Don't judge a record by its cover - some great music has been smuggled within awful designs. Here are the 12 ugliest offenders
Charli XCX's Mercury-nominated album Brat is as well known for its cover art as it is for its boldly irreverent music. A slime green square with the album title spelt out in blurry lowercase font, the sleeve has been co-opted by US presidential hopeful Kamala Harris, has defined a cultural movement ("Brat summer" - an empowered, sloppy, happy, hedonistic way of living), and has become as inextricably linked to the Cambridge-born singer as the colour pink is to Barbie.
Despite looking as though it was cobbled together with no regard for aesthetics, the sleeve of Brat actually took five months to finalise. It was designed by a high-end New York design studio called Special Offer, Inc. who went through 500 colours in their search for a suitably brash shade. Some observers are touting Brat as a design classic. Its look will be repeated this week when Charli XCX releases her highly-anticipated remix album, Brat and It's Completely Different but Also Still Brat.
Brat, then, is a hugely successful album with a sleeve that is deliberately made to look terrible. It's terrible with a very knowing wink.
But what about hugely successful albums whose sleeves are just plain bad? Here, we pick a dozen classic albums that are let down by disappointing sleeves, with no winks in sight.
The Who's fifth studio album is an absolute belter, featuring Baba O'Riley, Won't Get Fooled Again and Behind Blue Eyes. Who's Next was originally conceived by Pete Townshend as Lifehouse, a rock opera follow-up to 1969's Tommy. But the ambitious project was shelved and it became a traditional album instead. Less traditional was its cover depicting all four members of the band urinating on a concrete obelisk in a slag heap somewhere between Sheffield and Leicester. Bleak. The Beatles had only broken up the year before, but the era of peace and love was well and truly over.
