ok, i figured it out, but why is this necessary? the rest of my library shows the cover art without going thru the internet. only the albums i recently added required this. isn't there an automatic means of doing this?
Are you adding them from files or via ripping?
They should be looked up automatically upon ripping.
If you are just adding files, other apps may or may not store cover art in the file's tag.
iTunes for instance does not, it just stores it in it's database.
MC will do that, and also optionally store it in the file tag so you won't need to do that again in the future with other apps for example.
If you have a bunch file files that you imported, you can look under the playlists->smartlists->Audio --Missing cover art
select them all
and do the right-click get cover art from internet option
that will do them all at once.