Textual analysis of an album cover

Textual Analysis of an album cover.

This is the album cover for Nirvanas second studio album released in September 1991.

This Album cover is one of the most famous and recognisable album covers of all time.

Nirvana is an American rock band formed in the late 80s early 90s. This album cover was designed by the bands front man Kurt Cobain and art director Robert Fisher.

The cover is very simplistic with a plain non distracting background of the pool. This focuses the attention on the two key aspects of the cover the baby and the dollar bill on a fishing hook.  Then the album has the band’s name in the bands recognisable font and the title of the album underneath in like a wavy font to represent being under water. The bands font used for their name is used as it is instantly recognisable even though there is no other visual reference to the band.

The cover is a strange photograph not usually a style that is represented by the American rock genre. However I believe there to be an underlying meaning or two to the photograph. First of all the baby is naked which I believe to mean that in life everyone starts out equal and then society and upbringing mould them into the people that they are going to be in the future.

Second there is a dollar bill hung from a fishing hook in front of the baby I also believe that this means that as soon as a baby is born its life is ran and dictated by money and that it will spend the rest of its life trying to catch it but as represented by the hook it is a trap and can result in a lot of things going wrong.

Due to the album being very different from normal conventions especially due to it it featuring a 3 month old baby’s penis. I believe is why they used it. It makes it memorable and creates a little buzz around the band and the album so people buy it to see what it’s all about.