I only like Dirty Mind, Controversy, 20ten, Parade, Prince, Come and SOTT.

All simple and or well thought out.

The rest look sloppy or overdone.

1999 looks really bad to me i know Prince handmade that cover but it was just eww.

(maybe its because i like clean ,straight and symmetric art)

The Purple Rain cover looks so off to me. That nursing home wall paper on the sides just messes up whole album cover.

Lovesexy was terrible. I see what he was trying to do but naw homie it looks cheap almost ghetto. A naked asshole sitting on a flower... imagine his balls sliding on the flower petals ...

The cover doesnt really matter to me much. just as long as the mucis good.

[Edited 6/22/11 20:20pm]

I'm liking the 20ten deluxe cd cover.

formallypickles said:

imagine his balls sliding on the flower petals ...

The cover doesnt really matter to me much. just as long as the mucis good.

[Edited 6/22/11 20:20pm]

The mucus?

WOW! When it comes to favorites/least favorites, our opinions of Prince's album art varies as much as our opinions of his music...

My favorite 3:

1. 1999 - I love this cover, my favorite from the moment I saw it and it hasn't been beat in 29 years

2. Around The World In A Day

3. The Rainbow Children

others I like a lot:

Dirty Mind, Controversy, Purple Rain, Sign 'O' The Times, Black Album, , Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic (guess I'm the only one ), One Nite Alone Live, 3121, LotusFlower, 20Ten

Least favorite 3:

1. Lovesexy

2. Prince

3. Graffiti Bridge

others i dislike alot:

Batman, Diamonds And Pearls (Hologram), Emancipation, Crystal Ball, One Nite Alone Piano & Voice, Musicology

on a similar topic, 12" covers I love (US unless otherwise noted):

Let's Work, Let's Pretend We're Married, When Doves Cry, Mountains, Sign 'O' The Times, Gett Off, The Purple Medley, The Beautiful Experience, Little Red Corvette (UK, both of 'em), When Doves Cry (UK), Anotherloverholenyohead (UK), Fury, Black Sweat

also love:

first 3 Time album covers, both Madhouse album covers, Goldnigga & Exodus

[Edited 6/30/11 20:43pm]

ufoclub said:

formallypickles said:

imagine his balls sliding on the flower petals ...

The cover doesnt really matter to me much. just as long as the mucis good.

[Edited 6/22/11 20:20pm]

The mucus?

The music ...lol sorry

I think COME had a good design. It's one of those rare occasions, where the whole package worked. I've only got the vinyl LP, so I'm only really judging it on that. The black vinyl, the inner, everything, did what I think record sleeves should do: expand and broaden the music. Excellent cover.

Maybe it's because I'm an artist myself, but I'm also very fond of Around the World and its design. The paintings are made in the style of "awkward paintings", and I quite like the naivity of it. Again, I think it heightens the music - expanding the playfullnes of the music. I do not, how ever think the printed lyrics work in this context. They are just plain ugly and work against the cover, and the rainbow-thing.. erhm, no.

Parade is nearly perfect. The sleeve sums up everything I think Prince was at that moment - infinitely cool, both masculine and feminine and more than happy to tease. He's like a proto-lesbian in the 1990s commercials (K.D. Lang?) and the cover seems to tab into the style Herb Ritz and Calvin Klein and the whole 90's advertising aestheticism (and which Warners, true to fashion at the time, showcased with the bulky Greatest Hits package) years before it became comme il faut. Everything about that cover just works.

Lovesexy works as well, but not well in context of the music, I think. One might say that the nude dude on the cover is in bad taste, but I think aesthetically it works well. The skin tone with the white background; the naked "realness" of the person against the unbearably fake flowers. The font of the text (which is really cool I think) and the general colour scheme.

It doesn't work with the music though. Everything about the cover seems to scream: Irony! The apparent sincerity and "nakedness" of the man seems to have us reading: Unfiltered, honest, undressed and untampered, a project "from the heart"; while the setting is fake, fake, fake. The lyrics seems bare-all in a way, and I do not get irony from any of the songs .. so in that sense, good cover, but wrong record for it.

The Black Album get a quick mention. It's not "great", but the choice of the orangy colour for the text (could have been grey, white, blue, anything) is neat and works well. It turns my personal associations towards anger, rage and uncontrolled emotional states, while a white font against the black might have me think: No cover, no nothing, it's merely a practically sleeve devoit of creative information.

Both Lotusflow3r and 20ten are awfull. Painfully awfull. The faux 70's hippie, groovy, Earth Wind and Fire, Jimi Hendrix-style does not work, especially not when it looks so fucking Photoshopped and digital. The style of 20ten can be discussed in matters of taste and I'm personally thinking "My Little Pony" rather than "Rock God like Hendrix", but formally, the composition doesn't work particularly well. The backside of the cover is prettier with its minimal fuss and some simple, organic lines.

Worst is Emancipation though. It was not in style in the 90s, it is not in style now, and it will never be, so one can't even say that it's just a time specific piece of cover, that as tastes changed aged poorly. It's always been a poor cover. And EVERYTHING about it is ugly. The cheap, pixilated and poorly printed inlay; they choice of colours, everything. UGH.

Crystal Ball seemed to be something the cover of Emancipation pooped and couldn't flush fast enough.

1999, around the world in a day, parade, sign o the times, lovesexy,

diamonds and pearls (blue cover), the hits/bsides, come, TRC, 3121

and to a lesser extent, and NEWS (especially the inside) were

all good covers.

most disappointing was The Gold Experience. talk about horrible

just a gold foil inlay would have been better than that suckerpunch

of incredibly tacky font and windows paint cut n paste lettering in

combination with photo's that looked like cutting room floor litter.

it just hurts the eyes in it's uneven, gaudy clutter of wrongness.

even NPS, although being horrific, has something of a focus, be it

a designer's nightmare.

but gold is like, well, i don't know what it's like. altough, lately i'm

starting to think that it probably resembles what prince's mind is

like.

IstenSzek said:

most disappointing was The Gold Experience. talk about horrible

Funny.

I just have NO thoughts on that cover. I have NO opinion on it. I truly don't care about its cover.

Maybe that really reveals a lot.

I love being able to feel the whole concept. For that, the best covers are:

1999

SOTT

ATWIAD

Parade

Rave

The Rainbow Children

Worst are

Controversy,

Gold,

The Vault

and nearly everything post WB minus the two I mentioned above.

I do hold a torch for the Chaos and Disorder sleeve. Its sao not Prince I love it.

Musicology is a disgrace. I was in the cd shop yesterday and even though i don't need to buy them anymore, I always peruse the 'P' section to see what, if any Prince they'll have. I flicked past 1999 (which to be honest, i quite like; i used a corner of background to make a background for an artwork of mine once, just the purple with white dots)...but anyway...

I picked up Musicology and it was sad, I was embarassed to think that somebody might look over my shoulder and think i was going to buy something that looked like that!

It's sad when you can get bootleg, free releases with better art than something you pay for and expect COMPLETE quality with...

p.s i kind of love the most beautiful girl in the world single art.

I think a few interesting qualities of the artwork are lost in this CD/download generation.

A few examples:

• Open the two ATWIAD LP panels and you will see the mountains are the side profile of a woman laying down

• The cellophane label of ATWIAD had yet another piece of artwork - a boy holding onto a balloon with the album title

• Each single from ATWIAD used a cropped portion of the main album mural, which I thought was really cool

• Open the Parade LP panels and you see Prince connected at the waist to the alternate image on the other side.

• The inside of the Parade LP is a very slick black & white photo montage of The Revolution

• On the cover of The Rainbow Children, you can see Prince on the spine of the artwork holding the painting. In some cropped versions, you only see his hand, but on the actual artwork he's there.

best

Lovesexy

Parade

Sign O The Times

Purple Rain

Diamonds & Pearls (the Blue and the holographic, both)

Love Symbol / 1992

Controversy

1999

worst

Musicology

3121

The Rainbow Children

Rave Un2 The Joy Fantasic

Planet Earth

The Gold Experience

Around The World In A Day

The Vault... OF4S

lovecomequick said:

p.s i kind of love the most beautiful girl in the world single art.

Love the Intercactive CD-Rom cover that came out about the same time, too!!

TheDigitalGardener said:

Best cover art is The Black Album.

Some are so unfortunate that I am just indifferent to them anymore, but the worst of the worst has to be:

Musicology

20TEN

MPLSound

Chocolate Invasion

Slaughterhouse

One Nite Alone

It Ain't Over!

Come

Newpower Soul

Rave

After all this it begs the question, "How involved has Prince been with the album art?" I'm guessing post-Warner he's been much more so...

Spinlight said:

Some are so unfortunate that I am just indifferent to them anymore, but the worst of the worst has to be:

Musicology

20TEN

MPLSound

Chocolate Invasion

Slaughterhouse

One Nite Alone

It Ain't Over!

Come

Newpower Soul

Rave

I actually quite like The Slaughterhouse. It's so awkward and ugly that it's almost cool.

NouveauDance said:

They've basically been terrible for years. TRC was probably the last great one.

Most of his videos have been terrible too. It appears to me that Prince doesn't like to spend a lot of money when it comes to promoting himself and his music, or he just has real poor taste when it comes to promoting his image. Thank god for the music.

Best

Sign 'o' The Times

Parade

3121

Controversy

The Rainbow Children

His 80's and 90's albums are pretty decent (the best being Come) when it comes to artwork.

Since the 2000's:

The worst:

Planet Earth-He looks like a possessed Keebler Elf on the cover

Musicology-Wack

The best:

LotusFLower

Rainbow Children

I think this sums it up enough:

[img:$uid]http://i1227.photobucket.com/albums/ee423/aardvark16/Messedupcovers.jpg[/img:$uid]

Why does everyone seem to hate this one so much. I always thought it was fairly nice..

[Edited 7/3/11 9:13am]

And some dolt at Warner Bros is probably who decided on the album art for the first couple of albums, if not the first four. Prince had to go along with it whether he liked it or not.

1999 on is probably when he had more input and the 1999 album cover is classic.

FunkiestOne said:

Why does everyone seem to hate this one so much. I always thought it was fairly nice..

[Edited 7/3/11 9:13am]

To me it's first and foremost because it looks so plastic. It looks like one of those covers you'd see on bootlegs when photoshop was fairly new. It's very loudly distastfully over the top, like a freeze frame from a very busy tv commercial aimed at kids for either plush teddy bears with voice boxes in their stomachs or candy so sweet it'll give you diabetes type 2.

Then I'd argue there's a matter of the technical composition, especially considering the colour scheme. Had my art professor seen me do this, he'd have asked me if I'd payed attention in class at all.

The colour is a matter of taste, like all of the above also of course, and I speculate he choose it because it'd give associations to a "dawn", but for me it doesn't work. It's ugly, and not just because trends have moved on - it was out of style even back then.

So, I understand why people dislike it.

[/end pompous]

[Edited 7/3/11 9:29am]

FunkiestOne said:

And some dolt at Warner Bros is probably who decided on the album art for the first couple of albums, if not the first four. Prince had to go along with it whether he liked it or not.

1999 on is probably when he had more input and the 1999 album cover is classic.

mmm, i could see that for the first two albums, but i'd guess that starting with dirty mind prince had a significant role in choosing the art work since at that point he started to really craft his own image.

i do agree with folks that prince has had some rough album covers. it's funny because the sign o the times cover is so good, and that was the first prince album that i owned, i kind of associate prince with good covers.

i'm surprised by all the hate for musicology, unless it's for the free cover at the concerts. that cover is bad. but the one sold in the store was solid, imo. and the photos inside are some of the best liner notes photos of his career.

TheDigitalGardener said:

Best cover art is The Black Album.

Artistically, it really is cool though.

Cravens said:

FunkiestOne said:

Why does everyone seem to hate this one so much. I always thought it was fairly nice..

[Edited 7/3/11 9:13am]

To me it's first and foremost because it looks so plastic. It looks like one of those covers you'd see on bootlegs when photoshop was fairly new. It's very loudly distastfully over the top, like a freeze frame from a very busy tv commercial aimed at kids for either plush teddy bears with voice boxes in their stomachs or candy so sweet it'll give you diabetes type 2.

Then I'd argue there's a matter of the technical composition, especially considering the colour scheme. Had my art professor seen me do this, he'd have asked me if I'd payed attention in class at all.

The colour is a matter of taste, like all of the above also of course, and I speculate he choose it because it'd give associations to a "dawn", but for me it doesn't work. It's ugly, and not just because trends have moved on - it was out of style even back then.

So, I understand why people dislike it.

[/end pompous]

[Edited 7/3/11 9:29am]

lovesexy is my favourite cover by a country mile, it's prince laid bare, staring adoringly to the heavens, his hand on his heart. it totally catches the spirit of the music. every album cover since has been shite imho.

Around The World In A Day has always disturbed me. Even now, I'm looking at it and still want to know why the hell Prince has blond hair, and if that's not him, why'd he loan his guitar to that guy in Sheila E.'s band? Make it stop!