Bad Cover Art: Paul Simon

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

It's been a while since I found a piece of album cover art to pick on, so imagine my delight when I came across the cover for the 1973 Paul Simon album, There Goes Rhymin' Simon. I love the tongue in cheek name - alas, the album's cover, not so much. It's such a weird hodgepodge of a collage...you can almost hear the pre-Photoshop art director saying, "Aw, fuck it...the album needs to go to press next week, so let's just thrown some objects down on the floor and photograph them." Hence, the Mardi Gras mask, strange looking stars and stripes and kodachrome film all looking out of place. Even though the album featured several styles of music, that doesn't mean the cover needed to be discombobulated as well.

4 comments:

  1. That is godawful. Such great music within - what a shame. Sort of like serving a fine wine in a paper cup.

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  2. That cover art was done by Milton Glaser, who is quite famous in the illustration/design world. So it's not just bad cover art, it's bad cover art with a PEDIGREE. Hope this helps.

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  3. Blimey, that really doesn't hang together at all, does it?

    At least it won't give me nightmares, like that John Denver one did. :)

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  4. That's shameful that this is the work of one of the greatest graphic designers of the 20th century.

    Richard - sorry about the John Denver nightmares. :)

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