Marcy the Malevolent

After this photo, Marcy's duet partner never wore another smile.

On this album cover, Marcy's new partner failed to smile enough. She never got a second chance.

Tiny terror: Little Marcy swings!

There’s something you should know about a Marcy. She’s not the lovable proselytizing puppet she appears to be both in her songs and on the covers of her many records. No, there’s something quite sinister about her. Have you seen a more hateful smile? Unless it came from the face of the Twilight Zone’s “Talking Tina,” you most certainly have not. Unlike Talking Tina, Marcy actually exists. And not just in your nightmares. But because this adorable little devil is fronting with that whole “I’m in the Lord’s Army” bullshit while outfitted in the most precious jumpers, Marcy’s adoring fans are content to look past the figurative and literal skeletons decomposing in her closet. And the evidence is right there on her album covers. As the LP jackets posted above attest, Marcy changes singing partners more often than Catholic priests find themselves in a bit of … well, you get the point. See the women pictured alongside perky little Marcy? That’s right, they have neither been seen nor heard from after smiling for the camera alongside the tiny terror. I’m sure both singers were beguiled by Marcy’s sweet, innocent charm, whimsical voice, and seemingly genuine love for her lord and savior. They probably thought they were doing the lord’s work by helping Marcy connect with her peers (which include headless child-size mannequins from Sears, ventriloquist dummies, ineptly crafted sock puppets, and various Pinocchios) before she likely sent them packing for heaven when she strangled them to death with the razor wire of her “puppet strings.” Marcy shares the spotlight with no one, which is underscored by the LP cover depicting the pint-sized monster swinging solo. Next to Marcy, the blackest metal from the darkest corner of Norway is just child’s play. Speaking of child’s play, wasn’t that also the title of the first “Chucky” movie? Coincidence? Maybe Marcy is the true bride of Chucky.

Young Hungry Bastard

Christian folk's Captain & Tennille take on the great orphan crisis of 1974.

This 1974 album details one child’s harrowing and heartbreaking journey through the foster care and orphanage system. Ron and Haven's opus garnered 47 Grammy nominations in 1975, including “Best Mustache Depicted on an Album Cover,” “Best Use of a Prop on an Album Cover” (for Ron and Haven's use of a real orphan as their fictional adopted son), and “Concept Album of the Year.” I’m Adopted is still in print today, available for sale on Ron and Haven’s website (which I'll let you search for); however, the song titles have all been changed. Should you be interested in adopting this landmark LP for your collection, seek out the original, with its hard-hitting, unvarnished songs, such as: “Orphanage Head Lice Blues,” “If God Is My Father, Who Is This Guy?”, "Wallpaper Paste Tastes Like Oatmeal," “Bedbugs and Dried Boogers,” “Adoption Day Blues (No Home for Me),” “Ballad of a Young Bastard,” “They Found Me in a Dumpster,” and “I Come with a Warranty.”

Free to Fly

Put a Bird on It: Merv & Merla break wind.

If Merv and Merla hadn't been so bent on festooning their album cover with cliché Christian symbolism, they never would have released this innocent, young dove into the waiting embrace of a cruel, godless world. Weeks after the cover’s photo shoot, the bird was spotted foraging for food in a depressed part of town. Sporting a tattered “Jesus Saves” T-shirt to conceal the filth sullying its formerly snow-white plumage, the dirty dove, now just a common city pigeon, dodged stumbling footfalls of addled zombies as it pecked the crust of dried vomit fused to the sidewalk in front of an abandoned convenience store with busted-out windows. Shame on you, Merv and Merla.

Blinded by the Light

Ronnie Milsap's unfortunate 1976 album, 20-20 Vision 

One advantage of being a blind singer is never having to look this album cover in the face. So far a reissue of this album, entitled 20-20 Hindsight, featuring a revised cover has yet to surface.

Acid Casualty

In conceiving this terrible LP in the early 1970s, well-meaning Christians had tried their darnedest to re-brand the initialism of LSD into “Leadership, Service, Dedication.” Big mistake. No one bothered reading the fine print on the cover. And when some talking head on national TV declared that the cover of The New LSD alone had the power to transform minds, hordes of pimple-faced teens took heed of his innuendo and stormed the nation’s record stores for a taste, ripping the cellophane from the records and ravenously ingesting their covers, expecting them to be laced with acid. The only trip they experienced was a ride to juvie, though. As punishment for the destruction of merchandise, the aspiring acid casualties were ordered to suffer through the LP's sermon, “The Price of Leadership and Discipleship” as told by one Charles “Tremendous” Jones. But that was of no consolation to “Tremendous” Jones and his record label. While the contents of The New LSD may have been wholesome enough, its image was forever tainted thanks to those no-good kids. Record stores wanted nothing more to do with the record and refused to restock it. And just like that, The New LSD had evaporated from the market.

Music to Be Murdered By

Long before they instigated the Good Friday massacre, during which they torched dozens of churches and committed innumerable heinous acts of violence and in so doing transformed a normally tranquil if hopelessly clumsy Norway into an unimaginable dystopian nightmare. Long before they slaughtered their pet goats and drank the blood, donned corpse paint, rechristened themselves as Demonic Infestation, and unleashed a towering inferno of black metal chaos so menacing and intense that it induced legions of young evil-doers to take up guitars, embrace the southern Lord and wreak unrelenting havoc across Northern Europe. Long before all this, they were Norway’s most delightful export since lutefisk, a husband-and-wife folk duo known as Mike and Else.

Wretched Records and Crappy Covers II

Since when is pinning down and forcing one’s self upon an incapacitated and presumably disinclined partner a “Serenade for Love”? A year after this controversial record hit stores (only to be withdrawn and deleted by the label), Dick Hayman found himself donning a new set of stripes. This time it was he who was the unwilling recipient of another man’s “Serenade for Love.”

A forgotten Bourbon Street fixture, Rev. Bob Harrington achieved a bit of infamy in the 1970s for changing booze back into water, and tacky wallpaper into blazers.

What could be more terrifying on Halloween than a “Christian perspective” on the holiday? Fear not. Come October 31, this record won’t be knocking at your door for a trick or treat. All known surviving copies—four to be precise—have been consigned to haunting the basement of a small, dilapidated chapel in Beaver Dam, Kentucky.

Barbra Streisand: Unmasked, Unplugged, Ungodly!