"My Chemical Romance is this generation's Nirvana"

OTM, but that was pre-Nevermind. Compare: Reading '92.

Another question is what does "this generation's Nirvana" mean? As someone who felt pretty in touch with the zeitgeist in 1991, left the US a few months before Nirvana broke, and returned a couple of years later and felt completely lost, I find the claim pretty hard to swallow. Beyond whatever quality judgment you may make about Nirvana, they were the poster boys for a huge change in radio and popular tastes.

Following that (Sean is actually younger than ultragrrl, if I read everything correctly) the fact that he (and I for that matter) has never heard a note of MCR suggests that their "historical" role isn't really comparable to Nirvana.

I think it's just using the sacred Nirvana cow -- I guess she doesn't like them -- that makes this controversial. If we picked a slightly different generation for comparison I think we "MCR is this generation's Bon Jovi" and it would be equally true and feel a lot less argumentative.

well, they're paid by either money earned from advertisers who want 16-year-old kids to buy their warez OR by 16-year-old kids buying their magazines. they probably have some commercial considerations in mind beyond "about music that they like and see value in".

xpost
Well, yes, obviously, but the market is larger than just 16-year-olds. Also, presumably, those commercial considerations would actually drive more media coverage (which is not necessarly the same thing as music journalism) of MCR if they were really as popular as Britney et al.

(And maybe I'm just proving that I'm 35 here, but the "commercial considerations" that drive Pitchfork and Stylus, Sean Gramophone and Matthew Fluxblog, Chuck and Xgau, Robert Hilburn and Ann Powers, etc. are very different.)

Bon Jovi were the Nirvana of hair metal.

What did occur to me was that, uh, there is this assumption that MCR "mean" s.th. to "this" generation, but when Nirvana were active & Cobain alive, I don't recall them "meaning" anything like that to the equivalent generation back then, though obviously layers of "meaning" have been applied to Nirvana & Cobain in the intervening years. Perhaps.

I've heard MCR on the radio a bit, but I didn't think they were particularly, well, particularly anything, really. Then again, I'm 40 and I like Hawkwind.

As always, it would be interesting to see some numbers comparing column inches, record sales, and airplay for MCR, Kanye, etc.

Bon Jovi were the Nirvana of hair metal.

Exactly my point, except that the rockists among us won't take umbrage at comparing Bon Jovi and MCR the way they do Nirvana.

Another question is what does "this generation's Nirvana" mean?

I have no idea what this means either! Does she mean they're a band that are changing the greater musical landscape or does she simply mean that they're important to angsty kids? Or both? I don't geddit.

i suppose the more subjective answer is that many music hacks still see pop and rock music as essentially 'youth' forms, not without reason, really, and that youth phenomena are important, a sign of the times. probably this is because more music obsessives are teenagers than 35-year-olds.

One thing about Nirvana I suppose is that yer old buggers were into them way before yer 16-year olds knew who they were. Is this her point? I don't know!

Also, at the time Tad were the media tip for the big act to come out of Sub Pop.

I don't really recall this, but I wasn't really paying that much attention. Was this on the evidence of God's Balls vs. Bleach? 'Behemoth' was good, but not that good, IIRC. Anyhow Mudhoney would've been the obvious choice to me, but it's nice thinking about a planet where Tad released Nevermind. If only Dave Geffen had listened to that demo of 'Smells Like Beef Dripping'...

If u/grl'z "it's yoof, you oldies don't understand" blather is true w/r/2 MCR's audience, then I don't see the comparison, & I bet she's just tossing it out b/c she knows it'll annoy some Cobain=godhead type ppl.

(blethering about the innate musical & rocking superiority of Mudhoney to any of this shit ruthlessly excised)

I saw them on the same tour, and yeah, that was what the crowd were like. Later on, it was more of your grebo-lite Neds types. But certainly not kids.

Yay! Oh wait...

MCR might not fare as well in the retrospective critical opinion, but does that matter to their core fanbase? I mean, look at the NME readers in the UK -- they think that there's some canon with Arctic Monkeys and this Pete Doherty stuff near the top! That sounds like kids thinking they're living in some crucial moment to me.

Pash, OTM It wasn't until the deification of Cobains death in the late 90's that the angsty kid's became their core audience.

these seem to be the four things that made nirvana the nirvana of their generation: loved by the kids, loved by the non-kids, enjoyed by the critics, suicide.

x-post the children of rich white people?

I accept My Chemical Romance. I think they are totally relevant for 2006, but certainly won't be remembered that way in, say, 2010. They write OK rock songs that are pretty fun now, but won't be much more than nostalgia in the longrun. MCR is this generation's Bush.

(xpost x 3)

Or maybe not.

ok grandad.

xpost

the children of white people?

My whole investigation was largely based on working with a 19-year-old metalhead whose description of the rock world was largely foreign to me, even when he talked about "indie" and pop-rock kids; he knew a lot about music, but the set of things that mattered to him and the lineages he saw in them were completely non-canonical. Unfortunately after a few months of listening the main thing I would up listening to a lot was Nightmare of You, who just sound like Morrissey.

In the UK, MCR have thus far had four Top 40 singles, none of which has climbed higher than #19, and one Top 40 album which spent one week at #34. So in British terms, "we" need to grapple with them about as much as we need to grapple with Dave Matthews or Phish or Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds.

too funny...

Soundgarden, Primus, Alice in Chains -- these are 90s rock acts that "everyone" listened to, but none of them hold much critical sway anymore. Even assuming that MCR wind up in that category, don't critics benefit from knowing what Soundgarden, Primus, and Alice in Chains were about?

Further complication: part of why bands like that don't "hold critical sway" is that we ignore the people for whom they were formative -- people, so far as I can tell, in nu-metal acts. Same probably goes for the Get Up Kids.

????
Nickelback (sadly) sound more like Nirvana than Poison or Ratt!

Yes, if only to avoid having to "grapple" with them. We were too busy here drooling over transient novelty American acts like Jeff Buckley, Wu-Tang Clan, Will Oldham, DJ Shadow, etc.

I will listen to that tmr! am actually about to go bed - it’s late here in Asia

for an NJ band, they do have a lot of songs about California though lol

I always appreciated how in the Quietus interview for Danger Days they mentioned being huge Suede nerds, which I approve of greatly.

it just makes sense

Lol did not realize they are an East coast band. I also assumed they were from California, since like RHCP, they sing about it so much

imo the bare bones garage rock approach gets ropier the further they get into ballad territory

I'm not sure if you were also referring to "The Light Behind Your Eyes", but it's probably my favorite track from Conventional Weapons, even if it's a bit of a misfit with the other material. I also like "The World is Ugly" but they've done some better songs in that style on other albums

yo!!!! i love it when this band pretends to be the pixies

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, May 18, 2022 10:47 AM (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

ok i have heard this now - omg even gerard's singing style on this lmao! it IS great though

Ned, MCR are massive Anglophiles - they've covered Blur and Pulp in the past, some of their songs reference Smiths lyrics, so being into Suede is completely unsurprising

I mean Gerard's early hair was "I think I'm Robert Smith" so I should damn well hope they're Anglophiles!

one nice thing about getting into this band so late is discovering how quietly revolutionary they've always been

so easy for ppl to dismiss them as a band for preteen girls back in the day, but i can't imagine how incredible it must have been for a preteen girl who was into pop-punk/emo to have seen gerard way say this in 2005:

"If you ever see shitty ass rock dudes in shitty ass rock bands asking you to show them your tits for backstage passes, I want you to spit right in their fucking faces and yell FUCK YOU!"pic.twitter.com/wV1ddK2XGX

— grace (@vintageemisery) January 7, 2020

lots more examples like that in the twitter thread

gerard looking absolutely adorable performing “Mama” in a cheerleader’s outfit <3

THIS IS THE BEST MOMENT OF MY LIFE pic.twitter.com/0ulEMYGEMR

— nati | mcr in 3 days (@nataliawraggm) August 24, 2022

lol. God bless him. Wish I had tickets.

My daughter was at the show last night in Nashville. She's never been much of a concertgoer but would have run through a brick wall to get to this one, and I gather it totally delivered.

Lucky her! Definitely looked like it was a total blast