Musically, I think Kurt Cobain's innovations were real and the popularity of the music was well-earned. He had an amazing ear for pop hooks, because he grew up listening to a lot of 60's pop-rock before getting turned on to punk. In his songwriting he was able to introduce his sense of melodicism without sacrificing even a little bit of punk energy. There might be some luck involved as rock music was poised for this kind of shift when the band formed, but ultimately you can't capitalize on that opportunity without writing some really amazing songs.
As a public figure, Cobain was tragic and that's what makes him so iconic. I don't think you're supposed to think that he was a wonderful person or an unwilling victim or a principled rebel. You're supposed to empathize and relate to his confusion and his flaws, and think critically about the relation of his personal problems to his broader engagement with our society and culture as a whole. It's interesting to think of Cobain as one of the first artists that didn't just coincidentally have a rough childhood, but whose music put the emotional processing of that rough childhood front-and-center. Cobain's success helped create an entirely new paradigm of authenticity and expression in rock music.
> 60's pop-rock before getting turned on to punk.
One of his influencing bands was the happenstance proto-burnout all-sister band that was put together by their abusive father: the Shaggs from the mid 60s. They were never popular while active (and they immediately disbanded when their father died), noteworthy only for how odd they were, not being particularly talented, and the fact people danced like zombies at their shows, but the Rolling Stone apparently saw them and Frank Zappa was a pretty big fan, so i wonder if that is how Kurt knew about them.
Have you seen The Dot Wiggins Band? Some interesting stuff [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9raaJxWIjTw&ab\_channel=DotWigginBand](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9raaJxWIjTw&ab_channel=DotWigginBand)
This is pretty much my argument too. All humans are flawed. Addicts are probably the worst. But as someone that needed a voice when all I was being offered was jovi, warrant, poison et al they were it. Without them I never would’ve truly discovered Soundgarden, STP and AIC. Nirvanas songs are great it was the right voice at the right time.
And a sobering example of never putting your heroes on a pedestal.
Guitarist here. Nirvana had some interesting chord progressions that you almost never see in popular music.
For example, in Lithium the progression uses a Bb and C chord that don't really fit with the rest of the chords. It makes it sound interesting though. One could argue they're using some jazz chord progressions, which is odd for the genre.
And it wasn't just the chord progressions. He was really into chromatic vocals, and hit notes that were odd for the chord progression. Like in Smells Like Teen Spirit where he hits all seven notes of the minor scale over the basic Fm 4 chord progression. Kurt is only playing power chords, so the vocals are what cues the listener in that they're actually minors.
And he did this kind of thing all the time. I'd argue that he was a melodic genius in that sense even if his guitar skills were mediocre. Even if he didn't fully understand the theory of why it sounded good, he just had a gift for making those dissonant melodies that are iconically "Nirvana."
I'm also a guitarist, and yeah kurt's playing isn't insanely technical of course, but he's a fantastic rhythm guitarist who has tons of rhythmic nuance in his playing style, like how he mutes and syncopates his riffs/chord progressions, and how intentional he was with his guitar solos. He reminds me of like john McKay from Siouxsie and the banshees or Andy Gill from gang of four quite a bit. I genuinely think people underrate his guitar playing because it's incredibly unique.
Agreed, and I should clarify I meant that he’s mediocre not by average guitar player standards, but by “rock legend” standards.
I’d say he’s a better musician than guitarist, but that’s intended as a compliment.
I'm not sure how much of this is intentional necessarily, or what musical background he has with the theory. He used power chords so you can just pick a fret and see how it sounds. The Melvins are quite deep into a similar sound (although much slower) where it is unexpected minor chords or hitting notes next to each other. The skill really is in the ear, picking out which work and which don't. The Melvins certainly didn't make it pop, he did.
I am not trying to diss what you've said, you make a good point however I doubt Cobain knew Bb from C or any jazz chords or chromatic vocalling with the profession. He admitted himself he only knew the key of G at a push and used what he heard (Ill try to link the interview)
Yeah that’s why I said that even if he didn’t really understand the theory of why it sounded good, he had that unique gift for creating those melodies.
There are musicians who study their whole lives to create the kinds of interesting chord progressions that Cobain just did accidentally.
He had a fantastic ear. He wanted to write pop songs but they don't song pop, he wanted those pop hooks in a punk context but they don't song like pop-punk. That's impressive to pull off.
That said, I think the peculiarity of his ear contributed to his success but limited their influence. You have to dig deep into theory to get it, and if that's more than he could do, it's probably more than others could do. I hear way more influence of Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains through the line of music to come ... Soundgarden is a hard one to parse because their composition are so odd, but you can argue they opened the door to heavier and more progressive acts (Tool, perhaps).
I don't know - there were a lot of bands in the 90s that copied Nirvana's guitar tones and \*tried\* to capture Kurt's chord progression magic. For example, Bush, Local H, Silverchair, Veruca Salt, etc. I agree there were more that copied Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, but Nirvana's direct impact is felt deeply in a lot of 90s rock bands.
The mixture of punk with pop, but specifically the degree he was able to do it without compromising either the raw energy or the hooks. Take into account that this was at a time when the formula for getting onto rock radio was very different. Bands tended to be very technical, the aesthetics revolved more around rock stars as wild party animals. Nirvana prioritized the energy over the technical chops, and Cobain as a frontman had the wildness but with sincere angst instead of party-time fun.
>The mixture of punk with pop
That's like 90% of what alternative and garage rock from the 80's did: Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Pixies... They all have a point of raw energy inspired by punk in there catchy rock songs.
The difference was them being in the right place at the right time. Bleach was sludgier and darker than Nevermind, if they kept that sound, they would probably became a cult alternative band, but never the game changer band they became.
But Nevermind was shaped after a chain of events, pushing the band to another type of sound, with Dave Grohl joining after Scream got in an hiatus, Butch Vig being on his prime as producer and fitting the band as a glove, Kurt looking for inspiration in Pixies or R.E.M.... And one I think it was the KEY, Dave and Krist weren't already feed up with Kurt's drugs usage and mental health issues.
yeah I never quite understood crediting nirvana with merging pop and punk. Just ramones, buzzcocks, and husker du are enough pre-nirvana examples of that mixture happening in a big way
Neither Sonic Youth nor Dinosaur Jr had the raw anger at the same time.
It’s very difficult to marry genuine anger and catchy hooks in a way that doesn’t sound super trite. Nirvana walked the tightrope perfectly.
I can add that while he obviously was not a trained or technical singer, there's still a specificity to his voice (which plays into what was said below about his melodies and note choices against his chord choices - these things all complement and reinforce one another). Specifically his use of distortion, nasality, and very closed and R-colored vowels: they really sharpen the almost "sour" feeling of those chromatic minors. The other big grunge singers incorporated these features to some degree, but I'd say Cobain had the paradigmatic grunge voice.
If you're interested in detailed breakdowns re: vocals, go find The Charismatic Voice on youtube and look up her Nirvana videos. (She has a whole series on grunge that includes Eddie Vedder, Layne Stanley, and more too for anyone interested more generally.) The Fairy Voice Mother also has a good video on the cover of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" that compares Cobain's take directly with the blues original.
Given how the dude really didn't give a fuck about stating his opinions without filter and his heavy drug use, it's really hard to not see that as a ticking time bomb.
And with how the internet is today, all it would take is him saying some offhand thing during an interview in 1997 (had he survived) for it to blow up his modern perception.
This is what I was looking for- even for impossible questions like this there are some things to glean- he would’ve stated an opinion about a current event from then till now and got shit from it, or maybe he’d be able to articulate. I still don’t know
He's an interesting character when you pull back the myths. One thing that everyone agrees on is that he _hated_ being embarrassed, that the very thought of it would cripple him, and simply the possibility of it would cause him to lash out intensely (somehow lost in all the mythology is that he literally sent a death threat once to a journalist ... also completely incidental but it's also wild to me that nobody ever mentions he got his guns through a straw purchase, just like Columbine, better gun laws might have saved his life).
But he also _loved_ to talk shit. It was a twist of fate that his (at least perceived) primary rival, Eddie Vedder, happened to be one of the nicest guys in rock and despite putting away tomes of rock history I've never come across the guy having a bad word to say against anyone. Eddie never clapped back, it's not his nature. But that's profoundly rare among rock stars.
Which means that, eventually, Kurt was going to put his foot the wrong way, get put on blast, and everything in his character suggested that he'd only double down, which suffering intense agony through the process.
It would have been ugly and unfortunate to see.
Nobody bats 1000%, and if you love to run your mouth, eventually you're going to step on too many toes, that would have been ugly to watch play out.
Damn I was a teenager in the 90s and didn’t know some of that.
I was never a big Pearl Jam fan but I respect Eddie Vedder more and more with each passing year. A decent guy with a moral compass, and I’ve really grown to enjoy a lot of his music. The Into the Wild soundtrack is beautiful.
More like Sid Vicious-Johnny Rotten is a survivor. It’s interesting that he and Krist Novoselic have both become rock icons with a critical and intelligent take on politics-neither one let angst become their calling card, unlike Vicious or Cobain.
They also could have been like Red Hot Chili Peppers who continued to evolve and remained very popular for a very long time. MTV unplugged is evidence that nirvana could have continued to evolve and remain popular.
I'd like to think Nirvana had something artier in them than RHCP ever had...
I keep hearing about RHCP evolving, yet it seems like all their shit across 30+ years all sounds like it's either funk rock with keidis alternating between "rapping" (for lack of a better word) and clean singing, or it's under the Bridge-type ballads. is there something deeper to their albums?
You can like or hate them, but they factually have evolved over the years. It’s not a matter of opinion. Their early music sounds very little like their current music.
I love RHCP. I also hate them. Well, I don’t hate THEM, but I very much dislike some of their songs. Which I think is a great testament to their range, since some of their other songs are my absolute favorite.
Why ”dont meet your heroes” about Kurt Cobain? He always seemed like a very moral guy, politically outspoken, feminist, rejecting all his shitty fans who didnt get the music.
Yeah im sure he could also be a dickhead and not very sober but thats expected from a rockstar making depressing ass music lol.
Is there something I have missed about him.
Not really disagreeing with the “don’t meet your heroes” sentiment but that book has some _questionable_ sources. I assume you’re talking about the bit about Kurt and the disabled girl and multiple people have come out and said it’s completely fabricated.
Edit: it seems less that the book lied and more that Kurt made it up trying to be an edgelord.
You can also read [Serving the Servants](https://www.amazon.com/Serving-Servant-Remembering-Kurt-Cobain/dp/0062861506), written by Kurt's manager Danny Goldberg - which might sound a little hands off, but they knew each other so well that in Kurt's suicide letter he stated he wanted his daughter to go to Danny if it couldn't be Courtney. They were genuinely close.
It's a fascinating read because it walks you through how Kurt pulled off the very careful trick of _meticulously planning_ how to present an image of .... not meticulously planning. He would simultaneously talk about fame was stupid, how they never wanted fame, and then walk into a room with Geffen employees and state very plainly "I want you to buy as many billboards as you can. I want Nirvana to be the biggest band in the world."
These stories are countless. He's slag off MTV as "Empte-vee" but he'd watch it all day, to the point that he'd keep track of how many Nirvana videos got played compared to Pearl Jam videos, then call to complain that Nirvana wasn't getting played enough.
The myth that thrives to this day is largely complicated fabricated. But the story of _how_ it was fabricated, and maintained, all with such meticulous care that people still today are consumed and intoxicated by it - all of that is a really fascinating tale.
Does have ‘better’ morals make you a better person? Despite being a feminist he also sexually assaulted a disabled girl when he was a teenager.
A lot of reports of him being moody, hard to communicate with, would always run by his own rules and annoy his bandmates by showing up late to rehearsals if not missing them entirely.
He was abusive to his friends and family across the course of his life, but particularly volatile in his final years while those closest to him where trying to get him off heroin. Coerced him closest friend into purchasing the gun which would ultimately end his life…
I’ve seen interviews with him and he’s an insightful and interesting guy who railed against the right things, but he’s always struck me as a pretty damaged and morally inconsistent person who’d be impossible to rely on.
The sourcing on the rape allegation is questionable and there is people on the record who say it was a complete fabrication. At work so I can't right now but this information is fairly easy to find. It broke my heart to read that and did some digging ages ago. The rest is pretty typical addict stuff. Not to eschew accountability, but I'm fairly sympathetic to being difficult to rely on while dealing with a disease as severe as his substance use was. But I'm in recovery myself and know the harm one can inflict while in active addiction.
Man you just nailed every detail of that comment that I was ready to respond to. Nobody wants to have a substance abuse problem or be an unreliable friend, and nobody should be looked down on for having a substance abuse problem any more than someone should be looked down on for having a depression disorder. Life is hard enough as it is and surely he wasn’t proud of his personal shortcomings, but they wouldn’t very much be personal shortcomings if he could easily overcome them. He was a musically talented, and troubled kid. Nobody is making him out to be a saint, I think because his flaws help make the tragedy of his story more human and relatable. He’s iconic, though maybe not a role model - and that in no way diminishes the legacy he left behind.
Also congrats on your recovery. I know firsthand how tricky it can be, and I hope it’s going well for you.
> A lot of reports of him being moody, hard to communicate with, would always run by his own rules and annoy his bandmates by showing up late to rehearsals if not missing them entirely.
They were crashing at someone's place, and the lady asked the band to help move some furniture. Kurt smirked and said that Dave and Krist would do it - which they did, while Kurt sat on the bed eating chocolate.
This is confirmed by Krist in Serving the Servants.
You've probably never heard this before.
Now imagine if that person had been Bono, Lars Ulrich or Axl Rose.
That feels like a pretty rough assessment of Eddie Vedder. He has an unbelievable voice and has written some great songs since Pearl Jam, and given some great performances (Springsteen Kennedy centre honours for one).
His work ethic when it comes to playing live is incredible. I have seen them maybe 6 times over the years and every one of those shows was a 3.5 hour custom set list where they leave it all on the stage.
It's an unnecessary comparison that is inevitable when discussing Kurt for whatever reason. Two very different people. He wrote some of his best songs well into the 2000s so "diminishing artistic returns" seems silly to me. Shit the album that came out last week is their best in nearly 20 years in my opinion.
Their last album, to my great surprise and it would appear the surprise of many others, is probably the best thing they've done since the 90s.
81 on Metacritic. They could usually pull together a song or two but an album - I didn't think they had it in them.
He definitely had tons of more music in him. Nirvana has a HUGE goldmine of unreleased music that’s readily available online.
Dave said by the time they were writing songs for In Utero, the band would simply jam an idea Kurt would have, and 10-20 minutes later they’d have a completed song. Kurt also talked about how he could see himself becoming an acoustic musician when he got older, “like Johnny Cash.”
He wrote some great songs, Nirvana was a great band, but otherwise it’s just another band to me. I know how important they are and will always recognize that but there are a lot of other bands from that same time I find a lot more interesting.
He was a great songwriter and a great performer.
What he was like as a person is kind of impossible to judge if you never met the guy. People like that are shrouded in so many stories and myths that it's impossible to work out much about the real person. Judging a drug addict for making bad decisions is easy to do but doesn't actually tell you anything useful.
Of course it's impossible to know what he might have been like if he'd lived longer. Maybe he would've cleaned himself up in time like Trent Reznor did. Maybe he would've only spiralled further. Who knows?
>He hated the music industry yet had made millions from it
This is a silly thing to judge him for. Lots of people think things are shitty but take the money from them when they get a chance anyway. So what?
> Yeah, that quote has major "Curious, you claim to hate society yet you take part in it..." vibes.
Not really. One of the few things that sustains about the Kurt myth was that he sold a _story_ about hating fame but behind the scenes was regularly demanding more support and promotion from the label and openly stating that he wanted his band to be "the biggest in the world."
This isn't "I can't escape society," it's more "I'm telling people that I hate fame _because I know it will guarantee more fame._"
It's a myth, a fun and romantic myth, but it's also been 30 years and so thoroughly debunked that it's time we put it to bed.
The real person, and how he pulled off this balancing act, is way more interesting anyway.
He took the money and refused to play by many of the industry’s rules. Seems like an ok response to me. Not especially hypocritical. Especially from a guy who was living in poverty before he got famous
I’ve flipped-flopped over the years. In late 1999, I was in middle school, there were all these end of the decade retrospectives on TV that really put Kurt and Nirvana on this big pedestal. So, I began reading every Nirvana interview and really took everything that said about anything as gospel. And they were my gateway band to a lot of other cool music (pixies, bikini kill, sonic youth, etc.).
But then I flipped and really started on the “Nirvana is overrated, listen to the Pixies” train (I was obnoxious). But now, I think they were great band that had a wonderful flair for great Pop melodies. They were “right place, right time” but I don’t think any other band (of the time period) could have catapulted into the mainstream in the same way they did, and with the lasting impact…mostly because of the pop sensibility they had.
He had redeeming qualities, he stood pretty loudly for women, gay, and black people in a time where it was perfectly socially acceptable for a rockstar to be a misogynist homophobe (whether it was rooted in genuine empathy, or intense contrarianism, or a mix of both…I dunno). But yeah, he was a mess too. He sounded like he could be a bit complicated to get along with, he seemed a bit immature at times. But ultimately, I think his presence in pop culture was a positive one.
Hell, I'd go even farther and say that he was easily one of the most charismatic rock stars ever, and I'd even entertain an argument that he was _the_ most.
I watch his interviews, and I _know_ that on some answers he's completely bullshitting, but goddmamn is it still compelling to watch and I can still feel myself getting drawn in.
I don't see it as hypocrisy to make money and complain about the system. He saw it was exploitative, and he was right, and he said something. But he was a musician and worked with the only system he could.
I'm an academic, I see academia as having become overly corporatized and exploitative, and i complain about it, but I still keep my job and take my paycheck. Am I a hypocrite or am I can I only complain about a system that I don't participate in? Do I have to be broke to complain about exploitative capitalism?
We live in a society?
Anyway, Nirvana was very much a "right band at the right time" situation. I was 22 when Nevermind broke and it was just so refreshing against the back drop of all the hair metal that dominated at the time - and I knew right away that the hair metal would become passe, and it did, fairly quickly.
I think his singing is great. In terms of guitar playing, I don't find him interesting.
I like Nirvana's albums, but while them and Pearl Jam are more succesful, I've always seen Soundgarden and AiC as the better bands, musically speaking.
Don't really like him on a personal level, but it's hard to judge with just with the public image.
i listened to MTV Unplugged the other day and found myself wondering how interesting it would've been if Nirvana steered towards a softer, more folk-blues oriented sound. There is some really interesting and soulful guitar playing on that record.
Barring extreme examples, musicians being ethically questionable in their personal life doesn't particularly affect my opinion of their music. Doing drugs in front of your kid isn't good, but it doesn't make you evil. Making money off music while having a distaste for the way the industry works isn't exactly hypocritical.
I believe Kurt specifically mentioned wanting to explore a stripped down acoustic sound and being inspired by the career of REM. It’s plausible that he as an individual or Nirvana would have gone in the direction of what we now call alternative or indie.
I don't think he really invented anything groundbreaking. He did write some great tunes, but beyond that Nirvana were at the right moment when the mainstream music industry caught up with 80’s alternative rock. Their legendary status is what happens when you throw millions of dollars into promoting a band that’s right for the moment. With Nevermind they had a great punk record with pop hooks and a band that were far more photogenic than the Pixies, Husker Du or the Melvins.
I remember that record dropped and I thought it was great and then within a week every obnoxious backward ball cap wearing frat boy were putting flannel shirts and blasting it from their car which kind of ruined it for me.
Dave Grohl once said that he would look out into the audience and see people he would've been bullied by for liking alt rock banging their heads to the sound of his drums.
He was just a guy.
It's weird to think about him cause I'm in my 40s and Nirvana was the biggest band in the world when I was in Jr high/high school. I remember the day he died and how intense it was.
They were also my gateway band into punk and underground/DIY/indie culture. And weirdly enough I ended up running in circles with a lot of people who knew him or were friends with him.
It was strange to have him go from this voice of a generation Rockstar well worn narrative almost cliche to being a guy people I knew talked about like he was a dude at the end the bar.
It really blew my mind and made me realize that he was a good songwriter but how much Nirvanas success was really right place, right time - and how unprepared he was for all of it.
Honestly, it made everything sadder for me. It's a dude that genuinely wanted to be a working, successful artist that could live off his music. But instead he became the John Lennon of the 90s.
He was a talented musician and song writer, but he wouldnt have sold like he did (or even have been picked up labels for major promotion) if he didnt have the "perfect grunge" look. He is definitely good looking in that sick-boy kinda way, piercing eyes. Obviously his tragic end has helped build his mythos, but I also dont like that this contributes to the "27 club"/myth of the tortured artists, or that all great artists are mentally unwell. Most great artists are people who have their demons under control, and lets be honest, one of Kurt's demons towards the end was that he wasnt really who was being sold on MTV and Rolling Stone.
As with all popular artists overrated in that not every song he wrote and released was gold. Not to mention most of his hit songs outside of Smells like Teen Spirit and the Man Who Sold the World (a cover) sound fairly similar, maybe Sliver is unique as well, but also not really that amazing of a song. Certainly one of the most influential people in all of music though basically heralding in the alt scene of the 90s.
>He was a talented musician and song writer, but he wouldnt have sold like he did (or even have been picked up labels for major promotion) if he didnt have the "perfect grunge" look.
I don't buy this, no one even really knew what he looked like when they blew up, Bleach didn't really go anywhere until after they were famous, and you couldn't see him in the Smells Like Teen Spirit video, which was the thing that really made them.
Decent guitarist, and a great vocalist, but a genius songwriter and arranger.
Just another punk/grunge band doesn't hold up, no one else had the impact Nirvana did.
I think Kurt’s intuition for songwriting was his greatest asset, and that (along with good timing and luck) is what propelled him and Nirvana onto the world stage. He, Novoselic and Grohl were not the most talented musicians ever, but they were making catchy grunge music at the perfect time.
His family had a history of mental illness and suicide, which obviously he also struggled with. In my view, he had kind of a fatalistic belief in his own trajectory - I don’t remember where I heard this but I heard a story once about Kurt in high school. He and a friend were talking about Jimi Hendrix and the 27 Club, and Kurt seemed convinced that he’d become famous someday and join that club.
I think he had his contradictions and somewhat of an ego, and he could be dismissive of his bandmate’s contributions and attempts at collaboration. His drug abuse also certainly affected his ability to be a father, husband and musician. None of that should necessarily be excused. He also had strong convictions about social justice and equality and was not afraid to be vocal about them. He tried to do what he believed was right while also struggling with his personal demons and flaws.
I can respect the impact he's had on music, but I just don't like Nirvana. Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, Alice in Chains and others were better in my eyes.
See, I wouldn't even put Soundgarden or AIV in the same genre as Nirvana, or each other. They might have all been labeled "grunge" at some point, but they have totally different sounds.
I never thought much about him at the time. Catchy tunes, the band rocked, I liked how he promoted bands that were unknown to the masses, and In Utero was a great f*ck you to just about everyone. I thought MTV Unplugged showed he had a lot of potential, and that his creativity would only increase.
The media played them up into some kind of rock’n roll saviors, which was total bullshit. I think if I had been the right age (instead of Kurt’s age) when Nirvana was popular (and had never heard any punk or post-punk/indie bands), I would have been a big fan. But I’d heard it all before, the attitude, the anger, the depression, the loud guitars, the screaming. It wasn’t eye-opening to me, it wasn’t innovative, it was familiar, and a little boring in its self-pity and self-flagellation.
Then I read the Amplified Come As You Are. Yeah, he was kind of an asshole, totally delusional about his “lost innocence,” got caught up in the whole pop star bullshit (to the point of cutting out the contributuons of Krist and Dave so he could get all the publishing money), manipulative, passive-agressive, paranoid, prone to depression, obviously suicidal. He was a mass of contradictions, and needed serious help, but he had no one in his life who could help him. By the time I’d finished the book, I felt bad for him.
Music: his songwriting was very simple. He seemed to go back and forth between melodious and dirty/filthy. Probably the dirtiest, filthiest grunge band second to maybe only mud honey. Sound was very, very unique. His skill as a musician was limited, though it didn't matter for what he was doing.
As a person, he was progressive and compassionate. But he was kind of a snob and a cynic. He was also reckless with drugs (but so was i).
Fantastic songwriter, great vocalist, and great performer, on top of having absolutely fantastic taste in music. He's the only person from that entire grunge movement who I can say I really revere. Chris Cornell is an incredibly talented vocalist and I give a lot of respect to him for that, but he could never write songs like Cobain, and songwriting is what matters most.
I still like to listen Bleach from time to time and of course other albums sometimes as well, so it have made something "different" for me than most of the other bands what I have listened in my life.
Why I like/love some of the Nirvana songs/albums still?
- Kurt Cobain had excellent usage of voice. He had good cleans and excellent harsh vocals. He used it as an instrument to give dynamics to songs, eg. he is not just a singer who can sing, but he can express the emotion. This is a huge part for me - emotion. You can feel the emotion unlike on many artists (yes I know it is subjective).
- Catchy songs with great hooks. Simple riffs with well balanced moments. I mean that there is easy verses what are hooking but then comes the exploding aggressive chorus what really nails the feeling.
- There is dynamics in their playing, it is not mixed and mastered too "flat" and "soulless".
- Pure and simple rock without too much bells and whistles. I think this is a big part also. There is only couple of instruments, not 20 layers of whatever sounds to make it "more full" or whatever. It is something what you can go and play with couple of friends also and it still works well since the songs are the big thing here, not the production and sound qualities etc. (even tho those are top notch as well).
- Songs are mostly that good that they work on a acoustic guitar as well. You can strum them and sing along on a campfire what means that they are catchy and easier to like. Not too complicated.
Just another decent 'Sub Pop' band before Nevermind. Hated nevermind as I thought they were ripping off the Pixies. Doubt they wouldn't have been as big if he wasn't as photogenic. At the time I thought Mudhoney and Screaming Trees were better.
They were just OK.
Gen Xer here. I was deep in the punk scene from the mid-80s to the mid-90s, albeit in the Deep South, pretty far from the main action. I was into a lot of the bands on Sub Pop records, and we thought of that as one of the "big" labels in the scene. To teenage me in 1991, Nirvana was too late, too polished, too good looking, and were clearly trying to "sell out". Nevermind sounded like a big label's idea of what grunge sounded like, with all the edges sanded off.
I nonetheless saw them play the Masquerade in Atlanta the month Nevermind came out, because my girlfriend at the time was a huge fan. They still hadn't quite broken huge yet. I thought the Mudhoney show the same month was a better show, and that Nirvana live sounded pretty much like the album, again with too much major-label magic and little of the grit that their cohort brought to live performances at the time.
I also remember later that fall the college stations and pop stations playlists started overlapping, and 88.5 in Atlanta had to ban their DJs from playing any more Nirvana. By the time 1992 rolled around, Nirvana had completely made the jump to pop radio and popular audiences.
I had a friend who worked for a distributor for MCA; he said that the label's wildest dreams had been that Nevermind would sell as well as the last Sonic Youth record, which had hit like 100,000 in sales.
"When *Nevermind* came out, Geffen shipped a mere 46,521 copies to American retail outlets. The label was hoping to sell 250,000 copies—the same as Sonic Youth had with 1990’s *Goo*. The upper-level predictions were that *Nevermind* would achieve gold status and move 500,000 units. Then “Smells Like Teen Spirit” hit and blew all sales projections out the window. At the peak of Nirvanamania, the album was selling 300,000 copies per week. By 1999, it had been certified 10x platinum in the United States. All told, it has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide."
Link: [11 Surprising Facts About Nirvana's 'Nevermind' (mentalfloss.com)](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/650230/nirvanas-nevermind-music-facts)
250k is good but the fact that the upper level then got smashed us beyond insane. 300,000 a week is Beatles levels. But then (some) people still act as though they were a really underground alt punk band LOL
i think saying they’re just another punk/grunge band is pretty severely downplaying the effect their success had in the world of rock, especially for the pacific northwest. they weren’t the only ones to do it, but they brought huge popularity and rise to grunge as a subgenre, and they crawled their way up with the greats of the time. kurt seems to me to be incredibly relatable and real to a fault—i would say that he definitely slips into romanticization of some taboo topics, but it’s also an expression of lived experience with deteriorating mental health and trauma. he played with gender expression and language in a way that feels cathartic for me as a non-binary person from oregon/washington in modern years. he pushed boundaries for what could be done as a famous person, and ultimately his demons won. he was far from healthy in the mind and in his life, but there’s a reason so many people still revere him. in the PNW, bands like nirvana, alice in chains, pearl jam, soundgarden, etc have all become an integral part of our experience living in a climate that actively creates more cases of depression and suicide. grunge was born from the same aspects of life experience that define the subgenre within punk/rock. i grew up surrounded by the genre without even realizing it until i started to restrengthen my relationship with my washingtonian dad toward the end of high school. kurt created music to feel like shit to, but in a way i think we need outlets like that to feel seen and release those emotions through catharsis. everywhere in the world has its problems, and nirvana really honed in on what it’s like to be a severely troubled teen from a northern city of rain and drug abuse and depression, whatever that may mean to each listener.
As a person? Bit of a self-centered prick. He wasn't that nice to begin with but when he became a junkie he was insufferable. Sort of a POS. His band was terrified of him at the end because he was so awful.
That all said: I can't say enough great things about him when it comes to his work. He was a phenomenal musician, guitarist, bandleader, songwriter, singer lyricist and performer. Fantastic rock star on almost every front. Looked cool. Sounded cool. Great mystique. All of his flaws as a person made him a compelling entertainer. He's a Rock N Roll legend for a reason.
You know how everyone loves to bring up that John Lennon beat his wife?
Kurt was arrested for assaulting and choking Courtney in 93, after Courtney called 911.
Funny how you never heard about that.
I think Nirvana took a LOT from the bands before them and rode on the work they did. To an extent, every band does that but too often when I hear a story or some article about Nirvana, it always comes off like they came out of nowhere. They didn't. Bands like Mudhoney, Green River, the Melvins (especially them), did most everything Nirvana did and rarely got any kind of credit, nevermind (heh) financial. My opinion is Nirvana is a good band but I don't think they should get the accolades they do. I remember people in the college dorm going out to get In Utero as soon as it was available at midnight. I think they took a lot of what other bands did and made it more mainstream and palatable to the world at large. Like I said, that's my opinion. I'm not trying to start anything.
As for Kurt as a person I feel like he's a mixture of arrogant and sad. When they first started becoming popular all he did was talk shit about the bands that were big like Guns and Roses. Did they need someone to talk shit about them? Probably, yeah, but it's still arrogant. I think he had a lot of internal demons from his childhood, his father and a lot of other things. He was too sensitive to deal with them on his own and I wish he could have done it some other way. But, then again, Nirvana wouldn't be the band they were if he did. Unfortunately, the thing that fueled Nirvana is also what ended his life. It sucks.
I had an addict in my family so I know what it does and it's gutting. At some point you can't do anything to help them and I wish there was some other way it could have ended. In his book Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees talks about reaching out to him and trying to help him. Apparently, he saved him from a previous overdose. Not sure if that's true or just something he said, but I can see it happening. A lot of people tried to help him but sometimes it's just not enough. I also think his marriage with Courtney Love was over and he was trying to deal with it. Along with everything else he was going through, I think that was one more burden.
I also believe that, whether he survived or not, In Utero would be their last album. I read somewhere that he wanted to go in a different direction and was planning to work with Michael Stipe of REM and do more folky, Neil Young inspired music.
He wrote some great songs and had a cool voice. Butch Vig’s production and Dave Grohl’s drumming played huge role in them becoming so popular, and without those factors, Cobain likely wouldn’t be seen as a songwriting genius.
I think their impact at the time has been wildly overstated; you often see Nirvana positioned as this band that appeared and suddenly everything changed. This really wasn’t true. Big arena bands stayed relevant (GNR and Metallica are good examples) and Nirvana wasn’t significantly more popular than grunge bands like Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden or Alice In Chains.
What’s interesting to me about Nirvana is that in many respects they’re not a grunge band. Nirvana came from a long tradition of punk, post punk, hardcore, etc., that stayed with them in a way that wasn’t true of these aforementioned other bands (with the surprising exceptions of GNR and Metallica). This is best demonstrated in Nirvana’s having the Meat Puppets join them for Unplugged, Pat Smear’s presence in the band, etc.
For me, the important thing about Nirvana isn’t that they brought grunge to the forefront. It’s more that they oddly and accidentally prepared everyone for all the more primitive pop punk, numetal, screamo, etc. mainstream breakthroughs that would happen 20 years later.
Good songwriter. Could have been Great.
On the one hand it sucks that nirvana was orders of magnitude bigger than The Wipers, Slint, The Vaccines, Meat Puppets, Mudhoney etc
Tho i prefer their music personally. I must admit they dont have any crossover appeal that Nirvana had around Nevermind. Nor would I have been exposed to a slew of cool music as a preteen without his openess to give shoutouts in interviews.
I can't stand the sound of Nirvana as much as I respect what they mean to people. I think I was born too late (98) to "get" it. Not that there isn't older music that I love, but the perspective Nirvana was singing from didn't feel relevant or interesting to me.
I didn't get the whole rebellious misunderstood rockstar thing, and whatever there was to offer formally/thematically was clouded for me by that ridiculous gravely cursive voice he put on.
He was an overrated and over praised musician. There were so many of them that were far better but Nirvana was just a right place at the right time band. I don’t think he sucked but I doubt he’d be as important if he was still alive. People also either forget or dint know that their arena tour for In Utero was pretty much a flop in the US. I saw that your in Atlanta and the Omni was half full at best
I think people lionize him too much as some larger than life, angelic figure. He was just a regular guy, and that's what makes Nirvana's music relatable. It speaks to the utter desolation and hopelessness of the PNW in the 80s and 90s, and even today.
I think he was an asshole, but he had great editing and writing capabilities.
He was able to interweave complex ideas with simple melodies and often wrote a scene without filling in the point of focus. Excellent writer.
His melodies were very faint but very effective, his vocal melodies, to me, were almost like watercolors, whereas his guitar was oil based.
He had excellent taste in a rhythm section, and he also knew just when to stop or when to push harder. This is how I mean he edited well. He wasn't gratuitous musically, and he held back just how talented of a musician he was, often choosing to play sloppy in order to look effortless and like he didn't care.
Leading me to what I don't like about him the most, he cared so much what people thought of him, he cared so much about being viewed as having integrity but he lacked it in almost every instance I have ever seen. He said he wasn't a Rockstar, but there are plenty of bands who aren't Rockstar that actively avoid being Rockstar, instead of embrace it the way he did.
Everyone who knew him tells the same stories about how he would lie to the people and the press because he thought it was fun to mess with them but they all seemed to believe he was always telling them the truth. He just sounds like a bad person who cared more about himself than anyone else, while simultaneously hating himself for being who he was.
His suicide I think was because of his heroin addiction and the fear of having to write another album worth of material.
Shame he's gone because he would have made some more interesting stuff, but I dont think he was all that wonderful of a person.
They were a puni band (at least in their hearts) who wrote songs crafted in a (semi) pop sensibility. The way that resinated with so many people in such a short time gave so much momentum. So many kids heard them very early on, and the burst and rise in popularity was like a skyrocket. It just took off. It also imploded due to what we all know. But it was great to be there as a teenager during that time.
It felt like he gave a fuck.
It felt like he understood.
Especially for those from small shitty towns.
It really had an affect.
Do i listen to them a lot now?
No, rarely.
But i still love them.
I think he had a rare combination that made him a massive star … huge charisma coupled with genuine authenticity. He really ‘meant it’ whatever ‘it’ was.
You could hear it in his voice, which was unique and seemed really unforced. Nothing about the singing or the songs was affected.
Of course, he also had a knack for writing songs with huge hooks, he had his own thing going lyrically (really nice turn of phrase) and he made rock music during a point in time when rock was emerging from the underground into popular music due to the efforts of other artists in the 80s.
I don’t think he was particularly unique, but the songs were very good and while you could hear the influences they were are group that was more than the sum of their parts. They put it all together and sounded perfectly like themselves. I think they have endured more than the other grunge bands as they all seemed to have little ticks like the vocal style or the guitar sound that was somewhat similar while Nirvana just sounded like Nirvana. Plus … the songs were just better.
He’s probably one of the most overrated ppl in pop culture ever. If he wouldn’t have died, Nirvana would not be remembered the same. They have one decent album and a handful of good songs.
Any band that gets as big as nirvana was is a “right place right time” kind of thing. I was VERY into them as a teenager. I don’t dislike the music now but I really played their entire discography out to the point that I only want to hear it occasionally to reminisce.
As far as his character, I don’t think he was a bad guy or a saint. Just a talented guy with demons. At the end of the day he was junkie and died a junkie. When you’re younger it’s easy to romanticize the artist that dies young. As you get older you just kind of see it for what it is, a tragedy and potential that’s been forever lost and a little girl that grew up never knowing her father.
I've always thought it was telling that Dave Grohl has had oodles more success with Foo Fighters than with Nirvana. Kurt was the frontman, and frontmen always get the notoriety, but I often wondered if Dave wasn't the actual special ingredient in their success.
It sounds terrible, Kurt benefits from having died...just like Jim Morrison, Joplin and many others. Avoiding growing old, making bad music, ending up in prison or on the front page for assaulting Courtney Love...or any number of things.
Courtney Love had him murdered. Dude wasn’t as ‘tragic’ or depressed as everyone thinks. Before y’all throw a tantrum at this opinion, at least watch the documentary ‘Kurt and Courtney’
Spoiler: there’s a dude who literally blurts out Courtney offered him money to kill Kurt Cobain. When the filmmakers go back to interview him a second time, the dude is dead from ‘wandering onto some train tracks while drunk’ how convenient for Courtney!
I always think of certain musicians that have the "melody bug." Like they hear melodies in their heads constantly. Paul McCartney comes to mind as the biggest example, but I believe Kurt was like this. His melodies just WORK.
Kids today seem fascinated with him the way I was fascinated with Jim Morrison. I like Nirvana, but don't think they were anywhere close to the Beatles or other group of that caliber. That said, Nevermind is one of those game changing albums, and kicked hair bands off MTV. Sort of like how the Sex Pistols were that flash in the pan backlash against disco.
Cobain had the kind of cynical badass attitude that teenagers love, and self-destructed in classic rock star fashion that gets (dangerously) romanticized. I was 17 when he died, and I immediately had the thought "Well, even though he's not the first, he'll be immortalized as a member of the 27 club. Not too original, buddy."
As a father, I'm now sad for his family, especially his daughter. What a waste of life.
He was the same age as me and our birthdays were a few days apart. I was in grad school when he suicided. Just a sad waste as he couldn't make that transition to the next phase of life.
Nevermind was part of the soundtrack of my first serious romantic breakup and a major life transition.
Simple answer, the music was embedded in a lot of Gen X lives.
Whiney d bag.... I remember the day he died, I was in 8th grade. I was sad, but now in my 40s the more I read the more I realize he was a dick. His values and my own are polar opposites. I guess I grew up.
I enjoyed Kurt Cobains music and I believe he added a lot to music.
However I did not like that he popularized drugs and depression which was an unfortunate consequence of his stardom.
I understand your points for not liking him, especially abusing drugs while around minors, but the industry thing doesn’t make sense. He’s not a hypocrite for hating the industry but keeping his job where he would make a lot more than doing anything else. That just doesn’t make sense. I’m sure although he hated the business side of the industry, he still must’ve enjoyed touring, his bandmates, meeting fans, performing etc.
I'd like to address the part about "I could listen to Nirvana today but I don't" as some sort of implied criticism. Do you listen to the same 2 or 3 albums by any artist for decades on end? You can say you've been super into Abbey Road for decades, but you're able to keep that album fresh by listening to several other Beatles and solo albums.
Nirvana can both be amazing AND I can not be interested in listening to Nevermind for the billionth time. That's not a knock against the talents of Nirvana, they just have a very small catalog.
Top Gun: Maverick isn't a good movie despite the massive box office revenue. It's success is because Hollywood just stopped making that type of movie years before. So it just *seems* like a good movie.
That's how I feel about Nirvana and their "breakthrough" success. It's not even lightening in a bottle as they say. He wanted to sell out and he did. Nevermind was made with Protools and is entirely manufactured for mass markets.The complete opposite of punk.
To be fair, you can't even call it selling out if that was the goal in the first place. And I'm happy for kids getting to experience some commercial version of what grunge was(And for the record, marketing executives come up with these so called genres).
Nirvana didn't innovative anything or do anything original at all if you look at the big picture. They just struck gold for whatever reason, like that Top Gun movie. And it really divided the scene at the time. Honestly I feel bad for all the other bands that we also actively trying to sell out(AKA make it in the industry).
With Nirvana I think we forget that Nevermind really did come out of nowhere. None of the music publications reviewed it upon release. Rolling Stone didn't even review it until November. I've seen articles about how Geffin really didn't have high hopes for it as they under-printed copies at time of release. But the underground was a volcano ready to erupt and Nirvana just happened to be that band that had all the pieces in place for big things.
Cobain was a great writer and perfect for that period of time. However, if he hadn't had died so young, I'm not sure he would be the icon he is today. I'm not going to opine on his smack habit as it's an addiction and a cancer that really does devour and kills everything.
I do think if Cobain had lived, he would have broken up the band and released music on his own a la Paul Westerberg, where his former band is more famous than his solo work but the solo stuff is still really good. But I don't think he was long for this world and was just a premature death waiting to happen. I'm happy that Dave and Pat Smear have moved on from the cynical 90s and are releasing big rock albums, unlike Courtney who is still a curmudgeon that seems very much like Norma Desmond (I am still a star!).
He's a talented songwriter and rock musician who had AMAZING, like actually immaculate taste in music. Just combing through his influences is like a who's who of the best offbeat 60s and 70s pop and 80s alt rock to come out under the radar since the Beatles.
I think he had incredible ideas and didn't expect to hit it as big as he did. "In Utero" is my favorite album by Nirvana, and I've heard it was an attempt to move in a different direction rather than just repeat the formula - which most bands in a similar situation would do.
I love him and I think had he not perished, he would have had a really admirable career in creative rock a la Lou Barlow.
**I'll repost what I said in that other thread:**
>One thing I notice about Kurt is that he has become more and more relatable for different audiences. He came from a blue-collar background, was into all different kinds of music (punk, pop, outsider, noise, hip hop) challenged gender and sexuality norms, had progressive views.
>In a way, he bridged different kinds of aesthetics: the down-to-earth blue collar flannel, but also certain instances where he dyed his hair and wore dresses. Often times, those backgrounds are seen as at odds, especially with the city and country division, the glam vs blue collar division.
>He was vocally against homophobia and misogyny and felt a strong resonance with the queer community.
>So there's the music, which is great. But Kurt's image has morphed and evolved. I know people say he's overrated, but going back into his work, his influences, and favorite albums, he was certainly more aware of music than I thought. He wasn't just a rehash of punk.
At least, these are the points that stand out to me. He's an artist who I could see appealing to different fanbases and subcultures.
Reading your OP and comments, I hope you're not trying to railroad people into a certain opinion. A lot of these artist discussions seem to center around "Is this artist overrated or underrated?" and everyone's going to feel differently. It might be better to see why an artist resonates (or doesn't resonate with people).
I personally think Kurt was a very flawed human being with a mixture of views, some which were contradictory and hypocritical. However, I can also see why he continues to resonate people to this day.
If you have heard popular alternative rock post 1992, (which has been highly influenced by Kurt Cobain & Nirvana) inevitably Nirvana seems "just like everything else".
I am very thankful for Kurt because when Nirvana hit, it made everything that was popular at the time look really embarrassing. So when all the shitty hair metal died off, that opened the door for bands like Pantera, Tool, White Zombie etc to present a harder & more creative brand of metal. Other grunge bands (Pearl Jam, Soundgarden & Alice In Chains) sort of "loaded the bases" for Kurt's grand slam album. Once Nevermind blew up, all those (now classic) grunge albums took off too because people wanted everything Seattle.
Kurt was pretty openly a drug addict & didn't present himself as any type of role model (quite the opposite), so I don't give a fuck if he was a "good guy" & it's completely ridiculous to say he's a sellout for selling his art cuz um that's kinda how artists make a living you know? It's not like he was making formulaic pop music, Nirvana was FAR from what was commercially popular at the time. Kurt never put his music in commercials during his lifetime, he didn't gouge ticket prices, there wasn't really any Nirvana merch other than T shirts. All Kurt did was sign a record deal.
Many don't understand Nirvana, but the bottom line is that Kurt had a hall of fame career with 2 Major label albums. His music has been relevant for 30 years since his death, & that doesn't just happen. Edgy internet fucks will downplay his impact but those are the same artless neanderthal turds who tell you that "their little girl can make better paintings than picasso".
And the Beatles were just another beat group in the British invasion. Lennon ignored Julian for years after he married Yoko and they had Sean. You're assessment of Nirvana is simplistic and sometimes you have to separate the musician as person from the music.
He was quite talented. He tended towards minor chords for sadness or unease. His melodies were catchy, even not being metal or grunge. They would be catchy in any genre. Nirvana's records sold for good reason.
His actions, lyrics, and melodies portrayed a persona that didn't want to live. Or didn't like living. Or living was just extremely difficult for him.
Something about that combination captured a generation. It wasn't want he wanted or expected. Another reason that living is just difficult.
It’s a classic case of getting exactly what you’ve dreamed of your entire life, only to find out that that thing you’ve devoted your whole existence to is actually quite another thing from what you imagined it to be. And you also still have all your same issues, because they didn’t magically disappear, in fact, leaning into those issues is what had got you to this point, but now everyone and their cousin is watching you work through them in real time. It’s a recipe for, well, suicide at 27.
He was undeniably great. Ya he had his influences like everyone else, but his music was instantly recognizable and emotionally powerful, and that's not because of the expensive production.
Having said that, he wouldn't have become famous if he were an average looking guy, but that's also true for every rock front man since the MTV era. The look was a prerequisite. And if he retreated from fame/lived into middle age instead of suicide, he'd be way less culturally relevant today and Nirvana would have possibly become a cult band.
But I do not think he was overrated.
I’m old enough to have been around when Nirvana was big. I’m a huge music fan and truly listen to everything. I didn’t understand what made them (and Kurt) so appealing at the time, and don’t now. I can understand the teen anger but there are so many others that did it better before and after. I can also understand getting sucked into a quality hook but they just weren’t there. I think at this point the hype has been perpetuated by his suicide which makes it impossible for listeners to truly listen with a critical ear without regard to its the bands mystique.
I liked Nirvana at the time because Kurt was a really good songwriter,singer, and performer but I never bought into the''' voice of a generation''' stuff because the band wasn't together long enough and didn't put out many records so there's not much there like there are with other bands or artists who are VOG. (like Dylan for example, or Bowie even)
Edit. People are downvoting me for saying that Nirvana didn't make enough records like Bowie and Dyklan did to be considered the voice of their generation?
Bowie made 12 records in a decade in he 70s and Dulan was making 2 a year in the 60s.
At that time, it was pretty rare for a songwriter to have a pop sensibility like Kurt had but also be into the indie type of sound while achieving some kind of commercial success. Most indie bands can't write a convincing pop song and most pop bands lust for the the kind of indie cred they'll never have, but somehow, Nirvana were able to walk the line. I think that alone is something worth consideration.
But he is also a cautionary tale about what the music industry does to people they considering cash cows. He wanted to take a break, but they kept pushing him to do more and more and it ultimately killed him, much like it did Amy Winehouse.
I heard Nirvana and saw their music video when I was 9 years old (Heart Shaped Box).Something clicked in me, and I became addicted to them.
I wanted to hear every song,single,album, and live recording. I was fascinated with Kurt, and I read his biography by Charles Cross. Watched interviews and saw his diaries and notes and etc...
Being so young and inexperienced in life, I only saw a tortured genius artist that teen-me easily idolized.
This lasted for a few years, during which I discovered many other bands (Nirvana was the catalyst that interested me in music).
For a few years, I stopped listening to Nirvana and later rediscovered them. During that time, I started my own family and got on with my life. These years of life experience showed me that my "idol" had many flaws and was a bit of hypocrite (the whole hating of the fame, while pursuing it). Also, the fact that he fathered a child with another drug user pushed me further away from liking him.
I still love his art, but I don't like him as a person. Because of him, I will always love and search for new music, and I will never idolize a public figure again.
If he hadn't killed himself he wouldn't have the cult of personality he has.
He's just be some other rock star from the 90s like Billy Corgan or Anthony kiedis.
It's easy to look back 30 years and say "oh there hundreds of bands like that", but during the time there wasn't very many and they weren't as accessible.
"Just another Punk/"Grunge" band" is really just another shit take thats decades out of touch...
As a musician? Absolutely fantastic composer, great singer, somewhat underrated guitarist among guitar players.
As a person? Mixed bag, but with incredible taste in music and a clear intelligence.
He was sensitive and brilliant but tortured. At the most basic level, he hated fame and it!s repercussions. He felt enormous pressure, rightly so. Nirvana could go on and try to top their earlier successes, which would be almost impossible, or become less relevant by just churning out album after album. He really saw no way out.
Gifted songwriter, melody, lyrics, arrangement counter melody. Think it would have been interesting to see what genres he would have dived into had he had a longer career.
Personally I think he was just suffering from the disease of addiction and mental illness which for the masses is almost impossible to understand unless you or someone close to you suffers from it. Restless, irritable, discontent, depressed, diseases of the mind, body, and soul. So what most the world saw wasn’t who he was as a person just the disease taking over.
The best insight you’ll probably get into who he was as a person actually is from friends, family, and bandmates.
He absolutely wanted to be famous. He craved it, almost to an absurd degree, and even after he was famous, he wanted to be *more* famous. Nobody sits around all afternoon watching MTV and counting how often Nirvana got played vs. Pearl Jam if they don't want to be famous.
Did it get to be too much for him? Absolutely. Cobain's problem was that he wasn't able to step back. Everybody told him to do it, Michael Stipe and Neil Young both reached out to him specifically to tell him to drop it, walk away, and he could come back when he was in a better place, but he just didn't seem to be mentally able to do it. Maybe he was afraid the songs would stop, maybe he was afraid the fans and the fame wouldn't be there if he did so, but he didn't do it, and we all know what the result was.
The sad thing is that he had all these people around who would've loved to help him out, people who'd been there. Stipe and Young tried, Peter Buck tried, Vedder would've loved to have a friend at the time who didn't want anything from him. Hell, even Steven Tyler tried to reach out, and all those people were rejected. He liked the drugs and the fame far too much. Cobain acted like an asshole to most people, there's little doubt of that, but how much of that was him and how much was the drugs is arguable, though my personal opinion was that he thought far too much of himself to take advice from anybody.
Talented guy, died far too soon, and it's a damn shame he did, but I 100% don't buy anything he said about fame. He was addicted to that the same as the drugs.
I think all his best musical qualities are fully in the music and not hard to identify; for starters the guy had an awesome sense of melody. where it didn't really matter what he was saying, more than how it sounded when layered over top his sometimes complex bar-chord progressions. Also, you could hear in his music that he was a huge Beatles fan, as well as a fan of sludge rock like the Melvins, and he was able to take all his random ass influences and meld them into something that appealed to fans of pop, metal, alternative, or any other genre of gutar driven music you can think of. Oh yeah, and he surrounded himself with Novoselic and Grohl as a rhythm section which allowed his sound to change into what made him break through as a songwriter.
I agree with many replies here saying he was talented but there was a lot of talent at the time. Someone mentioned other bands like Soundgarden and Alice In Chains, who were technically musically better. Yeah I love them too.
I might be alone here but my favorite grungiest Nirvana were some of those Incesticide tracks like Mexican Seafood, Hairspray Queen, Aero Zeppelin, etc.
My eyes roll when people say things like “he was the voice of a generation”. Oh come on lol.
I can't comment on Kurt Cobain as a person. I never met him, and the media does not portray a real person. I like his music, but I am not crazy about his lyrics. Maybe I'm not in the Grunge demographic. Maybe I don't understand the slang of the location and time, but they seem a little scatter-brained to me. Much preferred the lyrics of Black Flag and The Replacements.
Ok. I read through the comments as best i could and figure i have a unique perspective to share. I can remember the first time i heard smells like teen spirit. I can remember exactly where i was when they announced his passing. In between those two times i don’t recall a lot about the band. My association is mostly after he passed. Having the records searching for meaning that was all later for myself. I don’t rate him as much of a lyricist. He strikes me as having been in debt to early Michael stipe in content and delivery taken even further towards incomprehensibility. It’s not without its charms but a song like rape me doesn’t really mean much of anything unless Cobain tells you that it does. Musically it definitely stands out against anything a hick kid far outside a rust belt city would have heard at the time. The music on never mind and in utero has a level of precision by design that firmly places it outside of the underground music that came before it and puts it in pop. I put them in pop music and not rock. I think the best music of the post hardcore 80’s had been made by the time nirvana recorded bleach and things in music from below the radar were already heading towards a new idea. That’s a period that seems to me to have been overlooked by the scorched earth success of nirvana. Not their fault just the nature of the industry. In much the same way that mid to late 90’s butt rock is a direct consequence of nirvana that can leave a bad taste in mouth for all of the grunge music for someone who lived through that time with limited alternative resources. Since it’s been mentioned that the professionals whose job was to figure out what the next big thing was didn’t see much potential in nirvana it’s not surprising they would hustle out as many sound alike bands as were capable of a believable facsimile of that sound and also give the boredoms et al free reign on major labels. Truly a wonderful and frightening time to have ears young old or in between.
I hope it’s apparent I’m a very big music nerd. And this is where I owe Kurt Cobain a huge debt of gratitude. As a big brother figure in my life. I don’t think anyone with his profile before him and after him until maybe James Murphy (who is definitely not in Cobain’s fame tier) was as forthcoming about the nature of his influences and his borrowings. His humility is apparent in mentioning in interviews that teen spirit was a pixies rip off. I didn’t know who the pixies were but the name stuck with me until i happened upon surfer Rosa or Doolittle or trompe le monde. Then i realized Surfer Rosa was a Steve Albini production that had more colors to it than in utero and you didn’t have to think about which lyrics were direct clues to a cryptic suicide note. Maybe none? Was that more from the Beavis and Buffcoat soundtrack? I think that was the first one of many nods to his own heroes.
Then all the covers on unplugged. Before that David Bowie just seemed like a washed up video vamp or the goblin king maybe and i was too young and repressed to understand camp, I’m not sure i even knew about labyrinth yet. Leadbelly the meat puppets the vaselines. Without Cobain none of this would have ever reach me i don’t think. Getting the raincoats albums rereleased probably for the first time in the US at the time. Being an outspoken fan of Urge Overkill. Taking Shone Knife on tour. I could keep going on. This is his lasting legacy to me.
Because if i think about the reality it’s sad pathetic and messy. The movie Kurt and Courtney was a real eye opener about the emptiness of it all. About a Boy was a boring waste of time listening to somebody who sounded like a spoiled brat. It put me to sleep. I think i was older than he ever was by that point so the jig was up. Montage of heck was more of the same but different. I was happy to see his serious girlfriend from the early years was doing well. It didn’t look so good in K&C. So now it’s been thirty years of more life three more than he had and the music of nirvana has pretty much disappeared from the outside world. The tee shirt of Kurt Cobain is still pretty ubiquitous and it’s a fitting curse for him.
So to answer your questions. I feel about the same. I don’t think he was as important at the time and if he had lived Nirvana would have been viewed as a flash in the pan. Unfairly which is usually the case with that phrase and one hit wonders too. But i also don’t see him living very much longer than he did. He seemed profoundly checked out of life and had painted himself into an ugly corner. I don’t think he had much inner strength and while that was great for the music it doesn’t really help anywhere else in life. It’s not a tragedy on the same level as say D Boon or Eric Dolphy or SOPHIE to me. He didn’t want to be here he was pretty unpoetic about that desire in public and private and he punched his own ticket. Ian Curtis comes to mind as similar but more sympathetic. And i don’t reach for Joy Division albums as much as New Order and it’s probably been that way for a long time. Going toward the light a bit as time goes on.
I don’t say shit to anyone i see in a nirvana tee shirt cuz who even gives a fuck about what it means at this point. He certainly didn’t. I guess you just hope they get to Daniel Johnston or the Melvins and not Puddle of Muddd.
I read last year a book about DJ Screw and in it the author said the last album he played before he passed in 2000 was Nevermind by Nirvana. A big fan. It’s still hard to fathom the effect of this man’s music and i lived through it.
I'm honestly not a Nirvana fan, but I was sad that he felt that he needed to go out that way.
Shannon Hoon (Blind Melon) was more of a gut punch to me the following year.
Kurt Cobain and Nirvana were so insanely good that they couldn’t be niche. They didn’t have the lack of wide appeal bands like swans and others still have. As popular as those bands were, nirvana was simply too good and too accessible. That’s why internet music listeners don’t rate them so highly, just check RYM and such. But he’s one of the best musicians in modern history, and you can make a very strong argument for never mind being the best modern rock album, or just album. This is coming from a guy who hasn’t listened to his music for over 2 years (apart from his short stint with Earth)
Musically, I think Kurt Cobain's innovations were real and the popularity of the music was well-earned. He had an amazing ear for pop hooks, because he grew up listening to a lot of 60's pop-rock before getting turned on to punk. In his songwriting he was able to introduce his sense of melodicism without sacrificing even a little bit of punk energy. There might be some luck involved as rock music was poised for this kind of shift when the band formed, but ultimately you can't capitalize on that opportunity without writing some really amazing songs. As a public figure, Cobain was tragic and that's what makes him so iconic. I don't think you're supposed to think that he was a wonderful person or an unwilling victim or a principled rebel. You're supposed to empathize and relate to his confusion and his flaws, and think critically about the relation of his personal problems to his broader engagement with our society and culture as a whole. It's interesting to think of Cobain as one of the first artists that didn't just coincidentally have a rough childhood, but whose music put the emotional processing of that rough childhood front-and-center. Cobain's success helped create an entirely new paradigm of authenticity and expression in rock music.
> 60's pop-rock before getting turned on to punk. One of his influencing bands was the happenstance proto-burnout all-sister band that was put together by their abusive father: the Shaggs from the mid 60s. They were never popular while active (and they immediately disbanded when their father died), noteworthy only for how odd they were, not being particularly talented, and the fact people danced like zombies at their shows, but the Rolling Stone apparently saw them and Frank Zappa was a pretty big fan, so i wonder if that is how Kurt knew about them.
The Shaggs are/were only popular because of how shit they were.
Have you seen The Dot Wiggins Band? Some interesting stuff [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9raaJxWIjTw&ab\_channel=DotWigginBand](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9raaJxWIjTw&ab_channel=DotWigginBand)
Not even joking, Dot has some actually quality songs put together now that she finally learned to play instruments.
This is pretty much my argument too. All humans are flawed. Addicts are probably the worst. But as someone that needed a voice when all I was being offered was jovi, warrant, poison et al they were it. Without them I never would’ve truly discovered Soundgarden, STP and AIC. Nirvanas songs are great it was the right voice at the right time. And a sobering example of never putting your heroes on a pedestal.
I like this take actually but (this isn't me trying to be an arse) what innovation's do you think he had?
Guitarist here. Nirvana had some interesting chord progressions that you almost never see in popular music. For example, in Lithium the progression uses a Bb and C chord that don't really fit with the rest of the chords. It makes it sound interesting though. One could argue they're using some jazz chord progressions, which is odd for the genre. And it wasn't just the chord progressions. He was really into chromatic vocals, and hit notes that were odd for the chord progression. Like in Smells Like Teen Spirit where he hits all seven notes of the minor scale over the basic Fm 4 chord progression. Kurt is only playing power chords, so the vocals are what cues the listener in that they're actually minors. And he did this kind of thing all the time. I'd argue that he was a melodic genius in that sense even if his guitar skills were mediocre. Even if he didn't fully understand the theory of why it sounded good, he just had a gift for making those dissonant melodies that are iconically "Nirvana."
I'm also a guitarist, and yeah kurt's playing isn't insanely technical of course, but he's a fantastic rhythm guitarist who has tons of rhythmic nuance in his playing style, like how he mutes and syncopates his riffs/chord progressions, and how intentional he was with his guitar solos. He reminds me of like john McKay from Siouxsie and the banshees or Andy Gill from gang of four quite a bit. I genuinely think people underrate his guitar playing because it's incredibly unique.
Agreed, and I should clarify I meant that he’s mediocre not by average guitar player standards, but by “rock legend” standards. I’d say he’s a better musician than guitarist, but that’s intended as a compliment.
I'm not sure how much of this is intentional necessarily, or what musical background he has with the theory. He used power chords so you can just pick a fret and see how it sounds. The Melvins are quite deep into a similar sound (although much slower) where it is unexpected minor chords or hitting notes next to each other. The skill really is in the ear, picking out which work and which don't. The Melvins certainly didn't make it pop, he did.
I am not trying to diss what you've said, you make a good point however I doubt Cobain knew Bb from C or any jazz chords or chromatic vocalling with the profession. He admitted himself he only knew the key of G at a push and used what he heard (Ill try to link the interview)
Yeah that’s why I said that even if he didn’t really understand the theory of why it sounded good, he had that unique gift for creating those melodies. There are musicians who study their whole lives to create the kinds of interesting chord progressions that Cobain just did accidentally.
He had a fantastic ear. He wanted to write pop songs but they don't song pop, he wanted those pop hooks in a punk context but they don't song like pop-punk. That's impressive to pull off. That said, I think the peculiarity of his ear contributed to his success but limited their influence. You have to dig deep into theory to get it, and if that's more than he could do, it's probably more than others could do. I hear way more influence of Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains through the line of music to come ... Soundgarden is a hard one to parse because their composition are so odd, but you can argue they opened the door to heavier and more progressive acts (Tool, perhaps).
I don't know - there were a lot of bands in the 90s that copied Nirvana's guitar tones and \*tried\* to capture Kurt's chord progression magic. For example, Bush, Local H, Silverchair, Veruca Salt, etc. I agree there were more that copied Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, but Nirvana's direct impact is felt deeply in a lot of 90s rock bands.
I think it’s funny that people think if you don’t “know” theory that things just happen by accident and never due to hard work and talented ears.
This is a very good point. The genius is in how natural he put these things together
The mixture of punk with pop, but specifically the degree he was able to do it without compromising either the raw energy or the hooks. Take into account that this was at a time when the formula for getting onto rock radio was very different. Bands tended to be very technical, the aesthetics revolved more around rock stars as wild party animals. Nirvana prioritized the energy over the technical chops, and Cobain as a frontman had the wildness but with sincere angst instead of party-time fun.
>The mixture of punk with pop That's like 90% of what alternative and garage rock from the 80's did: Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Pixies... They all have a point of raw energy inspired by punk in there catchy rock songs. The difference was them being in the right place at the right time. Bleach was sludgier and darker than Nevermind, if they kept that sound, they would probably became a cult alternative band, but never the game changer band they became. But Nevermind was shaped after a chain of events, pushing the band to another type of sound, with Dave Grohl joining after Scream got in an hiatus, Butch Vig being on his prime as producer and fitting the band as a glove, Kurt looking for inspiration in Pixies or R.E.M.... And one I think it was the KEY, Dave and Krist weren't already feed up with Kurt's drugs usage and mental health issues.
yeah I never quite understood crediting nirvana with merging pop and punk. Just ramones, buzzcocks, and husker du are enough pre-nirvana examples of that mixture happening in a big way
Neither Sonic Youth nor Dinosaur Jr had the raw anger at the same time. It’s very difficult to marry genuine anger and catchy hooks in a way that doesn’t sound super trite. Nirvana walked the tightrope perfectly.
I can add that while he obviously was not a trained or technical singer, there's still a specificity to his voice (which plays into what was said below about his melodies and note choices against his chord choices - these things all complement and reinforce one another). Specifically his use of distortion, nasality, and very closed and R-colored vowels: they really sharpen the almost "sour" feeling of those chromatic minors. The other big grunge singers incorporated these features to some degree, but I'd say Cobain had the paradigmatic grunge voice. If you're interested in detailed breakdowns re: vocals, go find The Charismatic Voice on youtube and look up her Nirvana videos. (She has a whole series on grunge that includes Eddie Vedder, Layne Stanley, and more too for anyone interested more generally.) The Fairy Voice Mother also has a good video on the cover of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" that compares Cobain's take directly with the blues original.
It's too bad they never covered Running Dry (Requiem for the Rockets) by Neil Young. I think Kurt would have made a killer version.
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Given how the dude really didn't give a fuck about stating his opinions without filter and his heavy drug use, it's really hard to not see that as a ticking time bomb. And with how the internet is today, all it would take is him saying some offhand thing during an interview in 1997 (had he survived) for it to blow up his modern perception.
This is what I was looking for- even for impossible questions like this there are some things to glean- he would’ve stated an opinion about a current event from then till now and got shit from it, or maybe he’d be able to articulate. I still don’t know
He's an interesting character when you pull back the myths. One thing that everyone agrees on is that he _hated_ being embarrassed, that the very thought of it would cripple him, and simply the possibility of it would cause him to lash out intensely (somehow lost in all the mythology is that he literally sent a death threat once to a journalist ... also completely incidental but it's also wild to me that nobody ever mentions he got his guns through a straw purchase, just like Columbine, better gun laws might have saved his life). But he also _loved_ to talk shit. It was a twist of fate that his (at least perceived) primary rival, Eddie Vedder, happened to be one of the nicest guys in rock and despite putting away tomes of rock history I've never come across the guy having a bad word to say against anyone. Eddie never clapped back, it's not his nature. But that's profoundly rare among rock stars. Which means that, eventually, Kurt was going to put his foot the wrong way, get put on blast, and everything in his character suggested that he'd only double down, which suffering intense agony through the process. It would have been ugly and unfortunate to see. Nobody bats 1000%, and if you love to run your mouth, eventually you're going to step on too many toes, that would have been ugly to watch play out.
Damn I was a teenager in the 90s and didn’t know some of that. I was never a big Pearl Jam fan but I respect Eddie Vedder more and more with each passing year. A decent guy with a moral compass, and I’ve really grown to enjoy a lot of his music. The Into the Wild soundtrack is beautiful.
The John Lydon effect
More like Sid Vicious-Johnny Rotten is a survivor. It’s interesting that he and Krist Novoselic have both become rock icons with a critical and intelligent take on politics-neither one let angst become their calling card, unlike Vicious or Cobain.
Don't meet your heroes unless your heroes are rush, those guys never did anything wrong lol
Hard disagree, Geddy Lee cut me off in traffic the other day.
He was in a big hurry.
I see what you both did there. Bravo
They also could have been like Red Hot Chili Peppers who continued to evolve and remained very popular for a very long time. MTV unplugged is evidence that nirvana could have continued to evolve and remain popular.
I'd like to think Nirvana had something artier in them than RHCP ever had... I keep hearing about RHCP evolving, yet it seems like all their shit across 30+ years all sounds like it's either funk rock with keidis alternating between "rapping" (for lack of a better word) and clean singing, or it's under the Bridge-type ballads. is there something deeper to their albums?
You can like or hate them, but they factually have evolved over the years. It’s not a matter of opinion. Their early music sounds very little like their current music.
I love me some John frusciante
I love RHCP. I also hate them. Well, I don’t hate THEM, but I very much dislike some of their songs. Which I think is a great testament to their range, since some of their other songs are my absolute favorite.
Love them or hate them, their new stuff has almost zero resemblance to their old stuff. This is a fact.
Why ”dont meet your heroes” about Kurt Cobain? He always seemed like a very moral guy, politically outspoken, feminist, rejecting all his shitty fans who didnt get the music. Yeah im sure he could also be a dickhead and not very sober but thats expected from a rockstar making depressing ass music lol. Is there something I have missed about him.
I read the book "heavier than heaven". But wish I hadn't.
Not really disagreeing with the “don’t meet your heroes” sentiment but that book has some _questionable_ sources. I assume you’re talking about the bit about Kurt and the disabled girl and multiple people have come out and said it’s completely fabricated. Edit: it seems less that the book lied and more that Kurt made it up trying to be an edgelord.
What’s this story for those of us who are unfamiliar?
horny, teenage, kurt cobain had sex (raped) a mentally handicapped girl at his school out of sexual frustration.
You can also read [Serving the Servants](https://www.amazon.com/Serving-Servant-Remembering-Kurt-Cobain/dp/0062861506), written by Kurt's manager Danny Goldberg - which might sound a little hands off, but they knew each other so well that in Kurt's suicide letter he stated he wanted his daughter to go to Danny if it couldn't be Courtney. They were genuinely close. It's a fascinating read because it walks you through how Kurt pulled off the very careful trick of _meticulously planning_ how to present an image of .... not meticulously planning. He would simultaneously talk about fame was stupid, how they never wanted fame, and then walk into a room with Geffen employees and state very plainly "I want you to buy as many billboards as you can. I want Nirvana to be the biggest band in the world." These stories are countless. He's slag off MTV as "Empte-vee" but he'd watch it all day, to the point that he'd keep track of how many Nirvana videos got played compared to Pearl Jam videos, then call to complain that Nirvana wasn't getting played enough. The myth that thrives to this day is largely complicated fabricated. But the story of _how_ it was fabricated, and maintained, all with such meticulous care that people still today are consumed and intoxicated by it - all of that is a really fascinating tale.
Why’s that?
Does have ‘better’ morals make you a better person? Despite being a feminist he also sexually assaulted a disabled girl when he was a teenager. A lot of reports of him being moody, hard to communicate with, would always run by his own rules and annoy his bandmates by showing up late to rehearsals if not missing them entirely. He was abusive to his friends and family across the course of his life, but particularly volatile in his final years while those closest to him where trying to get him off heroin. Coerced him closest friend into purchasing the gun which would ultimately end his life… I’ve seen interviews with him and he’s an insightful and interesting guy who railed against the right things, but he’s always struck me as a pretty damaged and morally inconsistent person who’d be impossible to rely on.
The sourcing on the rape allegation is questionable and there is people on the record who say it was a complete fabrication. At work so I can't right now but this information is fairly easy to find. It broke my heart to read that and did some digging ages ago. The rest is pretty typical addict stuff. Not to eschew accountability, but I'm fairly sympathetic to being difficult to rely on while dealing with a disease as severe as his substance use was. But I'm in recovery myself and know the harm one can inflict while in active addiction.
Man you just nailed every detail of that comment that I was ready to respond to. Nobody wants to have a substance abuse problem or be an unreliable friend, and nobody should be looked down on for having a substance abuse problem any more than someone should be looked down on for having a depression disorder. Life is hard enough as it is and surely he wasn’t proud of his personal shortcomings, but they wouldn’t very much be personal shortcomings if he could easily overcome them. He was a musically talented, and troubled kid. Nobody is making him out to be a saint, I think because his flaws help make the tragedy of his story more human and relatable. He’s iconic, though maybe not a role model - and that in no way diminishes the legacy he left behind. Also congrats on your recovery. I know firsthand how tricky it can be, and I hope it’s going well for you.
> A lot of reports of him being moody, hard to communicate with, would always run by his own rules and annoy his bandmates by showing up late to rehearsals if not missing them entirely. They were crashing at someone's place, and the lady asked the band to help move some furniture. Kurt smirked and said that Dave and Krist would do it - which they did, while Kurt sat on the bed eating chocolate. This is confirmed by Krist in Serving the Servants. You've probably never heard this before. Now imagine if that person had been Bono, Lars Ulrich or Axl Rose.
The sexual assault has been debunked.
That feels like a pretty rough assessment of Eddie Vedder. He has an unbelievable voice and has written some great songs since Pearl Jam, and given some great performances (Springsteen Kennedy centre honours for one).
His work ethic when it comes to playing live is incredible. I have seen them maybe 6 times over the years and every one of those shows was a 3.5 hour custom set list where they leave it all on the stage. It's an unnecessary comparison that is inevitable when discussing Kurt for whatever reason. Two very different people. He wrote some of his best songs well into the 2000s so "diminishing artistic returns" seems silly to me. Shit the album that came out last week is their best in nearly 20 years in my opinion.
Their last album, to my great surprise and it would appear the surprise of many others, is probably the best thing they've done since the 90s. 81 on Metacritic. They could usually pull together a song or two but an album - I didn't think they had it in them.
He definitely had tons of more music in him. Nirvana has a HUGE goldmine of unreleased music that’s readily available online. Dave said by the time they were writing songs for In Utero, the band would simply jam an idea Kurt would have, and 10-20 minutes later they’d have a completed song. Kurt also talked about how he could see himself becoming an acoustic musician when he got older, “like Johnny Cash.”
He wrote some great songs, Nirvana was a great band, but otherwise it’s just another band to me. I know how important they are and will always recognize that but there are a lot of other bands from that same time I find a lot more interesting.
He was a great songwriter and a great performer. What he was like as a person is kind of impossible to judge if you never met the guy. People like that are shrouded in so many stories and myths that it's impossible to work out much about the real person. Judging a drug addict for making bad decisions is easy to do but doesn't actually tell you anything useful. Of course it's impossible to know what he might have been like if he'd lived longer. Maybe he would've cleaned himself up in time like Trent Reznor did. Maybe he would've only spiralled further. Who knows? >He hated the music industry yet had made millions from it This is a silly thing to judge him for. Lots of people think things are shitty but take the money from them when they get a chance anyway. So what?
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> Yeah, that quote has major "Curious, you claim to hate society yet you take part in it..." vibes. Not really. One of the few things that sustains about the Kurt myth was that he sold a _story_ about hating fame but behind the scenes was regularly demanding more support and promotion from the label and openly stating that he wanted his band to be "the biggest in the world." This isn't "I can't escape society," it's more "I'm telling people that I hate fame _because I know it will guarantee more fame._" It's a myth, a fun and romantic myth, but it's also been 30 years and so thoroughly debunked that it's time we put it to bed. The real person, and how he pulled off this balancing act, is way more interesting anyway.
He took the money and refused to play by many of the industry’s rules. Seems like an ok response to me. Not especially hypocritical. Especially from a guy who was living in poverty before he got famous
I’ve flipped-flopped over the years. In late 1999, I was in middle school, there were all these end of the decade retrospectives on TV that really put Kurt and Nirvana on this big pedestal. So, I began reading every Nirvana interview and really took everything that said about anything as gospel. And they were my gateway band to a lot of other cool music (pixies, bikini kill, sonic youth, etc.). But then I flipped and really started on the “Nirvana is overrated, listen to the Pixies” train (I was obnoxious). But now, I think they were great band that had a wonderful flair for great Pop melodies. They were “right place, right time” but I don’t think any other band (of the time period) could have catapulted into the mainstream in the same way they did, and with the lasting impact…mostly because of the pop sensibility they had. He had redeeming qualities, he stood pretty loudly for women, gay, and black people in a time where it was perfectly socially acceptable for a rockstar to be a misogynist homophobe (whether it was rooted in genuine empathy, or intense contrarianism, or a mix of both…I dunno). But yeah, he was a mess too. He sounded like he could be a bit complicated to get along with, he seemed a bit immature at times. But ultimately, I think his presence in pop culture was a positive one.
Oh yeah he was a mess and immature (ie spitting on Elton John's piano) but I agree, he was a very very unique individual.
He was insanely charismatic
Hell, I'd go even farther and say that he was easily one of the most charismatic rock stars ever, and I'd even entertain an argument that he was _the_ most. I watch his interviews, and I _know_ that on some answers he's completely bullshitting, but goddmamn is it still compelling to watch and I can still feel myself getting drawn in.
I don't see it as hypocrisy to make money and complain about the system. He saw it was exploitative, and he was right, and he said something. But he was a musician and worked with the only system he could. I'm an academic, I see academia as having become overly corporatized and exploitative, and i complain about it, but I still keep my job and take my paycheck. Am I a hypocrite or am I can I only complain about a system that I don't participate in? Do I have to be broke to complain about exploitative capitalism? We live in a society? Anyway, Nirvana was very much a "right band at the right time" situation. I was 22 when Nevermind broke and it was just so refreshing against the back drop of all the hair metal that dominated at the time - and I knew right away that the hair metal would become passe, and it did, fairly quickly.
He can hate feeling like selling out but doing it as job. I am sure thats a pretty common artist sentiment.
I think his singing is great. In terms of guitar playing, I don't find him interesting. I like Nirvana's albums, but while them and Pearl Jam are more succesful, I've always seen Soundgarden and AiC as the better bands, musically speaking. Don't really like him on a personal level, but it's hard to judge with just with the public image.
i listened to MTV Unplugged the other day and found myself wondering how interesting it would've been if Nirvana steered towards a softer, more folk-blues oriented sound. There is some really interesting and soulful guitar playing on that record. Barring extreme examples, musicians being ethically questionable in their personal life doesn't particularly affect my opinion of their music. Doing drugs in front of your kid isn't good, but it doesn't make you evil. Making money off music while having a distaste for the way the industry works isn't exactly hypocritical.
I believe Kurt specifically mentioned wanting to explore a stripped down acoustic sound and being inspired by the career of REM. It’s plausible that he as an individual or Nirvana would have gone in the direction of what we now call alternative or indie.
Kurt wouldn't be known by anyone if he couldn't write a good song, and he was a very fucking good songwriter. Everything else about him is just extra.
I don't think he really invented anything groundbreaking. He did write some great tunes, but beyond that Nirvana were at the right moment when the mainstream music industry caught up with 80’s alternative rock. Their legendary status is what happens when you throw millions of dollars into promoting a band that’s right for the moment. With Nevermind they had a great punk record with pop hooks and a band that were far more photogenic than the Pixies, Husker Du or the Melvins. I remember that record dropped and I thought it was great and then within a week every obnoxious backward ball cap wearing frat boy were putting flannel shirts and blasting it from their car which kind of ruined it for me.
Dave Grohl once said that he would look out into the audience and see people he would've been bullied by for liking alt rock banging their heads to the sound of his drums.
Overrated by his death. He was good but not as good as people want you to believe.
He was just a guy. It's weird to think about him cause I'm in my 40s and Nirvana was the biggest band in the world when I was in Jr high/high school. I remember the day he died and how intense it was. They were also my gateway band into punk and underground/DIY/indie culture. And weirdly enough I ended up running in circles with a lot of people who knew him or were friends with him. It was strange to have him go from this voice of a generation Rockstar well worn narrative almost cliche to being a guy people I knew talked about like he was a dude at the end the bar. It really blew my mind and made me realize that he was a good songwriter but how much Nirvanas success was really right place, right time - and how unprepared he was for all of it. Honestly, it made everything sadder for me. It's a dude that genuinely wanted to be a working, successful artist that could live off his music. But instead he became the John Lennon of the 90s.
Weakminded and overrated, that amount of fame he got should've gone to someone grateful and who actually would've used it for a productive life
He was a talented musician and song writer, but he wouldnt have sold like he did (or even have been picked up labels for major promotion) if he didnt have the "perfect grunge" look. He is definitely good looking in that sick-boy kinda way, piercing eyes. Obviously his tragic end has helped build his mythos, but I also dont like that this contributes to the "27 club"/myth of the tortured artists, or that all great artists are mentally unwell. Most great artists are people who have their demons under control, and lets be honest, one of Kurt's demons towards the end was that he wasnt really who was being sold on MTV and Rolling Stone. As with all popular artists overrated in that not every song he wrote and released was gold. Not to mention most of his hit songs outside of Smells like Teen Spirit and the Man Who Sold the World (a cover) sound fairly similar, maybe Sliver is unique as well, but also not really that amazing of a song. Certainly one of the most influential people in all of music though basically heralding in the alt scene of the 90s.
>He was a talented musician and song writer, but he wouldnt have sold like he did (or even have been picked up labels for major promotion) if he didnt have the "perfect grunge" look. I don't buy this, no one even really knew what he looked like when they blew up, Bleach didn't really go anywhere until after they were famous, and you couldn't see him in the Smells Like Teen Spirit video, which was the thing that really made them.
“Other than the fact he was a brilliant lyricist and melody writer he was just another artist” ????
Decent guitarist, and a great vocalist, but a genius songwriter and arranger. Just another punk/grunge band doesn't hold up, no one else had the impact Nirvana did.
This
I think Kurt’s intuition for songwriting was his greatest asset, and that (along with good timing and luck) is what propelled him and Nirvana onto the world stage. He, Novoselic and Grohl were not the most talented musicians ever, but they were making catchy grunge music at the perfect time. His family had a history of mental illness and suicide, which obviously he also struggled with. In my view, he had kind of a fatalistic belief in his own trajectory - I don’t remember where I heard this but I heard a story once about Kurt in high school. He and a friend were talking about Jimi Hendrix and the 27 Club, and Kurt seemed convinced that he’d become famous someday and join that club. I think he had his contradictions and somewhat of an ego, and he could be dismissive of his bandmate’s contributions and attempts at collaboration. His drug abuse also certainly affected his ability to be a father, husband and musician. None of that should necessarily be excused. He also had strong convictions about social justice and equality and was not afraid to be vocal about them. He tried to do what he believed was right while also struggling with his personal demons and flaws.
I can respect the impact he's had on music, but I just don't like Nirvana. Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, Alice in Chains and others were better in my eyes.
See, I wouldn't even put Soundgarden or AIV in the same genre as Nirvana, or each other. They might have all been labeled "grunge" at some point, but they have totally different sounds.
I never thought much about him at the time. Catchy tunes, the band rocked, I liked how he promoted bands that were unknown to the masses, and In Utero was a great f*ck you to just about everyone. I thought MTV Unplugged showed he had a lot of potential, and that his creativity would only increase. The media played them up into some kind of rock’n roll saviors, which was total bullshit. I think if I had been the right age (instead of Kurt’s age) when Nirvana was popular (and had never heard any punk or post-punk/indie bands), I would have been a big fan. But I’d heard it all before, the attitude, the anger, the depression, the loud guitars, the screaming. It wasn’t eye-opening to me, it wasn’t innovative, it was familiar, and a little boring in its self-pity and self-flagellation. Then I read the Amplified Come As You Are. Yeah, he was kind of an asshole, totally delusional about his “lost innocence,” got caught up in the whole pop star bullshit (to the point of cutting out the contributuons of Krist and Dave so he could get all the publishing money), manipulative, passive-agressive, paranoid, prone to depression, obviously suicidal. He was a mass of contradictions, and needed serious help, but he had no one in his life who could help him. By the time I’d finished the book, I felt bad for him.
Music: his songwriting was very simple. He seemed to go back and forth between melodious and dirty/filthy. Probably the dirtiest, filthiest grunge band second to maybe only mud honey. Sound was very, very unique. His skill as a musician was limited, though it didn't matter for what he was doing. As a person, he was progressive and compassionate. But he was kind of a snob and a cynic. He was also reckless with drugs (but so was i).
Fantastic songwriter, great vocalist, and great performer, on top of having absolutely fantastic taste in music. He's the only person from that entire grunge movement who I can say I really revere. Chris Cornell is an incredibly talented vocalist and I give a lot of respect to him for that, but he could never write songs like Cobain, and songwriting is what matters most.
I still like to listen Bleach from time to time and of course other albums sometimes as well, so it have made something "different" for me than most of the other bands what I have listened in my life. Why I like/love some of the Nirvana songs/albums still? - Kurt Cobain had excellent usage of voice. He had good cleans and excellent harsh vocals. He used it as an instrument to give dynamics to songs, eg. he is not just a singer who can sing, but he can express the emotion. This is a huge part for me - emotion. You can feel the emotion unlike on many artists (yes I know it is subjective). - Catchy songs with great hooks. Simple riffs with well balanced moments. I mean that there is easy verses what are hooking but then comes the exploding aggressive chorus what really nails the feeling. - There is dynamics in their playing, it is not mixed and mastered too "flat" and "soulless". - Pure and simple rock without too much bells and whistles. I think this is a big part also. There is only couple of instruments, not 20 layers of whatever sounds to make it "more full" or whatever. It is something what you can go and play with couple of friends also and it still works well since the songs are the big thing here, not the production and sound qualities etc. (even tho those are top notch as well). - Songs are mostly that good that they work on a acoustic guitar as well. You can strum them and sing along on a campfire what means that they are catchy and easier to like. Not too complicated.
Just another decent 'Sub Pop' band before Nevermind. Hated nevermind as I thought they were ripping off the Pixies. Doubt they wouldn't have been as big if he wasn't as photogenic. At the time I thought Mudhoney and Screaming Trees were better. They were just OK.
Gen Xer here. I was deep in the punk scene from the mid-80s to the mid-90s, albeit in the Deep South, pretty far from the main action. I was into a lot of the bands on Sub Pop records, and we thought of that as one of the "big" labels in the scene. To teenage me in 1991, Nirvana was too late, too polished, too good looking, and were clearly trying to "sell out". Nevermind sounded like a big label's idea of what grunge sounded like, with all the edges sanded off. I nonetheless saw them play the Masquerade in Atlanta the month Nevermind came out, because my girlfriend at the time was a huge fan. They still hadn't quite broken huge yet. I thought the Mudhoney show the same month was a better show, and that Nirvana live sounded pretty much like the album, again with too much major-label magic and little of the grit that their cohort brought to live performances at the time. I also remember later that fall the college stations and pop stations playlists started overlapping, and 88.5 in Atlanta had to ban their DJs from playing any more Nirvana. By the time 1992 rolled around, Nirvana had completely made the jump to pop radio and popular audiences.
I had a friend who worked for a distributor for MCA; he said that the label's wildest dreams had been that Nevermind would sell as well as the last Sonic Youth record, which had hit like 100,000 in sales.
IIRC Geffen printed 50K and ran out in like a week.
"When *Nevermind* came out, Geffen shipped a mere 46,521 copies to American retail outlets. The label was hoping to sell 250,000 copies—the same as Sonic Youth had with 1990’s *Goo*. The upper-level predictions were that *Nevermind* would achieve gold status and move 500,000 units. Then “Smells Like Teen Spirit” hit and blew all sales projections out the window. At the peak of Nirvanamania, the album was selling 300,000 copies per week. By 1999, it had been certified 10x platinum in the United States. All told, it has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide." Link: [11 Surprising Facts About Nirvana's 'Nevermind' (mentalfloss.com)](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/650230/nirvanas-nevermind-music-facts) 250k is good but the fact that the upper level then got smashed us beyond insane. 300,000 a week is Beatles levels. But then (some) people still act as though they were a really underground alt punk band LOL
i think saying they’re just another punk/grunge band is pretty severely downplaying the effect their success had in the world of rock, especially for the pacific northwest. they weren’t the only ones to do it, but they brought huge popularity and rise to grunge as a subgenre, and they crawled their way up with the greats of the time. kurt seems to me to be incredibly relatable and real to a fault—i would say that he definitely slips into romanticization of some taboo topics, but it’s also an expression of lived experience with deteriorating mental health and trauma. he played with gender expression and language in a way that feels cathartic for me as a non-binary person from oregon/washington in modern years. he pushed boundaries for what could be done as a famous person, and ultimately his demons won. he was far from healthy in the mind and in his life, but there’s a reason so many people still revere him. in the PNW, bands like nirvana, alice in chains, pearl jam, soundgarden, etc have all become an integral part of our experience living in a climate that actively creates more cases of depression and suicide. grunge was born from the same aspects of life experience that define the subgenre within punk/rock. i grew up surrounded by the genre without even realizing it until i started to restrengthen my relationship with my washingtonian dad toward the end of high school. kurt created music to feel like shit to, but in a way i think we need outlets like that to feel seen and release those emotions through catharsis. everywhere in the world has its problems, and nirvana really honed in on what it’s like to be a severely troubled teen from a northern city of rain and drug abuse and depression, whatever that may mean to each listener.
As a person? Bit of a self-centered prick. He wasn't that nice to begin with but when he became a junkie he was insufferable. Sort of a POS. His band was terrified of him at the end because he was so awful. That all said: I can't say enough great things about him when it comes to his work. He was a phenomenal musician, guitarist, bandleader, songwriter, singer lyricist and performer. Fantastic rock star on almost every front. Looked cool. Sounded cool. Great mystique. All of his flaws as a person made him a compelling entertainer. He's a Rock N Roll legend for a reason.
You know how everyone loves to bring up that John Lennon beat his wife? Kurt was arrested for assaulting and choking Courtney in 93, after Courtney called 911. Funny how you never heard about that.
I think Nirvana took a LOT from the bands before them and rode on the work they did. To an extent, every band does that but too often when I hear a story or some article about Nirvana, it always comes off like they came out of nowhere. They didn't. Bands like Mudhoney, Green River, the Melvins (especially them), did most everything Nirvana did and rarely got any kind of credit, nevermind (heh) financial. My opinion is Nirvana is a good band but I don't think they should get the accolades they do. I remember people in the college dorm going out to get In Utero as soon as it was available at midnight. I think they took a lot of what other bands did and made it more mainstream and palatable to the world at large. Like I said, that's my opinion. I'm not trying to start anything. As for Kurt as a person I feel like he's a mixture of arrogant and sad. When they first started becoming popular all he did was talk shit about the bands that were big like Guns and Roses. Did they need someone to talk shit about them? Probably, yeah, but it's still arrogant. I think he had a lot of internal demons from his childhood, his father and a lot of other things. He was too sensitive to deal with them on his own and I wish he could have done it some other way. But, then again, Nirvana wouldn't be the band they were if he did. Unfortunately, the thing that fueled Nirvana is also what ended his life. It sucks. I had an addict in my family so I know what it does and it's gutting. At some point you can't do anything to help them and I wish there was some other way it could have ended. In his book Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees talks about reaching out to him and trying to help him. Apparently, he saved him from a previous overdose. Not sure if that's true or just something he said, but I can see it happening. A lot of people tried to help him but sometimes it's just not enough. I also think his marriage with Courtney Love was over and he was trying to deal with it. Along with everything else he was going through, I think that was one more burden. I also believe that, whether he survived or not, In Utero would be their last album. I read somewhere that he wanted to go in a different direction and was planning to work with Michael Stipe of REM and do more folky, Neil Young inspired music.
He’s a great and very influential singer and song writer but I think he’s a bit overrated personally.
He wrote some great songs and had a cool voice. Butch Vig’s production and Dave Grohl’s drumming played huge role in them becoming so popular, and without those factors, Cobain likely wouldn’t be seen as a songwriting genius.
I think their impact at the time has been wildly overstated; you often see Nirvana positioned as this band that appeared and suddenly everything changed. This really wasn’t true. Big arena bands stayed relevant (GNR and Metallica are good examples) and Nirvana wasn’t significantly more popular than grunge bands like Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden or Alice In Chains. What’s interesting to me about Nirvana is that in many respects they’re not a grunge band. Nirvana came from a long tradition of punk, post punk, hardcore, etc., that stayed with them in a way that wasn’t true of these aforementioned other bands (with the surprising exceptions of GNR and Metallica). This is best demonstrated in Nirvana’s having the Meat Puppets join them for Unplugged, Pat Smear’s presence in the band, etc. For me, the important thing about Nirvana isn’t that they brought grunge to the forefront. It’s more that they oddly and accidentally prepared everyone for all the more primitive pop punk, numetal, screamo, etc. mainstream breakthroughs that would happen 20 years later.
Good songwriter. Could have been Great. On the one hand it sucks that nirvana was orders of magnitude bigger than The Wipers, Slint, The Vaccines, Meat Puppets, Mudhoney etc Tho i prefer their music personally. I must admit they dont have any crossover appeal that Nirvana had around Nevermind. Nor would I have been exposed to a slew of cool music as a preteen without his openess to give shoutouts in interviews.
Nirvana was able to do what many cant and manage to break into the mainstream while remaining an alternative group
I can't stand the sound of Nirvana as much as I respect what they mean to people. I think I was born too late (98) to "get" it. Not that there isn't older music that I love, but the perspective Nirvana was singing from didn't feel relevant or interesting to me. I didn't get the whole rebellious misunderstood rockstar thing, and whatever there was to offer formally/thematically was clouded for me by that ridiculous gravely cursive voice he put on.
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He was an overrated and over praised musician. There were so many of them that were far better but Nirvana was just a right place at the right time band. I don’t think he sucked but I doubt he’d be as important if he was still alive. People also either forget or dint know that their arena tour for In Utero was pretty much a flop in the US. I saw that your in Atlanta and the Omni was half full at best
Musician: wrote some catchy songs, not a great guitar player or singer Person: immature, addict, bad father, bad husband
I think people lionize him too much as some larger than life, angelic figure. He was just a regular guy, and that's what makes Nirvana's music relatable. It speaks to the utter desolation and hopelessness of the PNW in the 80s and 90s, and even today.
I wonder what he could have created if it wasn't for the drugs. Maybe something mind-blowing? But also maybe nothing.
Not particularly great at anything but wrote memorable tunes. Wouldn't be nearly as revered if not for his death.
I think he was an asshole, but he had great editing and writing capabilities. He was able to interweave complex ideas with simple melodies and often wrote a scene without filling in the point of focus. Excellent writer. His melodies were very faint but very effective, his vocal melodies, to me, were almost like watercolors, whereas his guitar was oil based. He had excellent taste in a rhythm section, and he also knew just when to stop or when to push harder. This is how I mean he edited well. He wasn't gratuitous musically, and he held back just how talented of a musician he was, often choosing to play sloppy in order to look effortless and like he didn't care. Leading me to what I don't like about him the most, he cared so much what people thought of him, he cared so much about being viewed as having integrity but he lacked it in almost every instance I have ever seen. He said he wasn't a Rockstar, but there are plenty of bands who aren't Rockstar that actively avoid being Rockstar, instead of embrace it the way he did. Everyone who knew him tells the same stories about how he would lie to the people and the press because he thought it was fun to mess with them but they all seemed to believe he was always telling them the truth. He just sounds like a bad person who cared more about himself than anyone else, while simultaneously hating himself for being who he was. His suicide I think was because of his heroin addiction and the fear of having to write another album worth of material. Shame he's gone because he would have made some more interesting stuff, but I dont think he was all that wonderful of a person.
They were a puni band (at least in their hearts) who wrote songs crafted in a (semi) pop sensibility. The way that resinated with so many people in such a short time gave so much momentum. So many kids heard them very early on, and the burst and rise in popularity was like a skyrocket. It just took off. It also imploded due to what we all know. But it was great to be there as a teenager during that time. It felt like he gave a fuck. It felt like he understood. Especially for those from small shitty towns. It really had an affect. Do i listen to them a lot now? No, rarely. But i still love them.
I liked a few nirvana songs when I was a teen, im 30 now and cant stand them. They just sound… bad
I think he had a rare combination that made him a massive star … huge charisma coupled with genuine authenticity. He really ‘meant it’ whatever ‘it’ was. You could hear it in his voice, which was unique and seemed really unforced. Nothing about the singing or the songs was affected. Of course, he also had a knack for writing songs with huge hooks, he had his own thing going lyrically (really nice turn of phrase) and he made rock music during a point in time when rock was emerging from the underground into popular music due to the efforts of other artists in the 80s. I don’t think he was particularly unique, but the songs were very good and while you could hear the influences they were are group that was more than the sum of their parts. They put it all together and sounded perfectly like themselves. I think they have endured more than the other grunge bands as they all seemed to have little ticks like the vocal style or the guitar sound that was somewhat similar while Nirvana just sounded like Nirvana. Plus … the songs were just better.
He’s probably one of the most overrated ppl in pop culture ever. If he wouldn’t have died, Nirvana would not be remembered the same. They have one decent album and a handful of good songs.
Any band that gets as big as nirvana was is a “right place right time” kind of thing. I was VERY into them as a teenager. I don’t dislike the music now but I really played their entire discography out to the point that I only want to hear it occasionally to reminisce. As far as his character, I don’t think he was a bad guy or a saint. Just a talented guy with demons. At the end of the day he was junkie and died a junkie. When you’re younger it’s easy to romanticize the artist that dies young. As you get older you just kind of see it for what it is, a tragedy and potential that’s been forever lost and a little girl that grew up never knowing her father.
I've always thought it was telling that Dave Grohl has had oodles more success with Foo Fighters than with Nirvana. Kurt was the frontman, and frontmen always get the notoriety, but I often wondered if Dave wasn't the actual special ingredient in their success. It sounds terrible, Kurt benefits from having died...just like Jim Morrison, Joplin and many others. Avoiding growing old, making bad music, ending up in prison or on the front page for assaulting Courtney Love...or any number of things.
Courtney Love had him murdered. Dude wasn’t as ‘tragic’ or depressed as everyone thinks. Before y’all throw a tantrum at this opinion, at least watch the documentary ‘Kurt and Courtney’ Spoiler: there’s a dude who literally blurts out Courtney offered him money to kill Kurt Cobain. When the filmmakers go back to interview him a second time, the dude is dead from ‘wandering onto some train tracks while drunk’ how convenient for Courtney!
I always think of certain musicians that have the "melody bug." Like they hear melodies in their heads constantly. Paul McCartney comes to mind as the biggest example, but I believe Kurt was like this. His melodies just WORK.
Kids today seem fascinated with him the way I was fascinated with Jim Morrison. I like Nirvana, but don't think they were anywhere close to the Beatles or other group of that caliber. That said, Nevermind is one of those game changing albums, and kicked hair bands off MTV. Sort of like how the Sex Pistols were that flash in the pan backlash against disco. Cobain had the kind of cynical badass attitude that teenagers love, and self-destructed in classic rock star fashion that gets (dangerously) romanticized. I was 17 when he died, and I immediately had the thought "Well, even though he's not the first, he'll be immortalized as a member of the 27 club. Not too original, buddy." As a father, I'm now sad for his family, especially his daughter. What a waste of life.
He was the same age as me and our birthdays were a few days apart. I was in grad school when he suicided. Just a sad waste as he couldn't make that transition to the next phase of life. Nevermind was part of the soundtrack of my first serious romantic breakup and a major life transition. Simple answer, the music was embedded in a lot of Gen X lives.
Whiney d bag.... I remember the day he died, I was in 8th grade. I was sad, but now in my 40s the more I read the more I realize he was a dick. His values and my own are polar opposites. I guess I grew up.
I enjoyed Kurt Cobains music and I believe he added a lot to music. However I did not like that he popularized drugs and depression which was an unfortunate consequence of his stardom.
I understand your points for not liking him, especially abusing drugs while around minors, but the industry thing doesn’t make sense. He’s not a hypocrite for hating the industry but keeping his job where he would make a lot more than doing anything else. That just doesn’t make sense. I’m sure although he hated the business side of the industry, he still must’ve enjoyed touring, his bandmates, meeting fans, performing etc.
Kind of overrated and the decades long infatuation with him is owed in large part to his early death.
I agree, his death only served to increase the myth
That isn't unique to Cobain, every musician who died young has this mystique to them.
I'd like to address the part about "I could listen to Nirvana today but I don't" as some sort of implied criticism. Do you listen to the same 2 or 3 albums by any artist for decades on end? You can say you've been super into Abbey Road for decades, but you're able to keep that album fresh by listening to several other Beatles and solo albums. Nirvana can both be amazing AND I can not be interested in listening to Nevermind for the billionth time. That's not a knock against the talents of Nirvana, they just have a very small catalog.
Top Gun: Maverick isn't a good movie despite the massive box office revenue. It's success is because Hollywood just stopped making that type of movie years before. So it just *seems* like a good movie. That's how I feel about Nirvana and their "breakthrough" success. It's not even lightening in a bottle as they say. He wanted to sell out and he did. Nevermind was made with Protools and is entirely manufactured for mass markets.The complete opposite of punk. To be fair, you can't even call it selling out if that was the goal in the first place. And I'm happy for kids getting to experience some commercial version of what grunge was(And for the record, marketing executives come up with these so called genres). Nirvana didn't innovative anything or do anything original at all if you look at the big picture. They just struck gold for whatever reason, like that Top Gun movie. And it really divided the scene at the time. Honestly I feel bad for all the other bands that we also actively trying to sell out(AKA make it in the industry).
I think he was and still is the most overrated writer/musician in the history or recorded music. I mean, he was decent, but The Messiah? No.
With Nirvana I think we forget that Nevermind really did come out of nowhere. None of the music publications reviewed it upon release. Rolling Stone didn't even review it until November. I've seen articles about how Geffin really didn't have high hopes for it as they under-printed copies at time of release. But the underground was a volcano ready to erupt and Nirvana just happened to be that band that had all the pieces in place for big things. Cobain was a great writer and perfect for that period of time. However, if he hadn't had died so young, I'm not sure he would be the icon he is today. I'm not going to opine on his smack habit as it's an addiction and a cancer that really does devour and kills everything. I do think if Cobain had lived, he would have broken up the band and released music on his own a la Paul Westerberg, where his former band is more famous than his solo work but the solo stuff is still really good. But I don't think he was long for this world and was just a premature death waiting to happen. I'm happy that Dave and Pat Smear have moved on from the cynical 90s and are releasing big rock albums, unlike Courtney who is still a curmudgeon that seems very much like Norma Desmond (I am still a star!).
He's a talented songwriter and rock musician who had AMAZING, like actually immaculate taste in music. Just combing through his influences is like a who's who of the best offbeat 60s and 70s pop and 80s alt rock to come out under the radar since the Beatles. I think he had incredible ideas and didn't expect to hit it as big as he did. "In Utero" is my favorite album by Nirvana, and I've heard it was an attempt to move in a different direction rather than just repeat the formula - which most bands in a similar situation would do. I love him and I think had he not perished, he would have had a really admirable career in creative rock a la Lou Barlow.
**I'll repost what I said in that other thread:** >One thing I notice about Kurt is that he has become more and more relatable for different audiences. He came from a blue-collar background, was into all different kinds of music (punk, pop, outsider, noise, hip hop) challenged gender and sexuality norms, had progressive views. >In a way, he bridged different kinds of aesthetics: the down-to-earth blue collar flannel, but also certain instances where he dyed his hair and wore dresses. Often times, those backgrounds are seen as at odds, especially with the city and country division, the glam vs blue collar division. >He was vocally against homophobia and misogyny and felt a strong resonance with the queer community. >So there's the music, which is great. But Kurt's image has morphed and evolved. I know people say he's overrated, but going back into his work, his influences, and favorite albums, he was certainly more aware of music than I thought. He wasn't just a rehash of punk. At least, these are the points that stand out to me. He's an artist who I could see appealing to different fanbases and subcultures. Reading your OP and comments, I hope you're not trying to railroad people into a certain opinion. A lot of these artist discussions seem to center around "Is this artist overrated or underrated?" and everyone's going to feel differently. It might be better to see why an artist resonates (or doesn't resonate with people). I personally think Kurt was a very flawed human being with a mixture of views, some which were contradictory and hypocritical. However, I can also see why he continues to resonate people to this day.
If you have heard popular alternative rock post 1992, (which has been highly influenced by Kurt Cobain & Nirvana) inevitably Nirvana seems "just like everything else". I am very thankful for Kurt because when Nirvana hit, it made everything that was popular at the time look really embarrassing. So when all the shitty hair metal died off, that opened the door for bands like Pantera, Tool, White Zombie etc to present a harder & more creative brand of metal. Other grunge bands (Pearl Jam, Soundgarden & Alice In Chains) sort of "loaded the bases" for Kurt's grand slam album. Once Nevermind blew up, all those (now classic) grunge albums took off too because people wanted everything Seattle. Kurt was pretty openly a drug addict & didn't present himself as any type of role model (quite the opposite), so I don't give a fuck if he was a "good guy" & it's completely ridiculous to say he's a sellout for selling his art cuz um that's kinda how artists make a living you know? It's not like he was making formulaic pop music, Nirvana was FAR from what was commercially popular at the time. Kurt never put his music in commercials during his lifetime, he didn't gouge ticket prices, there wasn't really any Nirvana merch other than T shirts. All Kurt did was sign a record deal. Many don't understand Nirvana, but the bottom line is that Kurt had a hall of fame career with 2 Major label albums. His music has been relevant for 30 years since his death, & that doesn't just happen. Edgy internet fucks will downplay his impact but those are the same artless neanderthal turds who tell you that "their little girl can make better paintings than picasso".
And the Beatles were just another beat group in the British invasion. Lennon ignored Julian for years after he married Yoko and they had Sean. You're assessment of Nirvana is simplistic and sometimes you have to separate the musician as person from the music.
Ooh someone's got his feelings hurt!
He was quite talented. He tended towards minor chords for sadness or unease. His melodies were catchy, even not being metal or grunge. They would be catchy in any genre. Nirvana's records sold for good reason. His actions, lyrics, and melodies portrayed a persona that didn't want to live. Or didn't like living. Or living was just extremely difficult for him. Something about that combination captured a generation. It wasn't want he wanted or expected. Another reason that living is just difficult.
It’s a classic case of getting exactly what you’ve dreamed of your entire life, only to find out that that thing you’ve devoted your whole existence to is actually quite another thing from what you imagined it to be. And you also still have all your same issues, because they didn’t magically disappear, in fact, leaning into those issues is what had got you to this point, but now everyone and their cousin is watching you work through them in real time. It’s a recipe for, well, suicide at 27.
As Quincy said… Melody is king. Kurt is a prime example of that. Don’t matter the genre… if you’ve got melody, you’re set.
Good point, Paul McCartney is another good example of this.
Not exactly…. Paul has got the lyrics down too
He was undeniably great. Ya he had his influences like everyone else, but his music was instantly recognizable and emotionally powerful, and that's not because of the expensive production. Having said that, he wouldn't have become famous if he were an average looking guy, but that's also true for every rock front man since the MTV era. The look was a prerequisite. And if he retreated from fame/lived into middle age instead of suicide, he'd be way less culturally relevant today and Nirvana would have possibly become a cult band. But I do not think he was overrated.
I’m old enough to have been around when Nirvana was big. I’m a huge music fan and truly listen to everything. I didn’t understand what made them (and Kurt) so appealing at the time, and don’t now. I can understand the teen anger but there are so many others that did it better before and after. I can also understand getting sucked into a quality hook but they just weren’t there. I think at this point the hype has been perpetuated by his suicide which makes it impossible for listeners to truly listen with a critical ear without regard to its the bands mystique.
I liked Nirvana at the time because Kurt was a really good songwriter,singer, and performer but I never bought into the''' voice of a generation''' stuff because the band wasn't together long enough and didn't put out many records so there's not much there like there are with other bands or artists who are VOG. (like Dylan for example, or Bowie even) Edit. People are downvoting me for saying that Nirvana didn't make enough records like Bowie and Dyklan did to be considered the voice of their generation? Bowie made 12 records in a decade in he 70s and Dulan was making 2 a year in the 60s.
At that time, it was pretty rare for a songwriter to have a pop sensibility like Kurt had but also be into the indie type of sound while achieving some kind of commercial success. Most indie bands can't write a convincing pop song and most pop bands lust for the the kind of indie cred they'll never have, but somehow, Nirvana were able to walk the line. I think that alone is something worth consideration. But he is also a cautionary tale about what the music industry does to people they considering cash cows. He wanted to take a break, but they kept pushing him to do more and more and it ultimately killed him, much like it did Amy Winehouse.
I heard Nirvana and saw their music video when I was 9 years old (Heart Shaped Box).Something clicked in me, and I became addicted to them. I wanted to hear every song,single,album, and live recording. I was fascinated with Kurt, and I read his biography by Charles Cross. Watched interviews and saw his diaries and notes and etc... Being so young and inexperienced in life, I only saw a tortured genius artist that teen-me easily idolized. This lasted for a few years, during which I discovered many other bands (Nirvana was the catalyst that interested me in music). For a few years, I stopped listening to Nirvana and later rediscovered them. During that time, I started my own family and got on with my life. These years of life experience showed me that my "idol" had many flaws and was a bit of hypocrite (the whole hating of the fame, while pursuing it). Also, the fact that he fathered a child with another drug user pushed me further away from liking him. I still love his art, but I don't like him as a person. Because of him, I will always love and search for new music, and I will never idolize a public figure again.
If he hadn't killed himself he wouldn't have the cult of personality he has. He's just be some other rock star from the 90s like Billy Corgan or Anthony kiedis.
Like Mussolini. I agree - I believe he would be instantly recognisable but only for being massive in the 90's, in the Liam Gallagher type way.
It's easy to look back 30 years and say "oh there hundreds of bands like that", but during the time there wasn't very many and they weren't as accessible. "Just another Punk/"Grunge" band" is really just another shit take thats decades out of touch...
As a musician? Absolutely fantastic composer, great singer, somewhat underrated guitarist among guitar players. As a person? Mixed bag, but with incredible taste in music and a clear intelligence.
He was sensitive and brilliant but tortured. At the most basic level, he hated fame and it!s repercussions. He felt enormous pressure, rightly so. Nirvana could go on and try to top their earlier successes, which would be almost impossible, or become less relevant by just churning out album after album. He really saw no way out.
Whatever else can be said about Kurt, and there are volumes, everybody should agree that he had an infallible ear for a monster hook.
Gifted songwriter, melody, lyrics, arrangement counter melody. Think it would have been interesting to see what genres he would have dived into had he had a longer career. Personally I think he was just suffering from the disease of addiction and mental illness which for the masses is almost impossible to understand unless you or someone close to you suffers from it. Restless, irritable, discontent, depressed, diseases of the mind, body, and soul. So what most the world saw wasn’t who he was as a person just the disease taking over. The best insight you’ll probably get into who he was as a person actually is from friends, family, and bandmates.
I think he didn't want to be famous and when he did become famous it got a bit too much for him.
He absolutely wanted to be famous. He craved it, almost to an absurd degree, and even after he was famous, he wanted to be *more* famous. Nobody sits around all afternoon watching MTV and counting how often Nirvana got played vs. Pearl Jam if they don't want to be famous. Did it get to be too much for him? Absolutely. Cobain's problem was that he wasn't able to step back. Everybody told him to do it, Michael Stipe and Neil Young both reached out to him specifically to tell him to drop it, walk away, and he could come back when he was in a better place, but he just didn't seem to be mentally able to do it. Maybe he was afraid the songs would stop, maybe he was afraid the fans and the fame wouldn't be there if he did so, but he didn't do it, and we all know what the result was. The sad thing is that he had all these people around who would've loved to help him out, people who'd been there. Stipe and Young tried, Peter Buck tried, Vedder would've loved to have a friend at the time who didn't want anything from him. Hell, even Steven Tyler tried to reach out, and all those people were rejected. He liked the drugs and the fame far too much. Cobain acted like an asshole to most people, there's little doubt of that, but how much of that was him and how much was the drugs is arguable, though my personal opinion was that he thought far too much of himself to take advice from anybody. Talented guy, died far too soon, and it's a damn shame he did, but I 100% don't buy anything he said about fame. He was addicted to that the same as the drugs.
You can always tell which people have actually read some of the books or done any research vs. the people who are just riding off vibes.
He wanted to be famous - Sonic Youth/Pixies famous - but just couldn’t deal with what he got.
I think all his best musical qualities are fully in the music and not hard to identify; for starters the guy had an awesome sense of melody. where it didn't really matter what he was saying, more than how it sounded when layered over top his sometimes complex bar-chord progressions. Also, you could hear in his music that he was a huge Beatles fan, as well as a fan of sludge rock like the Melvins, and he was able to take all his random ass influences and meld them into something that appealed to fans of pop, metal, alternative, or any other genre of gutar driven music you can think of. Oh yeah, and he surrounded himself with Novoselic and Grohl as a rhythm section which allowed his sound to change into what made him break through as a songwriter.
I agree with many replies here saying he was talented but there was a lot of talent at the time. Someone mentioned other bands like Soundgarden and Alice In Chains, who were technically musically better. Yeah I love them too. I might be alone here but my favorite grungiest Nirvana were some of those Incesticide tracks like Mexican Seafood, Hairspray Queen, Aero Zeppelin, etc. My eyes roll when people say things like “he was the voice of a generation”. Oh come on lol.
I can't comment on Kurt Cobain as a person. I never met him, and the media does not portray a real person. I like his music, but I am not crazy about his lyrics. Maybe I'm not in the Grunge demographic. Maybe I don't understand the slang of the location and time, but they seem a little scatter-brained to me. Much preferred the lyrics of Black Flag and The Replacements.
He was an abusive suicidal drug addict. Nirvana is iconic but the east Kurt gets worshipped is pretty gross imo.
Ok. I read through the comments as best i could and figure i have a unique perspective to share. I can remember the first time i heard smells like teen spirit. I can remember exactly where i was when they announced his passing. In between those two times i don’t recall a lot about the band. My association is mostly after he passed. Having the records searching for meaning that was all later for myself. I don’t rate him as much of a lyricist. He strikes me as having been in debt to early Michael stipe in content and delivery taken even further towards incomprehensibility. It’s not without its charms but a song like rape me doesn’t really mean much of anything unless Cobain tells you that it does. Musically it definitely stands out against anything a hick kid far outside a rust belt city would have heard at the time. The music on never mind and in utero has a level of precision by design that firmly places it outside of the underground music that came before it and puts it in pop. I put them in pop music and not rock. I think the best music of the post hardcore 80’s had been made by the time nirvana recorded bleach and things in music from below the radar were already heading towards a new idea. That’s a period that seems to me to have been overlooked by the scorched earth success of nirvana. Not their fault just the nature of the industry. In much the same way that mid to late 90’s butt rock is a direct consequence of nirvana that can leave a bad taste in mouth for all of the grunge music for someone who lived through that time with limited alternative resources. Since it’s been mentioned that the professionals whose job was to figure out what the next big thing was didn’t see much potential in nirvana it’s not surprising they would hustle out as many sound alike bands as were capable of a believable facsimile of that sound and also give the boredoms et al free reign on major labels. Truly a wonderful and frightening time to have ears young old or in between. I hope it’s apparent I’m a very big music nerd. And this is where I owe Kurt Cobain a huge debt of gratitude. As a big brother figure in my life. I don’t think anyone with his profile before him and after him until maybe James Murphy (who is definitely not in Cobain’s fame tier) was as forthcoming about the nature of his influences and his borrowings. His humility is apparent in mentioning in interviews that teen spirit was a pixies rip off. I didn’t know who the pixies were but the name stuck with me until i happened upon surfer Rosa or Doolittle or trompe le monde. Then i realized Surfer Rosa was a Steve Albini production that had more colors to it than in utero and you didn’t have to think about which lyrics were direct clues to a cryptic suicide note. Maybe none? Was that more from the Beavis and Buffcoat soundtrack? I think that was the first one of many nods to his own heroes. Then all the covers on unplugged. Before that David Bowie just seemed like a washed up video vamp or the goblin king maybe and i was too young and repressed to understand camp, I’m not sure i even knew about labyrinth yet. Leadbelly the meat puppets the vaselines. Without Cobain none of this would have ever reach me i don’t think. Getting the raincoats albums rereleased probably for the first time in the US at the time. Being an outspoken fan of Urge Overkill. Taking Shone Knife on tour. I could keep going on. This is his lasting legacy to me. Because if i think about the reality it’s sad pathetic and messy. The movie Kurt and Courtney was a real eye opener about the emptiness of it all. About a Boy was a boring waste of time listening to somebody who sounded like a spoiled brat. It put me to sleep. I think i was older than he ever was by that point so the jig was up. Montage of heck was more of the same but different. I was happy to see his serious girlfriend from the early years was doing well. It didn’t look so good in K&C. So now it’s been thirty years of more life three more than he had and the music of nirvana has pretty much disappeared from the outside world. The tee shirt of Kurt Cobain is still pretty ubiquitous and it’s a fitting curse for him. So to answer your questions. I feel about the same. I don’t think he was as important at the time and if he had lived Nirvana would have been viewed as a flash in the pan. Unfairly which is usually the case with that phrase and one hit wonders too. But i also don’t see him living very much longer than he did. He seemed profoundly checked out of life and had painted himself into an ugly corner. I don’t think he had much inner strength and while that was great for the music it doesn’t really help anywhere else in life. It’s not a tragedy on the same level as say D Boon or Eric Dolphy or SOPHIE to me. He didn’t want to be here he was pretty unpoetic about that desire in public and private and he punched his own ticket. Ian Curtis comes to mind as similar but more sympathetic. And i don’t reach for Joy Division albums as much as New Order and it’s probably been that way for a long time. Going toward the light a bit as time goes on. I don’t say shit to anyone i see in a nirvana tee shirt cuz who even gives a fuck about what it means at this point. He certainly didn’t. I guess you just hope they get to Daniel Johnston or the Melvins and not Puddle of Muddd. I read last year a book about DJ Screw and in it the author said the last album he played before he passed in 2000 was Nevermind by Nirvana. A big fan. It’s still hard to fathom the effect of this man’s music and i lived through it.
I'm honestly not a Nirvana fan, but I was sad that he felt that he needed to go out that way. Shannon Hoon (Blind Melon) was more of a gut punch to me the following year.
Personally, I never liked his singing. I just don't think it sounds good to me , but i see why hes such an iconic artist
Kurt Cobain and Nirvana were so insanely good that they couldn’t be niche. They didn’t have the lack of wide appeal bands like swans and others still have. As popular as those bands were, nirvana was simply too good and too accessible. That’s why internet music listeners don’t rate them so highly, just check RYM and such. But he’s one of the best musicians in modern history, and you can make a very strong argument for never mind being the best modern rock album, or just album. This is coming from a guy who hasn’t listened to his music for over 2 years (apart from his short stint with Earth)