Ten Album Covers that Would Make Good Warning Labels on Cigarette Packs

Categories: Lists
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One of the nine images the FDA will require on cigarette packs soon.
Attention, cigarette smokers: The government has decided that you either can't read the verbal warnings on cigarette packs, or that you need to be given more stark, visual reminders that smoking is bad for you. The Food and Drug Administration is requiring that after September, 2012, tobacco marketers must place one of nine graphic images over the top half of cigarette boxes.

These images include photos of things like rotten teeth, black lungs, corpses of smokers, and underweight babies. Their purpose is, obviously, to reduce smoking, and it's too early to tell if images like the one above will be big deterrents. But looking at a photo of a guy smoking a cigarette through a tracheotomy hole in his throat should definitely take some of the tastiness out of that after-meal cigarette.

"Shocking" images may be new to cigarette packs in the U.S., but it's old school when it comes to rock album covers. We've found ten album covers that could serve as warnings on cigarette packs. (Some of these covers were banned, and might be NSFW.)

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Beautiful South, Welcome to the Beautiful South

This image of back-to-photos -- one of a woman holding a gun to her mouth, the other of a man smoking a cigarette -- pretty much says it all. The band may not have intended it, but the cover presents a morbid (albeit apt) metaphor: smoking is suicide.





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Tumour of Soul,
Tumour Necrosis Factor

Here we've got some dubious-looking tissue and a tumor. It may just be an artistic rendering, but still, would you want that thing in your lungs?



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50 Cent, Before I Self-Destruct 

Remember that old anti-smoking TV commercial from the '80s, where the woman's skin is turning sticky and black, and the message says, "If what happened on the inside happened on the outside, no one would smoke"? It sorta looks like 50 Cent on this cover. The next time a smoker goes to light up, they could imagine one of their lungs looks like 50 Cent with half his face burnt off. That should be a deterrent.



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Lords of Acid, Voodoo-U

This is the censored version of the Voodoo-U cover. The original depicted a graphic she-devil sex orgy. Still, the FDA could use this cover to convey the idea that smoking turns people into nasty little devils.



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Black Sabbath, Born Again

...and the FDA could use this one to show that smoking turns people's babies into sickly little things, maybe even the anti-christ, or something worse...



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Van Halen, 1984

...Like a smoking cherub that likes Van Halen.






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Social Cancer, Krowbarz & Baceball Brats

This cover conveys so many anti-smoking ideas to me. One, it's hard to breathe when you're smoker (hence, the gas mask). Two, non-smokers won't want to hang out with you (hence, the band name, Social Cancer). Three, smoking cuts off oxygen to your brain, which could make you stupid (hence, misspelling the album title).

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The Alkaline Trio, For Your Lungs Only

Looking at this thin, frail body X-ray all rendered blood red is a reminder that as humans, we're fragile and full of yucky fluids and stuff, and smoking only make our insides more gross.​

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The Beatles, Yesterday and Today

Another album cover that was censored. This original cover, known as the "butcher" cover to record collectors, depicts the Fab Four holding busted baby dolls and surrounded by meat slabs. Imagine the meats are your heart and lungs, and the babies are premature from mom smoking. Do you really want your lungs in Ringo Starr's lap, or decapitated children on Paul McCartney's shoulders?

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Cannibal Corpse, Vile

We could have used almost any Cannibal Corpse album cover for this list, but Vile seems most fitting for an anti-smoking campaign. If you can get past all the guts hanging out, look at the device on the corpse's mouth - that's a dental device used to hold the jaw open when a patient is undergoing extensive dental work. And since smoking damages the teeth, take it as a warning: smoke, and one day, you could find yourself in a dentist chair, getting your rotten teeth pulled, while your guts fall out.

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