Some may find it a bit surprising that in my nearly four years here, I've never posted a review of this album until now. Perhaps with what I've written below, and the firestorm I'm expecting for it, is my best explanation.
Do I really even need to write an introductory paragraph to this review? I mean, honestly? *sigh* Alright, just in case you've been living under a rock for the past oh, 12 years...
Nirvana first appeared in 1989 on Seattle's indy Sub Pop label with an album called Bleach. Ignored by the mainstream, Bleach went on to sell somewhat decently. The band gained steam through 1991, signing with Geffen Records to put out their second album, Nevermind, in the fall of that year. It went on to knock Michael Jackson out of the top albums list, which most people say signified the start of the so-called "grunge revolution," which saw Seattle become the center of the rock music world. In the next 2 and a half years, Nirvana would release a rarities album called Incesticide, the proper follow up to Nevermind, and their best album, In Utero, give the greatest MTV Unplugged performance ever, and instantly become critical darlings when lead singer and "messiah" Kurt Cobain committed suicide in April of 1994, after years of struggling with success and drugs.
The centerpiece of Nevermind was also it's first track and first single: Smells Like Teen Spirit is the song that for music critics and older music generations, came to define not just "Generation X," but all of what was good about music in the 1990s, and it's partial chorus of "here we are now, entertain us" became what was seemingly the youth of America's statement.
It's harsh punk aggression and uncompromising driving rhythms was the antithesis of almost every rock band that MTV played leading up to 1991. Before Nirvana, it was all about Poison, Bon Jovi and Def Leppard (and to be fair, for a while after Nirvana, Jovi and Lep still got good airplay for some of their videos). At the same time, there was a poppish underbelly to the song that was purely tongue in cheek and refreshing.
This led to no less than three more hits for the band from this record, although the quality of each varies greatly. I've always felt Come as You Are was extremely over-rated, especially given the image the music press loved to bestow on the band. The song is basically a bassline and nothing more. And while the line "And I swear that I don't have a gun" was chilling at one point, it barely even registers with me now thanks to it's hideously over-played nature (some may also say that that is my ultimate problem with this album, and I'm not sure I could disagree and be 100% honest about it).
The other two hits, In Bloom and Lithium, are hit and miss as well. In Bloom seems to be very autobiographical in nature ("He's the one who likes all the pretty songs" seems to point at Cobain's love for pop songs), while I've always thought Lithium was a mindless ode to the control drugs had over Kurt.
To me, the best example of Kurt being able to meld the harsh elements of punk with a bit of a pop upstroke was on Breed, which is harsh and aggressive, but on the chorus, it becomes almost hooky ("I don't mean to stare, We don't have to breed, We could plant a house, We could build a tree, I don't even care...").
Meanwhile, it could be said that Green Day's breakthrough could have been imagined long before most people would have thought, thanks to the inclusion of tracks like Drain You and On a Plain, which are nothing more than pop punk songs that somehow receive more cred because they appear on Nevermind (and with that being said, I adore both of those songs).
Another myth that needs to be debunked is how "influential" this record was. Its influence extends to bands who want to release an album that gets as much as*-kissing as this record does. Outside of a pair of main examples (Bush, who moved beyond it with record #2, and The Vines, who let's face it, suck), Nirvana's SONIC influence has been but a thumbnail compared to two of their Seattle counterparts (Pearl Jam for straight up rock bands, Alice in Chains for heavier bands), and another one of their contemporaries (Stone Temple Pilots).
Was Nevermind an important record? Of course it is, I'm not going to sit here and lose ALL credibility and tell you it wasn't. But would the so-called 'grunge' era not have happened without it? The answer is no, it still would have happened. So what was Nevermind exactly?
It WAS an important record that helped to shape the next 5 years or so of popular music, and the next decade (and counting) of rock music. It was NOT the greatest record of the 1990s, or anything close to it. It was NOT the most influential record of the 1990s. It WAS a good album that got overplayed and by extension over-rated by just about every hackneyed music scribe who ached for credibility. And lastly, it was NOT Nirvana's best record. That honor, my friends, belongs to In Utero.
Muze: Copyright 1995 - 2008 Muze Inc. For personal non-commercial use only. All rights reserved.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2008 Shopping.com, Inc.