all their cover art is perfect except pablo and king of limbs. pablo is not actually a bad graphic design job- or even unsuited to the songs- it's just a bit impersonal (an EMI employee probably made it, because this was pre stanley) and of course, extremely dated. it hasn't aged as well as some of the best early '90s alt rock album covers (i mean nevermind obvs) but let's be honest, it's way less embarassing than some of the covers of some classic albums of that time too. it's hard to find fault with it as a representation of an average to slightly above average record- the cover is like that too.

king of limbs is their best album. but i think one reason it is mostly seen as one of their worst albums is because most people do judge an album by its cover, and the cover of KOL is so horribly designed. it only comes close to looking decent (not great) when seen in a huge vinyl size where you can actually see details of the art, it looks shitty in cd size (although the bare bones ms paint trees of the actual cd included in the newspaper edition look even worse) but it looks truly disastrous in the digital thumbnail format most people in this album's time period have mostly listened to it (and indeed the first format the band themselves chose to make this album available). the problem with the limbs cover is entirely a design problem, not an art problem. stanley's cover art painting is amazing, equally stunning and definitive and suited to the music and lyrics as any of their past album covers. what messes up the limbs cover is the botched and almost inexplicable graphic design of sticking that big ass white text on top of the cover. it's some of the worst album cover design- or hell, graphic design, period- that i've ever seen. and the masterful album really was done a disservice by these shitty design choices. in order to see past the less-than-superficially-stunning appearance of a person it takes an unusual degree of attentiveness to that person's deeper traits and character, and most people will never give that "ugly" person a second look. likewise with an album cover as ugly and badly designed as limbs, most people will just assume the album sucks, especially if they listen to it once and it didn't click. if it had a pretty cover like in rainbows, they might give it dozens of listens before giving up. with an ugly cover like it has, the most it will get from most people is part of one listen. and unfortunately it's a more complex album than in rainbows so it really needed a more attractive surface to draw the listener in.

i would rank the album cover of the king of limbs as probably the single biggest mistake of radiohead's career- although the band made a lot of other terrible decisions about how to promote and publicly talk about (or not) their masterpiece the king of limbs, each and every one of these other mistakes can at least be understood and defended from a certain point of view, as something they could not have known would not work. but this album cover?? anyone should've been able to realize this text on the cover was a piece of shit that would probably knock down its pitchfork score by 10 points regardless of how the record sounded. of course, there are acts that can get away with bad album covers because they are known for other things- rather than cohesive statement-albums. radiohead are known for statement-albums, and in fact, in its own way king of limbs is as much of one as anything they made, but the statement is impossible to appreciate (or even understand) because the text blocks most people from seeing what is in the picture- DJing ghosts.