone found funny once and that keep getting recycled from one roundup article to the next?

When a cover comes with a reputation for being awful, people look at it already prepared to laugh. What happens if you hide the artist and the reputation, and judge by the picture alone? That’s what I built Sleeve Off to find out.

It works simply: two covers with their names hidden, side by side, and you tap the one that catches you. Only after you choose do the album and artist names appear.

Playing it myself, the first thing I noticed was how often I got stuck. “Both look bad.” “Both look great.” The other thing: because the pool is drawn at random, it sometimes includes a photo of a vinyl record itself, or what looks like a drawing in a notebook. Before “cool or not,” a different question comes up: is this even a cover? Still, I can’t help thinking that an image like that is less a sign of the artist’s taste or commercial calculation than a piece of the feeling they were trying to express through the music.

There aren’t enough votes yet to draw any conclusions. I have two hypotheses. Notorious covers might hold up surprisingly well when seen without context. Or, if the composition and colors are simply broken, they’ll lose even without any preconceptions. Either outcome would be interesting. And along the way, this kind of experience might even lead you to some new music.

Once there are results, I plan to add them to this article.