The image on the album's distinctive purple cover was painted by artist Patrick Nagel. The band, not the label, had creative control over their brand identity and worked with independent collaborators rather than the EMI label art department to create the distinctive visual style of Rio. The cover is best known for the iconic cover illustration by Patrick Nagel of a striking woman in his trademark style-"elegant and sophisticated, alluring but cool, stark but sensual, mysterious, contradictory, and utterly contemporary"-the quintessential 1980s woman. In 2003, VH1 ranked Rio twenty-second on its list of the "50 Greatest Album Covers." In 2020, Billboard magazine ranked it twenty-first. Rio has been acclaimed as one of the greatest album covers of all time. Nick Rhodes on the legacy of Patrick Nagel's cover illustration for Rio "I think has aged rather beautifully, like the Mona Lisa of the 1980s." Rhodes likened the name to Brazilian carnival-colorful, seductive and welcoming–that would become major themes of Rio 's sound and visuals. "And yet when we came back to Birmingham, the idea of exotica-and exotic travel-was Rio." Taylor, who had never left England before, was taken by the glamour and excitement of the road which included stops in Los Angeles, New York, Paris and Berlin.
John Taylor came up with the album's title in 1981 during the band's non-stop worldwide tour in support of their debut album.
The recording of the album also included the use of various sound effects such as tapes played in reverse (the opening of " Rio"), the sound of ice cubes dropped into a glass and excerpts from a BBC recording of nature sounds ("The Chauffeur"). "The Chauffeur" is an all-electronic piece, aside from ocarina, created by Nick Rhodes with lyrics and vocals by Simon Le Bon. The intense "Hold Back the Rain" was edited down from the original almost ten-minute recording. "New Religion" has been described as containing "a rapping, schizophrenic Le Bon in conversation with a funky rhythm section". The ballad "Save a Prayer" was built around a delicate and complex sequencer track. On the song "Lonely in Your Nightmare" John Taylor plays fretless bass to give the bass a more melodic sound. The band experimented with different sounds to record the album. The rest of the album was recorded in the winter of 1982 at AIR Studios in London with producer and engineer Colin Thurston. It was re-recorded for the album with a significantly different arrangement and production. The single version had a production influenced by disco and American R&B. "My Own Way" was originally released as a single in November 1981, with "Like an Angel" as the B-side. The first songs recorded for Rio were demo recordings of "Last Chance on the Stairway", " My Own Way", "New Religion", " Hungry Like the Wolf", and "Like an Angel", all recorded at EMI's Manchester Square studio in August 1981, along with demos of "The Chauffeur", " Save a Prayer", and "Lonely in Your Nightmare" recorded by engineer Bob Lamb at his home studio.
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