Songs of Innocence — U2 (2014)

While the stark Larry Mullen Jr. mother-and-son embrace isn't ugly, the forced iTunes download to 500 million accounts made this cover the most unwelcome visual in digital music history. The black-and-white photo, though competent, became synonymous with corporate arrogance and privacy violation. This cover outperforms #8 in pure design quality, but its legacy is 95% negative. The backlash was so intense that U2 had to distribute a one-click removal tool, a first for any album. The cover itself is fine, but the context of its delivery transformed it into a symbol of unwanted intrusion.