What the critics are saying:
>>Pixel Marx
Pixel Marx, the renegade oracle of digital art’s back alleys, dives headlong into the Google-search landscape to find a bracing MS Paint reinterpretation of Dire Straits’ "Communiqué" lurking at the image’s far right. Marx revels in the way brutally simple brushstrokes scatter nostalgia like confetti: here, Communiqué’s iconic envelope floats above a horizon rendered not with photorealist polish, but with intentionally awkward slabs of color—a beachside telegram rewritten in a language only MS Paint diehards truly speak. Marx’s verdict: this lo-fi tribute breaks the fourth wall of album cover art, planting a rebel flag right where pixel fandom and deep-cut vinyl crate-digging meet. Against a sea of corporate polish and collector gloss, this piece pulses with DIY defiance and a wink toward the infinite remixability of music culture’s most mythic images.<<
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>>When Mediocrity Invades: A Dire Straits "Communiqué" Desecration
By Reginald Thornberry III - Professional Destroyer of Dreams
It has come to my attention—through the algorithmic cesspool that is Google Image Search—that some philistine with access to Microsoft Paint has committed what can only be described as an artistic war crime against Dire Straits' 1979 masterpiece album cover, "Communiqué."
There it sits, in the far right of the search results, like a rash among dermatological specimens: a crude, childish recreation that makes one question whether humanity's opposable thumbs were truly an evolutionary advantage.
Where the original cover featured the understated elegance of a solitary figure on a beach—a meditation on isolation and connection—this MS Paint abomination offers what appears to be the death throes of a drunk toddler's first encounter with a computer mouse. The water looks less like the North Sea and more like someone spilled a bucket of blue paint mixed with window cleaner. The sky suggests the artist discovered the gradient tool approximately thirty seconds before giving up entirely on artistic merit.
Most egregiously, this digital vandalism now appears alongside legitimate vintage posters, 8-track memorabilia, and signed collectibles—as if the algorithm itself has lost all capacity for shame or discernment.
To the perpetrator: I have seen finger paintings in hospital waiting rooms with more compositional integrity. I have witnessed refrigerator art from five-year-olds that demonstrated a firmer grasp of color theory. Your creation doesn't merely fail to honor Dire Straits—it actively argues against the democratization of artistic tools.
The fact that this... thing... has invaded search results meant for actual artifacts of musical history is precisely why I maintain that not everyone deserves access to creative software. Some people should be restricted to pencils. Dull ones. Without erasers.
Rating: 0/10 - Would rate lower if mathematically possible.
I'm raising my wine glass (a 1982 Château Latour, if you must know—worth more than whatever device this was created on) to the original album cover designers, whose work now must share digital space with this tragedy.
P.S. - To Google's search algorithm: Do better. This is an insult to indexing.
Reginald Thornberry III currently accepting consulting offers from search engines wishing to implement taste-based filtering.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Last month, Thornberry was escorted from the Louvre after loudly declaring the Mona Lisa "an overrated portrait of a woman who clearly needs better skincare advice" and suggesting the museum would be better served "hanging a well-polished mirror in its place." He maintains that Da Vinci's sfumato technique is "just fancy fog" and that the enigmatic smile is "more likely indigestion than mystery."
When asked about Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, he merely sniffed and said, "Ceiling art is for people who can't afford proper wall space." He has been banned from fourteen museums across three continents.<<
>>Regina Pembly:
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