The Worst Christmas Album Covers Ever: Pt. 2
"Santa's got something to give you…"
(Image credit: bizarrerecords.com)
Ann Guest Moore - Welcome To The World Of Ann Guest Moore
Kicking off Part Two of our festive freakshow (and check out Part One if you haven't already), here's an oval-framed glimpse into the exotic double-life of Ann Guest Moore.
By day she’s a slinky, mullet-courting sex kitten with irresistible eyes. But by night she’s Santa’s very favourite little helper. Note: neither incarnation can sing a note.
Unintentional double meaning - it actually was Wham!'s last Christmas together
Wham! - Last Christmas
Last Christmas was number two in the 1984 UK Christmas charts, with Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas at number one.
George Michael sang on the Live Aid single, so technically achieved a very rare Christmas charts one-two. None of which explains why Andrew Ridgely is picking a reindeer’s nose on the front of the single.
Rudy also had a record called This Pussy Belongs To Me, which wasn't about getting a cat for Christmas
Rudy Ray Moore - This Ain't No White Christmas
A spoken word compilation from Blaxploitation star and stand up comic Rudy Ray Moore – known to a generation of badasses as Dolemite.
Only one complaint – don’t you hate it when your presents are wrapped so badly you can totally tell what they are?
Dad looks pleased with himself. Fair play
(Image credit: bizarrerecords.com)
The Mastertone Chorale - A Singer Christmas For All The Family
Disturbing family scenes this sewing machine-branded 1963 Christmas compilation.
Mum looks every inch the Stepford murderess, her little girl’s hiding from craft hell under a mountain of textiles, and the poor boy simply screams in existential horror.
No fire: the polyster suits would simply melt onto the skin
The Rhodes Kids - Rock 'n Rhodes Christmas
Before Charlie Manson ditched the wing-collared lilac uniforms, the Manson family kidnapped Santa.
Either that or it’s flash-in-the-pan American Bandstanders The Rhodes Kids creeping the hell out of Christmas.
The pun in the title - Mills' first name is Gladys - is so awful it needs pointing out
Mrs Mills - Glad Tidings: Mills' Christmas Party
Singalong heroine Mrs Mills puts on her very best frilly blue frock (and she had several) and invites you to an irresistible seasonal party.
The cover’s a creepy disaster, and doesn’t do anything like justice to Mill’s bubbling on-stage charm. Just watch this clip…
"I said blow, not suck!"
(Image credit: bizarrerecords.com)
The Border Brass - Tijuana Christmas
So what to expect from a front cover featuring a sombrero-sporting bandit hoovering baubles up with a trumpet?
A Christmas album filled with Mexican-spiced instrumental classics, of course.
Mum's clearly started early on the G&Ts
(Image credit: neatocoolville.blogspot.com)
Domenico Savino - Hi-Fi Christmas Party
Savino was one of the great arrangers and orchestra leaders of the early 20th Century, and conducted both the CBS and Rome Symphony orchestras.
A shame, then, that as far as Google Images is concerned his greatest contribution to popular culture is a photo of a horn protruding obscenely from Santa’s heaving sack.
Hang on, aren't Carols and Songs the same thing?
(Image credit: neatocoolville.blogspot.com)
Mitch Miller - Christmas Songs And Carols
Unobjectionable, aside from the sad, ghostly image of an onlooking Santa trapped in the hanging wooden sign like a condemned spirit.
We’d also like to contest the suggestion that the record is in any way unbreakable.
More like champagne, four valium and a packet of paracetamol music
(Image credit: neatocoolville.blogspot.com)
Lawrence Welk - Merry Christmas From Lawrence Welk
How long has accordion maestro Lawrence Welk has been frozen in his stiff pose of Christmas cheer? Long enough for cobwebs to dust his sad, decaying tree, but not for any of his friends or family to arrive to break the gloom.
Goodbye, Lawrence Welk.
Hopefully, they're rowing backwards into the open ocean
The Surfers - Christmas From Hawaii
This 1950s Hawaiian four-piece may make a hula-holiday season seem like a good idea, but it’s really not.
For one thing hula-hoops are impossible to wrap. For another that pink Christmas tree is an affront to both Jesus and Santa. And most importantly, everyone knows the whole point of Hawaiian music is hot Polynesian girls, and this album has exactly none.
Toby Keith: the face of the National Elf Service. Arf
Toby Keith - Classic Christmas
All-American country bear Toby Keith scratches his beard in time to classic Christmas tunes in this covers compilation.
In case you’re distracted by that idiotic background, it’s worth point out that Keith is wearing two goddam hats - cowboy and Santa – which makes him look a bit like he’s got elf ears.
There are coats and there are coats. And that is a coat
(Image credit: bizarrerecords.com)
Liberace - Twas The Night Before Christmas
The flamboyant ‘50s megastar revs up his greatest hit Ave Maria for this sparkling singalong.
It should be treasured – several polar bears died to make Liberace’s outfit, although as you can see the end result is so fabulous it sets Christmas trees alight at close distance.
Beware twins who play records with lethally serrated edges
The Gantvoort Twins - Christmas Carols
The scrawled-in-blood writing and the toothy awkward twins might put you in mind of a Hitchcock murder rather than warming festive treat.
But come on! 'To the accompaniment of antique music boxes from the famous Bornand Collection'? Has a single sentence ever made you want to rock harder?
Wickerman flashbacks? Anyone?
The Clancy Brothers - Christmas
Irish folk sibling the Clancy Brothers make Christmas all the more dramatic by borrowing the font Hollywood always uses on its posters for disaster movies. CHRISTMAS.
The sweaters – almost as imposing as the album title – were originally sent to the boys during their first American tour by their worried Ma, and soon become a part of the group’s look. Well, the only part, aside from being Irish.
The good news is they're flammable
Kenny And Corky - Nuttin' For Christmas and Suzy The Snowflake
Originally released by Rosemary Clooney in 1951, Suzy The Snowflake is here given the creepy high-pitched speed voice treatment and a novelty re-release alongside Nuttin’ For Christmas.
If the cover makes you think Kenny and Corky are about to narrow their wooden puppets’ eyes and give you a good shivving, listening to the music itself will only make you feel worse.
Just nobody say 'Jehovah,' OK?
Kićo - Christmas With Kico
The method approach from Croatian folk singer Kićo: he doesn’t pretend to be Father Christmas, he becomes Father Christmas!
With blue eyebrows. And a dead, dead stare.
A Santa Claus catastro-dee
Lenny Dee - Happy Holi-dee
"Why?" That’s the question on the face of the black dog on the left. "Why is this happening to me?"
All the dogs are looking the same way in fact – imploring some out-of-shot trainer to end this now – while easy listening organist impresario Lenny Dee grins like a drunk sailor for the Decca Records snapper.
He's got something to put in you
Thore Skrogman Julskiva - Klappa Pa!
Skogman has the dubious honour of being the only artist to make it in to the list twice.
It’s not entirely clear whether this is alternative artwork to the same album or another release of the same name. But either way - Jesus. That face says "I’m gonna hurt you with these sausages. First the little ones. And then with the big one…"
Blue, eh? Surely a giant Hessian sack would've been more her colour?
The Mom And Dads - Merry Christmas With The Mom And Dads
1972 collection of festive hits from the frankly bizarre country collective The Mom And Dads.
The scent of death hangs over the cover like carrion over a battlefield. It’s a flashforward to all our eventual once-a-year assisted-home visits from uncaring families. "Have you changed the will yet, mum?"
The steel-edged flat-top lurking at the back is the last straw. Terrifying.
'Tis the season to be fabulous
RuPaul - Ho Ho Ho
Supermodel drag artist RuPaul’s comedy-and-classics album, released as a tie-in to her VH1 Christmas special.
The front cover is pretty bad, but we’re saving you from the worst – RuPaul with pants around her ankles on the back of the record.
"The reindeer keeps touching my leg…" "That's not the reindeer"
Kenny & Dolly - Once Upon A Christmas
This country coming-together is a spin-off from another Christmas special, CBS’ Kenny & Dolly: A Christmas To Remember from 1984.
It’s also the exact moment at which Dolly Parton stopped aging – that mounted reindeer shows more wear from the last quarter century than the miniature dynamo.
Bob Kames, now in the Black Lodge forever
Bob Kames - Organ And Chimes
Bob Kames was a Hammond organ specialist who recorded over 70 albums in a career spanning four decades.
As far as we know, this is the only one that looks like a carefully posed backwoods murder scene. Merry Christmas everyone!
There's a (fictional) prize to anyone who recognises more than two of these 'stars'…
Warner Bros. Stars - We Wish You A Merry Christmas
Following in the footsteps of MGM and Paramount, in the late ‘50s Warner Bros. launched its own record label, resulting in this 1959 Christmas ensemble.
It doesn’t run to high-end talent though, just TV stars and familiar tunes. Efrim Zimbalist Jr. singing Adeste Fideles? Humbug.
One saving grace – middle row on the far left is Roger Moore, then starring in The Alaskans.
You are nothing without your robot car!
David Hasselhoff - The Night Before Christmas
Hard to believe this festive special from increasingly self-aware camp icon David Hasselhoff was only released in Germany.
Alright, no it isn’t. But it is hard to understand why he appears as a human bauble on the album’s artwork.
Okay, that's it. Apart from to say check out Part One if you haven't already and that we hope your eyes don't hurt too much, it's a Merry Christmas from MusicRadar.
