PRAYZEHYMN Online | where gospel music lives [Gospel's Worst Albums Covers...Ever]

By J. MATTHEW COBB
Editor-At-Large, PRAYZEHYMNOnline.com
Posted: August 9, 2008, Updated: August 10, 2008

HAVE YOU EVER SCROLLED through the gospel section at your favorite record store and actually had to do a double take on an album cover? And not because of its goregous layout, but for the opposite...because of tasteless color schemes, bad photography, cheesy Photoshop homework and tired fonts. You would have thought that over the years, with greater technology and better resources, we would have perfected the process of developing quality album covers. Well, in some cases, it’s gotten worse.

With gospel music ever exploding to become one of the fastest growing music genres of our time, it is very important to learn that “to whom much is given, much is required.” Pumping out assembly-line music is one thing, but putting out just any kind of image on a CD to market the music is another.

We hope that from this post of twenty bad ideas, people will learn on what mistakes to avoid when approving their future album cover. Boys and girls, don’t make these mistakes at home.

1) BeBe Winans Cherch (Koch)
Okay, the red color background and black font lettering may have been a wake-up call, but the idea of etching a line through the “u” in Church to prove a point in ghetto urban vocabulary breaks the camel’s back. The airbrushed photo of Bebe Winans in a suit doesn’t really help much. After a wonderful and groundbreaking career on Capitol and Atlantic Records, while also giving the gospel market quality music, we would have expected a better performance on the album art.

2) Cynthia Jones Soulology (Kingdom)
Good graphic design on the right, bad photography on the left. Another important lesson to learn from. And here’s the moral: Just because the colors match up - that doesn’t mean it’s okay to bring the best and worst of both world together. Maybe the hair is the distraction.

3) Pastor Gregg Patrick & the Bridge Project (Tyscot)
If Tyscot couldn’t stand us before, they surely won’t like us now. If it’s too good to be true...then don’t believe it. We want to understand the idea of a man posing on a chair with a candle perched on an elegant iron holder facing him - in all places - on a railroad track. Not only is this idea dangerous, but it just doesn’t match up with the background glimpses of an overhead bridge over a sear of water Photoshoped in mid-air during a sunset. It’s just a good idea gone terribly wrong. And why couldn’t they just rid the water stuck in mid-air over what should have been clouds. Everyone can tell this was two photos that were not corrected well in Photoshop.

4) Kierra KiKi Sheard This Is Me (EMI Gospel)
“This is me” may have been the statement, but the album cover says “you don’t wanna know me.” It’s a depressing and emotionless Kierra Sheard gracing the cover in what appears to be raindrops or wet marks altering the image. Unfortunately, it looks haunting and very eerie.

5) Kurt Carr One Church (GospoCentric)
There’s nothing terribly wrong with wearing leather, but it can be a problem when you have the word “one church “ ascribed below a picture of Kurt Carr wearing leather. And you almost miss the biggest mistake of it all: the Kodak-envisioned inserts of miniature photos featuring people of different races and ages stacked into the lettering of “one church.” Close up and afar off, you barely can make out the words. That is actually the agonizing heartache of this album cover. If you’re going to tamper with the imagery your album art, make sure your album title is readable.

6) VIP Mass Choir Live at the Fellowship (Verity)
The album art here looks like a pile of blue graffiti over a hymn book. And with the wrong choice of fonts, the visuals of this album cover are enough to question if the label even cares about the VIP projects. Let’s be honest here, the last time we witnessed a cutesy album cover on the John P. Kee’s VIP projects was on 1998's Any Day.

7) LaShun Pace I Know I’ve Been Changed (602)
While it features most of LaShun Pace’s big hits on the Savoy label and is meant to be a budget-priced, I Know I’ve Been Changed looks more like a visual natural disaster. And while most of the 601 projects (a small subsidiary of Malaco Records) try their best not to put big money into the packaging of their releases, an album packing Pace’s giant numbers deserves a bit more TLC than what was presented.

8) Bishop Paul S. Morton Crescent City Fire (GospoCentric)
Okay, follow along. A pastor sporting all black with shades, hat and a gangster look doesn’t work well with gospel.

9) Darwin Hobbs Broken (EMI Gospel)
Make no mistake about it, Darwin Hobbs’ voice is pure, golden and very hard to not compare with the legendary R&B crooner Luther Vandross. But it’s been very hard for Hobbs to present a satisfying album cover. Worshiper is probably the most agonizing with its bad choice of fonts (and small at that) and the huge face picture. My goodness, does the face have to cover the entire album cover.

10) Pilgrim Jubilees Jesus Got Me Off (Malaco)
It’s kinda funny looking at it, but is it supposed to be funny? The Pilgrim Jubilees are posed in front of a measuring lines in what appears to be a prison and the legendary gents are dressed in their comfortable church gear. And the big letters of “Jesus got me off” doesn’t help matters. The idea of a song proclaiming God’s delivering power from Satan’s captivity should definitely minister, but the album cover just doesn’t match the seriousness of such a title. That’s another point to try t avoid - don’t turn a serious situation into a comical cartoon.

11) Monique Walker My Genesis (Anointed Sounds)
Longtime vocalist with Hezekiah Walker’s Love Fellowship Crusade Choir, Monique Walker released her debut project, My Genesis, to the world this year. Unfortunately the album cover looks like it’s still in its genesis as well. Bad choice of fonts, wrong colors and the wrong photo butchers up what could have been a worthy first impression for those unfamiliar to her. By the way, it’s another Olan Mills-looking glamor head shot.

12) Holla The Best of Trin-i-tee 5:7 (GospoCentric)
With super hits like “God’s Grace,” “There He Is” and “Put Your Hands” under their belt, Trin-i-tee 5:7 deserved a better layout on their 2007 greatest hits compilation that what they got. Where do we begin? Wrong choice of wardrobe, characterless Word Clip-Art fonts and the girls are cropped in mid-air with glimmers of comic-book-like action glued to the back. There’s no mistaken that this has to be one of the dreadful albums covers lately.

13) Erick Matthews Life Captured (Avista)
Sometimes being an independent sucks. In Erick Matthews case, it’s been quite difficult. The singer, first discovered by John P. Kee, released the independent-supported Life Captured this year and looks a bit awkward. First the choice of a wood design as a background isn’t that catchy on the eyes. Secondly, Matthews’ hand stretched towards the camera like a superhero doesn’t look so fancy. And to top it off, bad-looking fonts and a hard-to-read album title are also in place.

14) Virtue Testimony (Darkchild Gospel/Integrity)
Using a 3-D prism look or maybe going a Tiffany stain glass design, Virtue lands one of the awkward album cover designs in modern contemporary gospel on 2006's Testimony. What’s more amazing is know that the album features a chunkful of Rodney Jerkins production on it. With that kind of support, it probably needed a big, bold album cover to match the heavyweight action on the project.

15) Yolanda Adams Day by Day (Atlantic)
This is not a bad cover to look at; just hard to explain. There’s no image at all of Yolanda Adams on the front cover. Just a living room sofa featuring an empty sofa, but no sign of Yolanda in sight.

16) 21:03 Total Attention (Verity)
Looks like the a similar box idea used on the Brady Bunch theme song. It’s not the worse, but the young teeny-boppers deserved something a little more hipper than this.

17) Sounds of Blackness The Night Before Christmas II (Atomic K)
What looks like a super extravagant Dreamgirls production graces the album cover of the Sounds of Blackness’ second volume of The Night Before Christmas. But the imagery has no connection to the holidays whatsoever and doesn’t even resemble what most conjure when thinking of the GRAMMY-award winning group.

18) New Direction Rain (GospoCentric)
An album cover that simply depresses. The colors, cheesy graphics, bad choice of fonts are all signs of bad judgement and poor taste.

19) Neal Roberson My Story, My Testimony (Blackberry)
Why are we on the coast of a beach and dressed in church gear? It just doesn’t add up.

20) Patti LaBelle The Gospel According to Patti LaBelle (Umbrella)
Even though she looks stunning to be 64, the wedding gown and simple cursive fonts and its placement looks like the wrong choice of theme for Labelle’s first gospel project. How about a picture of LaBelle standing in a church. Anything but a simple cover art like this.

SInce we posted this article, we have been getting alot of feedback on albums we failed to mention. So you know we had to post them...

This one comes from JayEm 86, our good friend at YouTube. And in his words, he best describes why the following entries needed some extra criticism.

"I can't tell, is that bad photoshopping, or is that guy in the middle a giant and the guy in the lower right hand corner very very tiny? lol."

EDITOR'S NOTE: I don't know how I missed this album. This is just a very bad Photoshop experience gone wrong! And the lil' guy in the right corner looks like a ten year older. And I would have thought if the guy in the middle was larger, his shoulders should have been in the front of the last guy to the left. If only we had a copy of Photoshop for Dummies!

"I was tempted to do a praise break, lol (ya'll pray for me!), but then I thought, in 50 years, we've gone from The Caravans and The Roberta Martin Singers dressed in long flowing, neck high choir robes on their LP covers to this. Before one jumps to conclusions, I an NOT knocking Damita as a person, nor the album content. This is purely a critique on ALBUM ART. I believe this young lady is following the calling put forth to her by the Lord to spread the Gospel by song. I also believe that we should do our best to look at the inward appearance of a person rather than the outward (1 Samuel 16:7), because clothes change daily, but the Word put into the soul is eternally constant. This leads me to ask the question, is this a sign of the times? It used to be that you could glance at an album cover and instantly tell what the genre was. If you didn't even know who Damita was, you'd probably think this was a secular album by the art alone. Perhaps that's what they were going for, some sort of Stealth Evangelism concept? Not finding out it's gospel until the CD is in the radio sounds like a good way to reach some unsaved or spiritually thirsty people who may not have otherwise heard the Word they desperately needed to hear."

EDITOR'S NOTE: You were very nice, JayEm69. What's up with that tight spandex rubberband? And I'm still trying to figure out what the subway is for?

"I'll let this one just speak for itself."

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm still trying to figure out what THAT is! And I think Kanye and 50 need to team up with the Rappin' Rev. LOL.

OTHER VALUABLE RESOURCES TO LOOK INTO:
We perish because of the lack of knowledge. Get schooled.
The Worst Albums Covers of All Time - Religious sinners' section on the this hilarious website.
Worst Album Covers Ever - Album covers you may need to beware from recreating. Learn a few lessons.
The 20 Worst Album Covers of 2007 - 2007's list. Presented by Pitchfork.com. Staff list by Stephen M. Deusner
The 20 Worst Album Covers of 2006 - 2006's list. Presented by Pitchfork.com. Staff list by Ryan Schreiber