Nirvana C/D

I became aware of Nirvana thru MTV, the video for Lithium, I think i was 8 years old. I thought the lyrics were funny, it made me giggle. It also struck me as crazed and unhinged, and sounded sludgy. Was def surprised to find out shortly afterwards that they were evidently the most popular band in the world.

Speculation as to why this band became so huge and not the Pixies or Husker Du was obligatory in anything you'd read about them even then. So I'm familiar with the various explanations and I get it, but at the same time they always struck me as the unlikeliest band to achieve that kind of popularity. They really seemed like they could just as easily have been a rando indie pop band on K records, or a band that only ever released a couple pf short run 7" singles.

The Vig production and mix, though. Pixies didn't have it and sure as hell Husker Du didn't either.

i don't think pixies or husker du would have rejected that kind of thing had they stayed around. breeders and sugar did ok post-nevermind

Pretty singer with a strong voice, consistent hooks.xps

I based my immediate attraction to Sugar on how massive it sounded.

xxxp yeah, of course, but they might have gone another way and their other records paint them in a very different light.

Yeah I remember an interview with Lou Barlow who was bitching that Dinosaur Jr "did everything Nirvana did first" or something like that and complained that Kurt's voice was "nectar...fucking nectar" and they couldn't compete in that category.

Love Bob Mould and Frank Black but it doesn't seem mysterious why they didn't appear on as many magazine covers.

Sure, and much has been said about this in the last 30 years as I mentioned (I think testosterone and machismo were often cited in explanation, funnily enough). Those two bands were the most frequently mentioned in comparison probably because there were expectations of crossover success which they ultimately did not meet, where Nirvana's success was unexpected.

Anyway, re:hooks- much as I came to love Cobain's sort of harmonic asymmetry, it made me queasy age 8 or 9! 'More than a feeling" was much more palatable to me than " smells like teen spirit" at that time, though i seem to be alone in this and they were the most popular band among my age group by a huge distance.

I sound like Geir Hongro now.

There must be an ancient Geir Hongro thread on here on Nirvana vs. Nirvana Uk where he says that although the American Nirvana had a couple of nice songs, the British Nirvana were much better overall.

Listen, you could've produced Kurt's songs any way and they would've been massive -- I don't think the production on Doolittle or Flip Your Wig/Candy Apple Grey did anything good for their respective artists, and yes Vig did an exceptional job on Nevermind, but Kurt is in a league of his own even when he's recording onto a fucking boombox. I think it has a lot to do with the hooks and the really unusual songwriting in a technical sense--I've said this before but there's a series of great posts on ILX in one of the infinite Nirvana threads that analyzes their songs harmonically and whatever, I'm too dumb to go on but the person said something to the effect of Kurt using dissonant thirds or something. Please someone find that post. They talk about the descending vocal line in the chorus of "Lithium."

It's in the power chords he used, how they make NO sense together, yet somehow do. "Lithium" is not only immediately recognizable on an acoustic guitar, it also sounds completely different from most other pop music using standard major and minor chord patterns.

Quite Lennonesque

In the someday
What's that sound

xxp That's just it, though, I experienced those harmonic things as very bitter and syrupy as a child, in Nirvana and in grunge more broadly to an extent, I probably associated it with a seasick feeling more than anything else. This does not seem to have been a common side effect, of course.

Not to undercut Cobain's agency, but with breakthroughs as seismic as Nevermind's you can't overlook serendipity. The album broke the autumn when (a) alternative/college/'modern rock lol' culture had made considerable commercial and cultural inroads, thanks, in part to Pixies, the Smithereens, and their friends in the UK; (b) Soundscan had just made this breakthrough possible. In '91 we learned how popular country and hip-hop were and had always been; now the actual sales told the tale.

I mean, Trompe Le Monde, the best sounding (and, to my ears, best) Pixies album, came out the same month as Nevermind. Only one of them knocked Dangerous from the top of the Billboard chart.

Jane's Addiction & FNM also helped sell alt rock/metal to the Kerrang crowd.

he clearly had something else going on in the songwriting department

Alfred OTM throughout this thread. Also, I'd like to second recommendations of Everett True's Nirvana biog (both, in fact), which are my favourite Nirvana texts by some considerable distance.

most successes can be owed to right place/right time dynamics but i am kinda sympathetic to flappy's argument, dude was just a cut above, very individual voice that struck the balance between sophisticated and raw/tossed off, and the latter gave so much energy and verve to the former that it's irresistible xp

It's not a binary, though. Talent + luck.

One of my postulates is that, contrary to the received wisdom, Nevermind didn't signal the end of the Poppy Bush Interzone but was another weird product of it.

So what was the first post-Bush hit or phenonenon?

Something that gets overlooked by those who say that "Pixies/Husker/Replacements should have made it..." is that by the time that serendipity that Alfred mentions, those bands were DONE. I mean, Husker Dü broke up before Billboard even had an Alternative/Modern Rock chart, The 'Mats broke up the summer before Nevermind, and The Pixies were very nearly on life support.

OTOH, Nirvana comes in with a strong major-label debut, a video that hits outside of 120 Minutes & Headbanger's Ball PLUS THE SERENDIPITY.

Biggie feels distinctly '90s. Garth too, despite getting his start in the Interzone.

otm

xpost

I'm with Alfred here. I don't think the extra Neil Young debt that elevates Cobain above his PNW contemporaries is entirely commensurate with the level of his band's accomplishment. The FNM/Jane's/general-gradual-acceptance-of-harder-rock-as-possibly-acceptable-style quotient is a big factor

It's not a binary, though. Talent + luck.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, June 2, 2021 2:15 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh yeah, ofc, i just also don't necessarily credit it to vig/wallace, guess i'm still talking about production here

nevermind does sound really really incredible tho

when my buddy Greg bought it on a late November morning record store trip (I bought Robyn Hitchcock's Perspex Island) and put the tape in the car, it boomed like Def Leppard.

Sidenote: It took me way too long to realize FNM wasn't a mistyped REM or NIN (both of whom also as important as FNM to this discussion).

nevermind does sound really really incredible tho

so do a lot of the records Butch Vig worked on around that time! none of those records had "teen spirit," but "teen spirit" plus the full court press goes a long way.

Sidenote: It took me way too long to realize FNM wasn't a mistyped REM or NIN (both of whom also as important as FNM to this discussion).

― blue whales on ambient (C. Grisso/McCain)

I thought it stood for Fine Noung Mannibals.

trust me i am not trying to downplay butch vig's work lol, even his later records which are mastered abominably i tend to still love the sound of

There must be an ancient Geir Hongro thread on here on Nirvana vs. Nirvana Uk where he says that although the American Nirvana had a couple of nice songs, the British Nirvana were much better overall.

― Fauna Sukkot (Deflatormouse), Wednesday, June 2, 2021 3:26 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol he made a post like this in this very thread

nirvana ruled

Of course he did.

One of the first music related texts I had was this Life magazine special issue from 1992 on the last 40 years of rock that i swiped from my dad. It had a big feature on Guns N Roses at the end and made a point of saying how Axl Rose was totally macho even though he wore a blouse. In the accompanying photo of some of the band are sitting in a hot tub backstage with varuious blonde groupies.

I don't think Kurt Cobain wearing a dress would have been seen as necessarily effeminate by their college jock fans at the time, let alone offputting.

The FNM/Jane's/general-gradual-acceptance-of-harder-rock-as-possibly-acceptable-style quotient is a big factor

From what I remember, a lot of the contemporary press coverage had it the other way around, taking the acceptance of hard rock/metal as a given and suggesting that discernable hard rock roots, however embarrassing to the band, may have been key to Nirvana's broader appeal.

very individual voice that struck the balance between sophisticated and raw/tossed off

Precisely the qualities that make me inclined to perceive their superstardom as an unlikely twist?

I was three years old when Smells Like Teen Spirit came out and I had pretty much no concept of Nirvana and Cobain until I was older. Lots of people at school had Nirvana hoodies but they were the "mosher" crowd, the same folk who had Slipknot and Limp Bizkit hoodies, very much music for a certain type of teenager (and in my experience, overwhelmingly male). It's what put me off investigating them for so long despite having discovered and loving Pixies on my own - it was loved by an audience who weren't welcoming to me as an effete gay teenager, and who seemed to like a lot of music that was characterised by things I don't enjoy the sound and style of. The idea of Cobain as anti-heteronormative really didn't align with the people who I saw identify as fans.

Not to undercut Cobain's agency, but with breakthroughs as seismic as Nevermind's you can't overlook serendipity. The album broke the autumn when (a) alternative/college/'modern rock lol' culture had made considerable commercial and cultural inroads, thanks, in part to Pixies, the Smithereens, and their friends in the UK; (b) Soundscan had just made this breakthrough possible. In '91 we learned how popular country and hip-hop were and had always been; now the actual sales told the tale.

OTM Alfred. I also want to add Sinéad O'Connor and R.E.M. in there for making the U.S. pop charts much more alt-friendly by the time Nevermind and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" landed in the fall of '91 - both got a multiplatinum album and a #1 and a #4 single respectively. And something about the Soundscan thing always unnerved me - like, if Soundscan had been delayed by a few years for whatever reason, what would that mean? Would the actual sales for people like N.W.A. or Nirvana have been undercut and reported at a fraction of what they really were? In all seriousness, I wouldn't know how much of a difference it would make, but could they seriously have been merely gold records at best going by the old system?

Listen, you could've produced Kurt's songs any way and they would've been massive -- I don't think the production on Doolittle or Flip Your Wig/Candy Apple Grey did anything good for their respective artists, and yes Vig did an exceptional job on Nevermind, but Kurt is in a league of his own even when he's recording onto a fucking boombox. I think it has a lot to do with the hooks and the really unusual songwriting in a technical sense--I've said this before but there's a series of great posts on ILX in one of the infinite Nirvana threads that analyzes their songs harmonically and whatever, I'm too dumb to go on but the person said something to the effect of Kurt using dissonant thirds or something. Please someone find that post. They talk about the descending vocal line in the chorus of "Lithium."

It's in the power chords he used, how they make NO sense together, yet somehow do. "Lithium" is not only immediately recognizable on an acoustic guitar, it also sounds completely different from most other pop music using standard major and minor chord patterns.

Yeah, I wouldn't say the chords make no sense together but the modal mixture and melody-writing is definitely distinctive and effective - to me, though, this answers "why the songs are good", not "why they became Michael Jackson-level popular".

And something about the Soundscan thing always unnerved me - like, if Soundscan had been delayed by a few years for whatever reason, what would that mean? Would the actual sales for people like N.W.A. or Nirvana have been undercut and reported at a fraction of what they really were? In all seriousness, I wouldn't know how much of a difference it would make, but could they seriously have been merely gold records at best going by the old system?

Yes! Rob Harvilla's Ringer article from last week has the tasty details.

I mean, I was 11 in 1990 and I could tell that hair metal was done and the next big rock thing was probably going to be one of the bands they were calling 'alternative', though I would not have expected it to be as big as it was.xp

to me, though, this answers "why the songs are good", not "why they became Michael Jackson-level popular".

― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r),

Exactly!!

Yes! Rob Harvilla's Ringer article from last week has the tasty details.

Yikes!

Hate to use Garth Brooks as the example, but it's the clearest one from the article:

"It is not quite right to say that SoundScan made Garth Brooks: His second album, 1990’s No Fences, was already a Top 20 hit, though it did jump from no. 16 to no. 4 the week of the changeover. But it’s safe to say he doesn’t score a no. 1 debut with Ropin’ the Wind later in ’91—let alone kick off a string of nine no. 1 albums—if the chart isn’t better reflecting how gargantuan he’d already gotten.

'“Once you realize Garth Brooks is selling better than Mariah Carey and Pearl Jam, and consistently every year, you promote him accordingly,” Molanphy says. “Does Garth Brooks get a Central Park concert in 1997 without SoundScan? Maybe, maybe not.”'

It really shows the domino effect, where more certified/confirmed sales leads to more promotional support from the label, which leads to even more sales, etc. and that circular momentum just keeps going.

to me, though, this answers "why the songs are good", not "why they became Michael Jackson-level popular".

― Sequel to Sadness (Sund4r),

Exactly!!

― Fauna Sukkot (Deflatormouse), Wednesday, June 2, 2021 4:03 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol i mean yeah that tracks, sometimes when i am listening to nirvana i get so besotted cobain's melodic talents + his lyrical voice that i'm like, oh yeah, of course this connected (as soon as the lane opened for it). even on bleach, sometimes especially on bleach

obviously right place, right time was a huge factor, but i don't think pixies/husker du/replacements etc. ever had anywhere near the same sort of focus as nirvana did on nevermind, especially with its singles.

looking at butch vig's production credits i'm a little surprised at how few other notable albums from the time he worked on, there's like, siamese dream and dirty (and other albums by both those bands), and then pretty much everything else from that period is just lesser known grunge bands

^yeah, I looked earlier and the exact same reaction. It's like right after Nevermind, there was Tad or something

tbf 8-Way Santa is an excellent album! first time i saw Nirvana, they were supporting Tad