An improvement, no?

So you know how it is... One of your favourite artists (one of the only artists capable of making a Christmas album not worthy of a cascade of vom) decides to release a 'seasonal album' and the cover is TERRIBLE. Not just casually terrible. But execrable-terrible. And you feel angry. Not just because you're a fan and you feel protective of this artist and their body of work. But also because when their run of past artwork is a collection of such stunning and arresting visuals, it kind of ruins everything for you. Like when Björk fudged up her run of 5 star album cover portrait shots with a sticker of her dressed as a multicoloured egg. Or when Girls Aloud ended their record breaking run of Top Ten singles by squeezing in at 11 with one of the best songs they've ever recorded.

So in short: the cover for Tori Amos' up-and-coming Xmas album, Midwinter Graces, makes us angry because it is terrible, and because it is her first album artwork faux pas in her long and successful career. Of course, there are those of you reading this who will say album artwork doesn't matter, but of course it does. It's by no means the be all and end all, but it does, to an extent matter.

So we took 'matters into our own hands' and designed our OWN cover, using a publicity shot we found on last.fm and about 30 seconds in Fireworks. We're shit at graphic design (one our number is AMAZING at it, but alas this writer is not he) and we STILL managed to make a vastly superior album cover up above. By all means use it (and credit us), because we will be. When we scroll through our iTunes we will see the above cover and we will pretend the other awful Waxwork Sim at an Exorcism cover NEVER EXISTED. We suggest you do too.

Denial is powerful.