None More Black: The Spinal Tap Award For Album Cover Awfulness
The 1984 rockumentary “Spinal Tap” is an up close and personal look at a (fictional) hard working, hard charging rock band of the same name on tour to promote their album “Smell the Glove.” I don’t think I have to turn the volume up to 11 to tell you that even if you’ve never seen the movie, surely you’ve heard jokes quoted from it. I’ve heard jokes quoted from it, but my name isn’t Shirley. Sorry, different movie.
“The law of averages says you will survive”
The reason we are gathered here today is to award real-life rock bands the Spinal Tap Award For Album Cover Awfulness. Only a select few (5) will receive this prestigious award. The winning criteria includes the following:
Title: The album cover must include a title. For example, “Shark Sandwich.” If it’s an exceptionally weird, nonsensical, or irrelevant title, that’s a plus.
2. Artwork: The album cover must contain artwork. Pretentious, inane, or inexplicable artwork is preferred. The weaker the effort, the better.
3. Coolness: An attempt must be made to be cool, hip, avant garde, au courant, and à la mode. It may or may not include actual ice cream. The winners are those whose attempts at coolness fail most miserably.
Cover of Spinal Tap’s album “Smell the Glove”
4. Timelessness: Is the album cover timeless? Or not? The winners of this award will veer toward the side of “not.”
“No one knows who they were or what they were doing. But their legacy remains.”
Without further ado, here are the winners of the Spinal Tap Award For Album Cover Awfulness.
These albums came out after the 1984 release of Spinal Tap, so no one can say, “Spinal Tap imitated them, not the other way around.”
These bands had every opportunity to see “Spinal Tap,” study the awful album covers featured in the movie, and make better artistic choices. Instead, they insisted on barreling down the metaphorical freeway which has led to this very moment in history: the presenting of the Spinal Tap Award For Album Cover Awfulness.
I might postulate that some of these bands saw “Spinal Tap” and intentionally made album covers that fit the Spinal Tap ethos. If true, that would make them a Saucy Jack indeed.
Winner #1: Aerosmith, “Get a Grip”
“Get a grip” is a cool phrase to say to an authority figure. Especially in 1993 when you’re 45 year-old Steven Tyler. You know what else is cool? A piercing. A piercing is countercultural and rad. But what if you pierced your nipple? Better yet, what if you pierced a cow’s nipple?
And what if on the CD for “Get a Grip,” you had a picture of each band member’s nipple? Or maybe five random people’s nipples. I never figured out whose nipples they are. Anyway, there are 5 human nipples on the CD.
Brand the cow with an Aerosmith logo aaaaaaaand we’re done.
As David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap said, “I envy us.” Soak this one in, Aerosmith. You’ve earned it!
Winner #2: Guns N’ Roses, “The Spaghetti Incident?”
This is GNR’s “Shark Sandwich.” It’s sloppy, it’s disgusting. It contains an unnecessary question mark in the title. It also has quotation marks around the title— a convention no other album cover I’ve ever seen adheres to.
It looks like they dumped out a can of Chef Boyardee and photographed it. Is the music on the album good? I don’t know. In this era, 1993— the time of tapes and CD’s— I don’t think anyone wanted to find out what was on the album because it would require handling this repellant packaging.
In 1993, Guns N’ Roses was staring down the end of their relevance as a band. I imagine their thoughts may have mirrored David St. Hubbins pondering the end of Spinal Tap: “I don’t really think that the end can be assessed as of itself, as being the end. Because what does the end feel like? It’s like trying to extrapolate the end of the universe. You say if the universe is indeed infinite, then what does that mean? How far is all the way? If it stops, what’s stopping it and what’s behind what’s stopping it? So what’s the end? …is my question to you.”
While Spinal Tap were contemplating string theory, Guns N’ Roses were pondering “spaghetti theory?”
Winner #3: Pink Floyd, “Delicate Sound of Thunder (Live)”
In 1988, Pink Floyd had the brilliant idea to record and release a live album. It was such a bright idea, they pictured a man on the cover who had— you guessed it— light bulbs attached all over his jacket and pants.
And he’s on a rocky hillside— yep, right again— staring at a man who’s surrounded by small birds flying all around.
The delicate sound of thunder (not pictured) is presumably off in the distance. And that, my friends, is how you do an album cover!
Spinal Tap famously had a puppet show for an opener, and Pink Floyd, I assume, had Light Bulb Guy wander out on stage and warm up the crowd. Bird guy, of course, was too difficult to bring on the road.
Winner #4: Rush, “Counterparts”
I promise in making this list, I had no idea I was choosing so many albums from 1993. This one also came out in ‘93. In the picture, the nut and bolt are “counterparts.” Get it? There’s also the connotation of “screw you” or “get screwed.” That’s kind of edgy, right?
I do like the shade of blue. And there’s more of a visual, artistic sensibility than the other winners of this award.
Nevertheless, “Counterparts” is a meaningless title and the album cover is equally vacuous and silly.
By 1993, Rush was much like Spinal Tap bassist Derek Smalls: “a preserved moose onstage.”
Winner #5: Metallica (Self-titled)
Could this be the one that consciously imitated Spinal Tap’s “Smell the Glove”? In person, this album cover looks all black. Only under a certain angle of light can you see “Metallica” and a coiled snake in their respective corners.
Let’s go to Wikipedia’s page on the album for the final word: “The cover is reminiscent of Spinal Tap's album Smell the Glove, which the band jokingly acknowledged in its documentary ‘A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica.’ Members of Spinal Tap appeared on the film and asked Metallica about it, with Lars Ulrich commenting that British rock group Status Quo was the original inspiration as that band's ‘Hello!’ album cover was also black.”
Verdict: Metallica is the Saucy Jack of the bunch for their album that could be none more black. And hey, for no particular reason let’s also call them the patron saints of quality footwear! (No clip, but it’s the fifth quote down on the list.)
—This post is dedicated to the late, great Rob Reiner, who appeared in and directed “Spinal Tap.” He passed away on December 14, 2025 at age 78.—
