According to Google Search Console, one of the most common queries that leads people to my blog is billiards songs. Perhaps they’re a fan of the lyrics to Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May,” or fondly remember the video for George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone.” Then, I hit them with my Top 10 Billiards Songs and Video list, and it’s a whole another level of billiards music mania.

But, if the lyrics and videos take you down one pool pocket, then the design of the album covers will steer you down a very different one. With the exception of Huey Lewis & the News’ third album, Sports, featuring an innocuous barroom pool table in the bottom left corner of the cover, and consisting of four top-ten hits (e.g., “Heart and Soul,” “Heart of Rock and Roll”), most covers featuring billiards are likely to be unfamiliar. Indeed, most of these bands, which span 14 genres across 11 countries over 50 years, are likely to be unfamiliar. Nonetheless, the portrayal of billiards in pop culture – whether in film, music, art, comics, advertising, or some combination – continues to reveal the richness of the sport and its global appeal. I therefore present my Top 15 Billiards Album Covers. (If you want to really go geek, take a peek at my Billiard Album Covers Pinterest page to see the other 125 that I ruled out.)

15. Wilson Pickett: Pickett in the Pocket

Funk/soul/R&B singer and songwriter Wilson Pickett was a prolific music man with more than 50 songs that made the R&B charts. Pickett in the Pocket, his 1974 release for RCA, doesn’t feature any of his famous standards, such as “In the Midnight Hour” or “Funky Broadway,” though the album’s lesser-known “Take Your Pleasure Where You Find It” is considered a mammoth funk hit. But, the album cover reeks of cool, from the alliterative, pool-themed album name, to the photo of Pickett, wearing a satin red tailored, single-breasted jacket, while he patiently waits his turn at the table, with two fine ladies adorning each side of him.  Perhaps, he’s so relaxed because he has a two ball lead with solids? Or, as the back cover suggests, maybe it’s because he’ll be giving one-on-one lessons to one of the women after the game.

14. Benny Holst / Jytte Pilloni / Katrine Jensenius / Delta Blues Band:  Så Længe Mit Hjerte Slår (En Nat Med John Mogensen)

Yeah, that’s a mouthful. This 1985 rock-and-blues release from Denmark features studio recordings from the cabaret “Så længe mit hjerte slår.” For the life of me, I can’t figure out the band or album’s connection to billiards, or why the blonde feels compelled to sit on the table. Nonetheless, this cover makes the cut because of its focus on Keglebillard med huller (or Skittle Pool). In this billiards variant, players score points by knocking over the pins or by sinking balls in pockets according to local rules. And if pin billiards is now your jam, check out the Italian billiards film Io, Chiara e lo Scuro (The Pool Hustlers) that includes the nine-pin game goriziana at its center.

13. Novo Fasili: Tvoje I Moje Godine

For 30 years, the Croatian pop group Novo Fasili has been getting fans to shake their hips with their music style that combines ballad, Schlager, and Europop. By the 1980s, they were the most popular band to emerge from the former Yugoslavia. Like the previous album cover, the Tvoje I Moje Godine LP features band members sitting on the billiards table, but I can overlook such stupidity given the clever use of the billiards balls to spell the band’s initials “NF,” a lexical feat not captured on any other album cover I reviewed.  Now the only question is how did the table wind up with 23 billiards balls? 

12. Bennewitz Quartet: Haydn, Mozart, Dittersdorf & Vanhal: An Evening in Vienna 1784

While it’s hardly visually interesting, the album cover for the Bennewitz Quartet’s tribute to the “Viennese Classical” circle of composers remains noteworthy for several reasons. First, it’s the only classical music LP cover I discovered that features billiards. Second, it’s one of the few album covers that focuses on carom billiards (with its pocketless table); another that didn’t make the list is the cover to the 1989 album Hotel Štístko Blues from the Czech blues band ASPM.  Finally, it’s a tip of the cue stick to Mozart, who unlike the other three composers, was a noted billiards aficionado who played the sport regularly and even owned a billiards table in his apartment in Vienna.

11. Feed Me:  High Street Creeps

In the world of Electronic Dance Music (EDM), visual branding is very powerful. Think of Deadmau5’s mouse head or Marshmello’s giant white marshmallow helmet. Feed Me (aka Jonathan Gooch) is no exception. The former graphic designer created his trademark green monster as his visual embodiment. Now, what’s a bit harder to explain is why this green monster is playing a game of snooker with Gooch on the cover of his 2019 release High Street Creeps. Gooch has said in interviews that he grew up in England surrounded by pub culture, where snooker is commonplace, but I’m pretty sure the rule of one foot on the ground still applies. Sorry, Green Monster.

10. Dolla Bill: “Old Schoolin’”  |. Nightblaze: “State of Grace”

Billiards and sex have been bed partners for a long time. (See my blog post, “Rated B for Billiards: Top 10 Billiards Bedroom Scenes.”) So, it’s hardly surprising that sex, or at least hot women, would feature prominently on some covers. Tying for 10th place are two EP covers that have little in common other than the lovelies at the tables. In 2018, the North Carolina rapper Dolla Bill released his single “Old Schoolin’” with its fat bass pulse, flashes of electric piano…and a corseted woman lying prone on a billiard table while her stiletto heel naughtily lifts up the back of her dress. Fast forward to just a few weeks ago, and the Italian melodic rock band Nightblaze released “State of Grace,” the first single from their upcoming new album. Supposedly it’s a reimagining of their signature sound, but I’m still a bit bedazzled by the buxom beauty in the barroom who probably holds a pool cue as well as she holds that smoking semi-automatic.

9.  The Intellectuals: Half-A-Live

The Intellectuals are a garage punk/rock band from Denmark who adopted a vintage pulp aesthetic for their 1986 album Half-A-Live. The LP cover leans into retro cartoon imagery popular with the punk genre (e.g., The Cramps, Crypt Records). In this case, the cover features a sailor and a roughneck playing carom billiards, while a bartender looks on. Absurdity abounds, from the juxtaposition of the band’s name with the cartoon characters, to the surreal, distorted table that sends the balls flying.  That table would probably fit well in this collection of Top 7 Billiards Tables Not For Sale. 

8. Victor Fantastic Orchestra: Off Vocal Selection Shinji Tanimura / Takao Horiuchi Works

If you’re a fan of J-Pop, you may sway to the Victor Fantastic Orchestra, a Japanese instrumental ensemble that plays orchestral renditions of classic J-Pop songs. But, you don’t have to love the genre to groove to the great cover of their 1986 album, Off Vocal Selection. Incorporating bold shapes and lines and a palette that riffs on the color of traditional pool table cloth, the album cover is positively retro-futuristic. This is what it means for pool to be hipster cool. It’s what Tubbs and Crockett would look like playing billiards in an episode of the spinoff Tokyo Vice.

7. Brainstory: Sounds Good. |. Rez Doggz: Underdoggz

Animals playing pool is nothing new. Think of the Mr. Ed episode, “Ed the Pool Player.” Or, my blog post, “Welcome to the Billiards Zoo.” But, canine-headed humanoids? That’s a first. Except when it comes to album covers, where cynocephali are apparently not so unique. Brainstory, the psychedelic soul trio from Los Angeles, released Sounds Good in 2024. Even with the red cloth pool table, the album cover’s bar room is unmemorable, except, lo and behold, there are three pool playing patrons with dog heads. That idea may be as crazy as a rabid Rottweiler, yet six years earlier, Rez Doggz, a group of Mi’kmaq Hip-Hop artists from the First Nation reserve of Gesgapegiag, released their album Underdoggz, which similarly featured a pack of weredogs shooting stick and having a grand old time at the local watering hole.

6. Nationaleatern: Rockormen

Recorded during a series of live performances in 1978 from the Swedish progressive rock band Nationleatern, Rockormen, which translates to “The Rock Snake,” features on the cover a billiards table with some surreal serpentine spectators and an arrangement of billiards balls with faces on them. It feels ghastly and uncomfortable. The faces may be based on real political targets, much as the band’s music often had political themes. (A similar use of representing political figures as billiards balls first appeared in a 1942 war poster, and then again on the 2013 magazine cover of India Today – Tamil. See the award Best Political Use of Imagery on a Magazine Cover.)

5. Zekk: “Platinum Gacha”

The future is 9-ball, at least for the twenty-something South Korean EDM DJ, Zekk, who made it the focus of the cover to his 2019 single, “Platinum Gacha.”  The anime illustration, foregrounding a spectacularly-fonted 9-ball, suggests a dystopia, where guards with robotic, stormtrooper-like heads act as billiards match overseers and hover dangerously close to the players. It’s not quite the futuristic billiards world Lex Marinos visualized in Hard Knuckle, though the player looks like she’d be comfortable in Bai Xinyu’s 2019 ultramodern billiards drama Metal Billiards.

4. Jamie J. Marquez: Moon Striker  |  Eloy: Performance

Space is the place, at least according to Spanish guitarist Jamie J. Marquez and German prog rockers Eloy. On the cover of his 2014 solo album Moon Striker, Marquez takes us on an extraterrestrial journey, where a three-eyed alien, with nice form and a solid bridge, takes aim at the Earth (ball) in an interstellar game of carom billiards. Back in the Milky Way (maybe?), Eloy’s 1983 album Performance shows on the cover a human in a spacesuit playing billiards with glow-in-the-dark cue sticks and balls stamped with mathematical symbols. There hasn’t been this much planetary pool since Paul McCartney and the Wings went astro-minimal on the cover of their 1975 album, Venus and Mars.

3. Butaotome: Billiards

Across the top of the cover, in bold katakana, is written a title that translates to “Billiards.” Of course, Butaotome’s 2017 album was going to secure a top spot on this list. The band, a product of the country’s independently produced doujin music scene, embraces the visuality of billiards, even if there’s no direct linkage to the music or musicians. Floating billiard balls surround a woman in a red kimono descending from an escalator. The bright colors evoke Japanese ‘60s pop art, though there is also an anime influence. The modern setting, perhaps a shopping mall, also feels surreal, as the linearity of the mechanical escalator intersects with the randomness of the weightless balls.      

2. Richard Elliot: Ricochet

Smooth jazz makes my skin crawl, but I’m happy to give saxophonist Richard Elliot a second listen, simply because of the cover for his 2003 album Ricochet.  The illustration shows a vibrant group of people gathered around pool tables to play or watch. The picture is crawling with motion and energy. While Hollis King is credited as the art director for the album, the actual illustrator is unidentified. But, looking at the stylized figures, with their elongated limbs, I’d bet my Olhausen that the artist was heavily influenced by Ernie Barnes, the iconic artist who is most famous for his painting “Sugar Shack,” which was the backdrop for the credits of the sitcom Good Times. Barnes was enamored with billiards; in fact, he did a whole series of paintings that occurred in pool halls, such as Main Street Pool Hall and Pool Player. I’m sure he would have loved Ricochet, too.

1. Black Label Society: Shot to Hell

Zakk Wylde, the long-time guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne, formed his band Black Label Society in 1998. On the cover of their seventh studio album, Shot to Hell (2006), they dabbled with paged imagery, as many heavy metal bands tend to do, but this time with light-hearted humor. The cover features a trio of nuns playing billiards. The first is focused intently on her shot, aiming the cueball at an eightball emblazoned with a skull on it; the other two are wistfully praying, perhaps to the Good Lord of the Baize. It’s sacrilege, of course, but with the nun’s upturned grin and the vibrant halo of colors surrounding the monastic trinity, I’m inclined to think this shot is going in. By the way, if sisters shooting stick is your salvation, then watch the “Armando and the Pool Table” episode of The Flying Nun, or purchase The Original 2021 Nuns Having Fun wall calendar. 

******

So, there’s my list. I’m sure I made some enemies with my omissions. I had to say no to some intimidating folks (e.g., Shandy, “Bish Bosh Bash”)…and to some not-so-intimidating folks (e.g., Elizabeth Barraclough, Hi). That’s the nature of the job. What would you have included on your list? Most important, the next time you’re shopping for albums – wait, does anyone shop for albums? – keep your eyes open for similar great Billiards Album Covers.