So let us celebrate CD covers. Let us rejoice in the neglected art of putting a picture and some writing on a small square of glossy paper. But woe betide those popular recording artistes who get it so very wrong they make our eyes vomit with aesthetic disgust.

At Slashmusic we judge CDs by the cover...


10. Still at number ten this week it’s Coldplay with ‘X&Y’. Like a Gameboy Colour that's crashed halfway through playing Tetris. "Take it back to the shop, it's ugly and useless. We don't want it anymore!"




9. Michael Jackson - 'The Essential'.
Is this a screen grab from the 'Thriller' video? And off a black and white telly, as well! We'd heard money was tight in the Jackson camp but really... It's not like he hasn't had his picture taken recently. We prefer our version.


8. Keane are back in the chart. Why? Do you think this looks sophisticated, do you think it looks tasteful? Well, do you? The Velvet Underground had a peeling banana on the sleeve of their debut album. The Rolling Stones put an unzippable fly on the cover of one of theirs. Keane chose a design less interesting than peeling paint and dead flies. Zzzz.


7. Faithless – ‘Greatest Hits’. Look at him there. He's got out of the bath and the sudden change in temperature has put pressure on his bladder. We've all been there. We've all stood (or sat) naked at our own bowl and felt the strangely liberating sensation of weeing in the nude. Maxi Jazz clearly believes a picture of that act represents his group's oeuvre. Nice.

6. Kaiser Chiefs - ‘Employment'. It's meant to look like the dusty old box of a very boring board game. And it does. But when we think of Kaiser Chiefs we think of Buckaroo or Mousetrap... or Hungry Hippos. The cover should have pictures of children poking their fingers into things and looking astonished.


5. Green Day - 'American Idiot'. Against our better judgement, we quite like this. It's a heart - it's a hand grenade. Geddit? It reminds us of the kind of banner we'd wave when we were politically charged students protesting about unfair wages for sheep farmers in Koozbania (even though we had no idea where Koozbania was or how much their sheep farmers earned.)



4. James Blunt is at four because he’s put a photo of himself on the cover. There's some other stuff going on at the bottom that we're not quite sure about. Perhaps it's a sort of Pied Piper type procession; everyone being led a merry dance by Blunt's tunes (except crippled boys, if we remember that fairy tale correctly).


3. Jeff Wayne's 'War Of The Worlds' looks like an old master next to some of the modern tat in the chart this week. An old master featuring a big alien robot spider shooting a ship, which is the best kind.




2. Crazy Frog - 'Crazy Hits'.The only proper new entry this week goes to The Annoying Thing. There's the frog, there's his cock - look, he's so crazy he's wearing headphones, a shirt but no pants! What a crazy c**t. There's a predominance of crazy orange, a colour we tend to associate with the Ulster Unionists or Hare Krishnas. Not that we're suggesting either organisation is mentally unstable...




1.Gorillaz - 'Demon Days'. The Doherty-baiting monkeys pop back into the chart alongside the Frog, suggesting the British public's faith in their fellow man was at such a low this week that they only wanted to buy albums made by - and cover-starring - cartoon characters. Please remember that although 2-D of the Gorillaz is smoking a fag he can do this because he is a drawing and cannot be hurt. You cannot smoke because you are a human and your lungs will fall off.