NIRVANA - NEVERMIND
I forgot I had this album and I forgot I was so into Nirvana at one stage...which stage? That 14 yo ‘I hate everything’ stage when I used a cricket bat to jam my bedroom door closed and spent most of my spare time in muted darkness. I suspect based on how we all know Kurt Cobain’s life turned out, he kind of felt the same as I did.
So that’s why Nevermind is like a timepiece, capturing a moment when music changed and then evolved because of Neverminds impact. If you were in 2020 and you asked Doc and Marty to take you to back to a time when music felt alive in that self-hatred, raining all the time kind of way then they would set the DeLorean to arrive in 1991 and maybe you could take a scenic tour through the next few years of Seattle’s influence on music.
I didn't buy this album until later..maybe because I was 12 when it was released and we didn't even have a CD player until I was almost 13. Times have changed.
I haven’t listened to Nevermind for years. I had to take a break halfway through my second listen and watch some Ellen for comic relief. Clearly, I’m old and boring now but I’m amazed I used to do my homework listening to this. It demands attention and maybe I’m just more aware of it than I used to be. Smells like Teen Spirit still has lyrics that I sing along to and yet have no idea what I’m saying. I’m probably singing the weird Al Yankovic version.
Considering Dave Grohl is still making music, I wonder where Kurt Cobain would be if he didn’t die at his peak...its common knowledge that his suicide note quoted Neil Young: ‘It's better to burn out, than to fade away.’ True - it probably cements your status as icon of the ‘prozac generation’. Plus the Nirvana catalogue has funded Courtney Love’s lifestyle of addiction wrapped inside celebrity until now. Kurt listened to REM’s Automatic for the People before he killed himself. I read he felt that some of Nirvana’s music had limitations and aspired to make his next record more like Automatic; with orchestra and melancholy that lulls you rather than yells at you. Cobain had serious undiagnosed stomach problems, his heroin addiction was in part to numb his stomach pain and since the stomach is the epicenter of your emotions I can understand why.
Every album I have has an accompanying story and here’s Nevermind’s:
My best friend at school was obsessed with Nirvana, listening to Nevermind non stop on a cassette tape (she didn't have a CD player either)..so anyway one night, rather spooky outside, howling wind and black as ink..no moon. We were listening to the tape and lamenting school the next day when it automatically jumped to the B side and started playing songs from the A side backwards..I swear it! I’m a sissy when it comes to stuff like this so I’m not embarrassed to admit I did my best not to listen...but in between trying to fold the pillow over my head I hear out of nowhere this creepy voice become audible through the noise of backward gushing guitars and my bf’s hears her brothers name along with some other words I can’t remember.I was shit scared but curious and while she continued to listen to it repeatedly...I don’t think I listened to Nevermind for 2 years after.
KILLER TRACKS:
#8 Drain You
#5 Lithium - I’m so happy cause today I found my friends - they’re in my head
The most melodic song on Nevermind..best lyrically too...perfection
#2 In Bloom - Nature is a whore
Killer Harmony’s and every element sounds full and all encompassing
#3 Come as you are - take your time, hurry up
You cant fake a voice like Kurt Cobain’s...he even enunciates with self loathing
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