An In-Depth Analysis of Nirvana’s Nevermind Album Cover

Nirvana means the release from the cycle of life and death, representing the final goal of Buddhism. There also is a band with the same name Nirvana. It might sound unfamiliar to the majority of the 20s now days. They were the band that created a huge impact to the 90s making alternative rock famous around the world. The 80s and 90s were when commercial rock was popular, when artists forgot what “real rock” was creating slow rock and pop metal on and on. I might as well add that if it was not Nirvana, rock might have been music as classic, leading higher entry barriers for people to actually enjoy the music. The album cover that I chose was Nirvana’s cover for 1991, the Nevermind album cover. It is one of the famous covers for the band because of its unique appearance. This cover shows a child reaching out for a dollar inside a swimming pool.

Before starting my analysis about this cover, a fun fact about this cover is that the child, Spencer Elden, received 200 dollars for modeling this picture. The kid was the son of the album photographer’s friend and the picture was simply created by throwing up a baby into the swimming pool. The cover might look funny for the majority of people, but by starting to think about the cultural background in those ages, it would be easier to understand the whole story. As described before, the 1980s was a dull period for rock. Pop metal and glam metal were the usual music that were popular at that time, and heavy metal was at its peak. However, some people started to express that the rock music was not as usual. It was not “true music”anymore, but more like commercial music showing familiar, obvious verses and actions. Artists no longer thought about how to make the audience joyful, but to go in higher pitches and to talk about the same boring love story. Nirvana was a rebellion to this period. They represented the new era trying to end the dull rock music that had been dragged from the 80s. Also, Nirvana was the band that refused the popular style of rock recreating their own style of rock called alternative rock. It was a new style of rock that had lyrics of anti social actions and resisted against the mainstream.

The album cover clearly showed what they have meant. The cover of “Nevermind” shows a baby inside a pool staring at a dollar. What I felt was that the three figures in the picture was symbolic standing for different things. The baby stands for the band Nirvana, a new born band in this era. The pool symbolizing the ocean, shows the band’s musical theory, alternative rock. The dollar stands money and fame which the baby is staring at. What I thought for this was Nirvana’s spirit only staring at the dollar not trying to grab for it. Overall the album cover clearly showed what the band was passionate about, portraying Nirvana’s beliefs inside music throughout the picture.

Kurt Cobain, Nirvana’s guitarist and vocal played a big role in this cover too. Kurt lived a gloomy life in the past going through adversity and hard life due to their poor family and his aggressive father. Kurt’s only way for standing out and relieving stress was by music. By looking at Kurt’s background information, I think that people could easily catch out what Kurt wanted to explain using the cover. The baby can be Kurt himself, doing the things he want(music in this case), and earning the money without actually trying to. The dollar could be Kurt’s own thoughts about money, since the baby was only watching for the dollar not actually grabbing it. A sad fact is that Kurt committed suicide and got addicted to cocaine after the success of this album because he did not intend for this type of music to get popular. By giving in this kind of album cover, the band Nirvana clearly drew the public’s attention towards alternative rock.

The cover was aimed for the 20~40s which were the majority of the ages who liked to listen to the 90s popular music: rock. Nirvana succeeded in making people think that it was a big impact to destroy the dull ordinary culture in order to recreate their own music by simply giving out a revolutionary album cover leading toward their own music. Some people said that the dollar and the baby meant the modern society of men thriving toward money. Modern men were being controlled by money, and the string connected to the dollar showed that there was a huge group that moved the money around the world. Different kind of messages were shown inside the album cover for Nevermind. Some parts might be true and some parts might be people over exaggerating facts that the band did not intend to. But, the album cover did succeed in its own purpose; 30 million covers were sold making the band Nirvana rich and also earn the fame. Nirvana’s new style of music, alternative rock, became the popular genre in the 1990s changing the original meta dull commercial heavy rock. The band finally accomplished their own name Nirvana. Instead of getting released from the cycle of life and death, the band gave the society the release from the old fashioned dull rock.

To conclude, Nirvana’s album Nevermind, gave in huge visual impacts throughout the world. They not only changed the 80~90s popular type of rock, but also gave in a clear different type of rock: alternative rock, to change the world. Even though people might say that it was their music that truly turned the world upside-down, I still want to add that Nevermind’s creative album cover played a big role in this.