![]() Its visual complexity was at odds with the way in which fans were consuming music at the time, and is a curious exception in the evolution of the album cover which tends to mirror the changing formats and consumption methods of the time. The timing for such an aesthetic switch was curious: by the early 90s, music formats had shrunk from the larger canvas of vinyl to cassettes and then to CDs, so trying to spot the artwork’s myriad of hidden treasures – Jackson’s monkey Bubbles, the plasters he wore on his fingers, the minuscule picture of him from the 1984 Grammys – on a tiny cassette cover was like a game of Where’s Wally. It represented a massive departure from the simpler, more posed artwork of Jackson’s previous albums (1987’s Bad was just him, a snazzy zipped jacket and some red spray paint). I was equally obsessed with the artwork an intricately detailed, multi-layered tableau created by artist Mark Ryden over six months. Given to me as a present on Christmas Day, 1991, I played the cassette constantly on a chunky Walkman and subjected my family to repeated plays on long car journeys. The first album I properly owned was Michael Jackson’s Dangerous.
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