Really, Rolling Stone?

Truth be told, Rolling Stone is probably my favorite magazine, and I have a great amount of respect and admiration for Pink Floyd, so I'm bound to be overly critical of this April 2007 cover featuring the members.

I love the picture of the band. I'm a big fan of pictures in which each person is looking in a different direction. However, the rest looks like a cheesy montage I might have created when I was a bored sixteen-year-old just learning Adobe Photoshop.

I get the flying pig (a reference to "Pigs on the Wing" from their 1977 album, Animals). And it's a cute idea in theory. But just look at the subhead: "How Madness and Excess Destroyed the Legendary Band." "Madness," "Destroyed," "Legendary"— these are pretty powerful words. The piece sounds tragic and dark - a stark contrast from the cheesy graphics added to an otherwise decent picture of the band. And flames in the background? Are they serious?

I'm also not a fan of the stamp in the top right corner. Come on now, Rolling Stone, you could have found a better spot to place a blurb about JFK than covering the headline (like the pig already does) and the songwriter's forehead.

My problems is that the graphics just don't match the tone of an article about the downfall of such an influential band. I understand the nature of celebrity news, and that Rolling Stone doesn't have to be straightforward and objective - qualities we might attribute more to the New York Times. But it is a fairly reputable music magazine, and I think this page just didn't reach its artistic potential.

So do you think the layout added novelty and color, or did it simply make the cover look cheesy?