3 cover stories in our archive
Behind the Covers' archive includes 3 album covers documented under the "alternative" design theme, all from the 1990s. These covers sit within the alternative, rock tradition and feature work by Fiona Apple, Ben Folds Five, PJ Harvey. Each entry below includes the cover artwork, the designers and photographers behind it, and a short story about the visual choices that defined the release.
The cover of Fiona Apple's When the Pawn... is inseparable from the album's famously long title, a 90-word poem Apple wrote after reading hostile letters about herself in SPIN. Apple is credited with the cover-art concept and design, turning the sleeve into part portrait, part rebuttal, and part declaration of control over how she would be seen.
Ben Folds Five's debut looks less like a polished major-label campaign than something assembled around a piano: snapshots, handwritten marks and the instrument that made a guitarless trio such an anomaly in 1995 alternative rock. Alexandria Searls is credited for the album's photography. Thirty years later, the cover has fresh relevance as the band reunites around an expanded anniversary edition built from a long-lost first attempt at the record.
PJ Harvey's Rid of Me cover was made in photographer Maria Mochnacz's tiny Bristol bathroom, in total darkness, with a flash and barely enough room for the camera. Harvey's soaked hair became a sculptural arc across the frame. When Island suggested cleaning up the wall, drips and plant, Mochnacz refused. The imperfections were the point.