This morning was like every other morning. I strolled out to the car, plugged in the Ipod and made my way to work through the frozen countryside. However, this morning I happened to glance at the aforementioned Ipod's screen before actually getting on the road. One of my favorite Ipod features is the tiny image of the album cover of the song that you're currently listening to. As I rocked out to "Out In The Street," I took a glance at the cover of Bruce Springsteen's "The River." I'd never really paid much attention to it before, but this morning something became painfully clear... it's awful. The blues, the flannel shirt, the unkempt hair, the dreadful close-up... this seemed to be less of a disheveled troubadour and more of a very, very tired man.

This, of course, sent my mind wandering into other directions. Specifically into the realm of the worst album covers I'd ever seen. I worked in a record shop in my younger days, which meant that I had the dubious honor of looking at the jackets of albums that I would otherwise never have seen. Of course nearly every metal album sucked, with bands like Helloween and guys like Ronnie James Dio really standing out. But it was the ones that you didn't see coming, the bands that weren't supposed to have horrible album covers that really cranked out the winners. I thought I'd share a few of my favorites this morning.

For my money, this may be the worst album cover ever. It takes a few puzzle pieces fitting neatly together to really assemble a dreadful album cover, this would be a prime example. Here we start with the terrible title, "Surfing With The Alien." I'm not exactly sure how you'd go about doing that, but even Joe Satriani, with all of his guitar noodling is still limited to the confines of gravity and oxygen. Part two is, of course, the actual album cover. Here we have a fairly stock-standard image of Marvel Comics' Silver Surfer with very little explanation, other than the fact that he is, in fact, an alien and surfing. Finally, the artist. If you're not familiar with Joe Satriani then fall to your knees and that God right this moment. Does this guy actually have fans? If two of them exist, do the have conversations about his music?

Bill: Hey, did you get that new Satriani record?
Jeff: Yeah, I sure did.
Bill: It's great, isn't it!? What's your favorite track?
Jeff: Oh man, they're all great, but I'd say that I really love that one where he makes the bendy noise with the whammy bar!
Bill: Yeah, that's a great one, but how about the one where he hits the same note for fifteen minutes, wasn't that great?
Jeff: That's the one that I'm talking about.
Bill: Oh, I thought you meant the OTHER one where he makes the bendy noise with the whammy bar.

To be perfectly honest, this album cover really isn't as bad as the rest of this list. It made the cut for two reasons. One is the fashion choices that Salt N Pepa made at this point in their career. They certainly never came off as the most feminine bunch, so they rushed this record to shelves, full of smoky songs about men, boys, dudes and whattamen in an attempt to soften their image and declare their heterosexuality. Unfortunately, in the rush they also decided to include an image of themselves wearing flannel shirts, Carhartt jackets and, I'd imagine, Timberland boots. Clearly, nothing says femininity quite like that.

Secondly, the album's title cracks me up. Usually a title works to either sum up the content of the record (Dr. Dre's "The Chronic"), promote the big single (Michael Jackson's "Thriller") or make a statement... possibly while doing all three (Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising"). On this record, Salt N Pepa clearly went with option three, but what was the statement? I can only imagine that it was a reaction to someone in a boardroom at the label saying, "A new Salt N Pepa album... is that really necessary?" To which they replied, "oh yes."

This album may just defy explanation. Honestly, it's entirely possible that Limp Bizkit may be the worst band ever... ever. However, they decided to take juvenile crotch-rock to a whole new low (was that possible) by naming their album after pee pees and butt holes. As anyone knows, the only way to class up an album named after these body parts is to cover your record with images of aliens smoking marijuana. I'll give a shiny new nickel to anyone that can explain to me what anything on this album cover has to do with anything else on this album cover... and furthermore what any of that has to do with "Rollin'." The obvious obsession with these specific aspects of the human body certainly flies in the face of prior single, "Nookie."

At this point I decided to do a quick Google search for a few albums that I may have forgotten about. I typed in "worst album covers ever," only to find that I had missed the boat. These three were bad, but in a world of bad album covers, they were at the bottom of the pecking order. I now present to you three records that I've never actually seen, but now desperately want...

I just don't even know what to say about this one.

Show me one church where this is part of Sunday Service and I'll be there promptly at 11 AM every week.

This truly is something special. However, if it was an album of turntable beats, it would REALLY be something special.

It really makes you wonder how these albums were made. But nothing can change the fact that they were. They're here, and they're now part of our collective consciousness. This may have given birth to a new obsession. I'm going to be digging through crates in record stores for the next ten years, but I don't really expect to do much better than these.