Classic 90's Albums With Recognizable Cover Art

Some of us miss the ’90s. Who didn’t love visiting record stores, scanning all those beautiful album covers for your favorite artists, and perhaps listening to a few tracks on public headphones? The coolest part was taking the album home and listening as you read through the lyrics, band photos, and bonus material.

Dozens of album covers defined the decade, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, to the downright controversial.

1. Michael Jackson: Dangerous (1991)

Michael Jackson’s artwork throughout his celebrated (albeit controversial) career went between wholesome portraits and surrealist collages. Artist Mark Ryden worked for many months on the Dangerous cover painting, which consisted of a detailed mashup featuring several scenarios, hidden meanings, and absurdist humor. With Jackson’s piercing eyes peering from above through a gilded viewing mask, he looks at a gold-plated tapestry of animal monarchs and intricate oddities. At the bottom is an industrial underworld flanked by an entrance and exit for a gondola ride carrying a young Michael and his chimp, Bubbles. Ryden said his inspiration was Jackson’s “Leave Me Alone” video — another weird ride into Jackson’s bizarre soul.

2. Nirvana: Nevermind (1991)

The first album many think of with this decade is Nirvana’s iconic Nevermind album cover with its swimming baby. The question is, which song do you hear when you see the underwater baby chasing the dollar bill? In 2022, the infant was hired for the shoot, and now a man named Spencer Elden sued the band in 2022, claiming he was unable to consent, because of his age. His lawsuit was unsuccessful.

3. Rage Against the Machine: Rage Against the Machine (1992)

Sometimes, album art can be subtle — á la Pink Floyd’s art sculptures and natural backgrounds. Then there’s Rage Against the Machine’s debut album cover. This sleeve shows the famous self-immolation of Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc at a busy Saigon intersection. The image of a devout man ablaze was a fitting metaphor for the record’s raging musical polemic, itself a protest against centralized government persecution and oppression.

4. R.E.M. Automatic For The People (1992)

Artist Chris Bilheimer worked for many years with the Athens, Georgia supergroup, and his stark cover of the curiously titled Automatic for the People was both odd and striking. At first glance, it appears to be some kind of sea mine suspended in mid-air, but it’s actually a photograph of a famous star that once protruded from the Sindbad Hotel in Miami. The hotel was eventually demolished after hurricane damage.

5. Nas: Illmatic (1994)

When he arrived on the hip-hop scene, Nas changed the game, bringing a cerebral, prophetic rhyming style and understated coolness. His debut album, Illmatic charted well on the Billboard 200, although it never reached the commercial success its critical reception warranted. The album cover shows a real-life photo of a seven-year-old Nas (aka Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones) dissolved into a bleak shot of his native Queens. Nas’s facial expression betrays an innocence destroyed by living in a deadly, neglected corner of urban America.

6. DJ Shadow: Endtroducing (1996)

This record-breaking album has been on my playlist since its release in 1996. Endtroducing came at a great time for home-musician nerds who loved collecting vinyl records to use as samples for their latest experimental Cubase mashup. The album cover captures the man himself in a Sacramento record store, sifting through some records. Josh Davis would have no idea he was inspring a generation of would-be turntablists and composers to do the same.

7. Radiohead: OK Computer (1997)

Radiohead understands the connection between album imagery and the music within, and OK Computer is arguably their most iconic artwork. In any case, the artwork is probably the most recognizable due to the album’s huge success. Record executives at EMI weren’t sure the album would sell so well. Nevertheless, the record went stratospheric across Britain, Europe, and the United States, making the front cover a part of the ’90s zeitgeist. The artwork’s abstractionist super highway scene with the words “Lost Child” stenciled in duplicate above and the giant “X” add an ambiguous contrast to the clean white background. The concept album’s tone matches the cover’s distorted weirdness.

8. Buena Vista Social Club: Buena Vista Social Club (1997)

One of the sweetest musical stories from the ’90s was the emergence of the Cuban Jazz phenomenon Buena Vista Social Club, with its timeless album cover. The photograph is a perfect snapshot of band member Ibrahim Ferrer, one of 16 musicians assembled for the recording sessions. The photo perfectly contrasts shadow and sunshine in a Havana sidestreet. It captures Ferrer’s moment of cool reflection as he strolled down the sidewalk, unaware of any photographer. The sky-blue ’50s Chevy in the background sits half in shadow — a throwback to pre-communist Cuba and every bit as cool as Ferrer himself.

9. Air: Moon Safari (1998)

At the commercial coalface of ’90s electro music was French duo Air, with their brand of soft synth, vocoder-heavy, and ambiance-infused chill-pop. Air’s breakthrough record was Moon Safari, and the album art depicted musicians Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel in black pen washed with watercolors. Amusingly, the “AIR” title features a subliminal “French Band” written down its side — a sarcastic stab at how Anglo-Saxon musical audiences had often dismissed French acts in the past, perhaps?

10. Red Hot Chili Peppers: Californication (1999)

Among the bands with ’90s immortality is Los Angeles quartet Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose brand of funk rock brought them multi-platinum success. Californication is arguably the band’s best work, with Rick Rubin producing and the band at full power with the return of quarterback lead-guitarist John Frusciante. The album cover is a simple augmented photo of a swimming pool, reflecting a fiery sky instead of water; the background is ocean instead of sky. Designer Lawrence Azerrad explains the image’s inspiration on his website: “John Frusciante had a dream, and in this dream, there was a pool where the water was in the sky, and the sky was in the water.”