Nirvana: Nevermind

Nevermind

Best song: Something In The Way

Worst song: On A Plain

Overall grade: 4

If there’s one type of person I really can’t stand, it is the Nirvana superfan. You know, the one who’s all ‘Nirvana is the greatest thing that ever happened to music! Kurt Cobain is a genius and no other songwriter before or since could come anywhere close!’ The kind who worships the band with an undying devotion and considers them impossible of doing any wrong. Now, many bands have a subset of fans like this one, but Nirvana’s are some of the most extreme I’ve come across. And I’ve never told any of them this because I’m a coward who doesn’t like having eggs thrown at her, but…

‘Nevermind’ is so overrated.

I mean, I like it and all. I can even see why people love it. But this whole ‘greatest album of the 90s, singlehandedly saved rock’ rubbish is just that. If you asked me the greatest album of the 90s, that’d be… well, that review’s coming up next week and I won’t spoil it. And I don’t think there’s one album that singlehandedly saved rock. Even as far as grunge goes, when that’s what I’m in the mood for I’m more likely to put on Pearl Jam.

But I do still like this album (cannot stress that enough) and I have tried very hard to understand what it is about Kurt Cobain that makes people worship him like others worship John Lennon or Bob Dylan. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s because he seems like a real person. He doesn’t seem like someone famous, from another world who has a lot of money and spends his time writing songs/making records; he seems like the slightly weird guy who sits at the back of your maths class or a random, hunched-over dude with big headphones who you notice on the bus, and he just happens to write songs in his spare time. Which accidentally get released and become huge hits, of course.

I don’t know how much this is true and how much it’s an act, so it’s not why I like him; I like him because he took simple pop tunes and put them through punk and metal filters so that they came out as a schizophrenic blend of both. It’s a very effective way of appealing to a wide variety of people, but of course, it was so effective that he just repeated it every time for every song, with one or two exceptions. I’ll quickly mention these: ‘Something In The Way’ reminds me of the Beatles and is a surprising, but excellent, finish, and it even has a cello, which is cool. I love ‘Polly’ too, it’s a song that really sucks me into the story. But I won’t talk about the huge hit songs – what is there to say? Apart from the fact that Dave Grohl’s drumming sets them apart slightly from other big radio hits of the time.

This record, well, it’s a contradiction in terms. It’s meant to be alternative and anti-mainstream but it’s actually incredibly accessible and fun; it’s supposed to be revolutionary but much of the bass and guitar work is pretty generic. I think its reputation has spoiled it a bit. I’m supposed to like it so much that I find myself drifting in the opposite direction until I actually listen to it. That’s the moment when I realise, these songs are mostly good and yeah, these guys had talent. Just maybe not for quite the same things as a lot of people think.