“Never judge a book by its cover” is easier said than done, especially when the cover is specifically designed to give readers a glimpse into the contents contained within the pages.

In some cases, a cover can be so bad, it unintentionally forces someone to skip right past it. Or it could be so brilliant that it entices someone to pick up a book that they might not have ordinarily. The same rings true for a music album cover.

"Album art serves as a visual representation of the music contained within. It provides listeners with an initial glimpse into the style, mood and atmosphere of the music," notes international design promotion organization Good Design Australia. "A well-designed cover can effectively convey the essence of the artist’s vision and create a strong connection between the music and the audience."

Before the release of the Nevermind album, Nirvana was an unknown band to millions of people. And while there’s no doubt it was their unique, non-conforming, grunge rock sounds that shot the band to superstardom, many experts agree that the album cover played a part in their instant success.

Just as Nirvana's music lives on, long after the death of their frontman Kurt Cobain, so too does that iconic album cover. It features a baby swimming towards a one-dollar note, dangling on a fishing hook in front of him.

Robert Fisher is the man behind the design of the cover. “I remember the first time I saw it with all the type on it and everything … it was perfect. I was so happy with it," he said. "When I showed the final cover for the first time to the band and management, they loved it and didn’t have a single change. Nirvana was such a great band and the two together just made magic I guess.”

“It was a great concept—a baby underwater, unable to breathe, going after money on a fishhook," the photographer Kirk Weddles told Time magazine.

The cover was so legendary that it now features in the Museum of Modern Art’s collection and has been recreated time and again. One of those recreations was carried out in 2016, 25 years after the release of Nevermind, and featured the now-adult baby that was on the original cover.

“The anniversary means something to me. It’s strange that I did this for five minutes when I was 4 months old and it became this really iconic image,” Spencer Elden told the New York Post.

Elden's parents were reportedly paid $200 for the baby's image to be used on Nirvana's album cover. The shoot took a few seconds and the album went on to sell 30 million copies. It's a bitter pill to swallow for the man who went on to work as an artist.

As an adult, he believes he wasn't fairly compensated for his part in the raging success of the album, and he believes his rights were violated when he was photographed nude at the age of 4 months.

“It’s hard not to get upset when you hear how much money was involved,” he once told Time magazine. “[When] I go to a baseball game and think about it: ‘Man, everybody at this baseball game has probably seen my little baby p*nis,’ I feel like I got part of my human rights revoked.”

The album cover made headlines decades after the original shoot, when Elden took his grievance to court. He sued Nirvana and record label Universal Music Group in 2021, accusing them of exploiting him and causing him continuing personal harm. A district judge dismissed the case because Elden didn't sue within a 10-year limitations period after learning of the cover.

In December 2023, a unanimous panel reversed that ruling. "The appeals court said that Elden could still sue based on Nirvana’s republication of the cover more recently, including in a rereleased version of Nevermind from 2021," reported the Guardian at the time.

While the cover was considered iconic, and played a big part in Nirvana's album sales, it also ended up being controversial, and part of a serious criminal case, highlighting just how much forethought needs to go into design and execution of an album cover. And perhaps proving that maybe sometimes you can, in fact, judge a book - or album - by its cover.