Rolling Stone Says Limp Bizkit Release Has the Worst Album Cover of All Time
When it comes right down to it, Limp Bizkit’s 2000 album Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water was a cautionary tale in how not to follow up a successful album. It was a clear cash grab to try to follow up on the success of the previous year’s Significant Other as quickly as possible, so much so that the album was quite clearly rushed. The resulting album was an absolute train wreck from start to finish.
But is the album’s cover amongst its worst sins? There’s a lot of sins to rank, but yeah, I think it probably is. Rolling Stone certainly thinks so, as they recently listed it as #1 on their list of the 50 worst album covers of all time. Rolling Stone writes:
“Five Gollum-looking dudes lolling around on a bed of nitrate-infused meat? Sure, that’s a fair representation of Limp Bizkit. Following up on their breakthrough hit Significant Other, the nu metal band leaned even harder into being repulsive — ‘chocolate starfish’ is a slang term for ‘asshole,’ a nickname vocalist Fred Durst adopted with pride — as a substitute for an actual artistic philosophy. This cover (made by the band’s guitarist, Wes Borland) is both tacky and gross, but at least it works as a warning label: What you see is what you get.”
As for the criteria for inclusion on the list, one of the things that Rolling Stone mentioned was that they tried to skew towards “major artists with the resources of professional graphic designers who really should have known better.” Their list is also limited to only one album cover per artist, which is most likely the only thing that kept some other Limp Bizkit album covers out of the Top 50 like Results May Vary which is just Fred Durst’s ugly mug in green.
Other metal albums included on the list are Metallica’s Black Album at 41, Ozzy Osbourne’s Down to Earth at 30, Anthrax’s Fistful of Metal at 23, Scorpions’ Lovedrive at 18, Ted Nugent’s Love Grenade at 5, and Creed’s Weathered at 3. Those are all extremely worthy inclusions, but yeah, Chocolate Starfish is just repulsive.
