Very few contemporary rock stars–Jack White being one lone exception that proves the rule–have so effusively and enthusiastically sung the praises of their forebears like Cobain. Nirvana’s lyrics are only bad if you’re looking for something Cobain never promised: poetry.ĭid Kurt Cobain change your life? If you’re a music fan between the ages of 25 and 40, there is a very good chance that the reason you know about the Melvins, Mudhoney, the Vaselines, Earth, the Meat Puppets, the Wipers, Killing Joke, The Pixies, Scratch Acid, the Jesus Lizard, or William Burroughs is Kurt Cobain. Even Nirvana’s lyrics–often nonsensical, cryptic, or just plain dumb–articulated the sort of suburban, post-Reagan nihilism commonly associated with the Alternative Nation. For misfit teens and pre-teens who couldn’t have possibly related to the things Motley Crüe or Warrant sang about, Cobain functioned as a beacon and necessary alternative, someone they could identify with. Like 2Pac, Eminem, or John Lennon after the Beatles, Cobain’s music is intensely, rivetingly personal even when it wasn’t strictly autobiographical, it still sounded like it was. Some of them are really good.īut this, too, presents another frustrating complication: as tempting as it is to try to de-personalize Nirvana’s–Cobain’s–music and focus on the work itself, such an undertaking is impossible, and anyway, it misses the point: by all accounts, Cobain the songwriter and Cobain the man are the same thing. The songs should be discussed simply because they are good. All too often, fans and critics evoke Nirvana’s songs in the form of citations supporting elaborate, unnecessary arguments. Of course, very few of these things should have much to do with Nirvana’s place on the continuum of rock and roll. For a person who never wanted to be a rock star, Kurt Cobain’s story sure managed to tick all the boxes. Reams have been written about Nirvana’s legacy, and most of what has been published is disappointingly but necessarily typical, right down to an obligatory “influential wife meddles, destroys band” narrative. Lawsuits, elaborate conspiracy theories, hagiographic biographies, “biopics,” posthumously-published diaries, tomb-raiding box sets, more lawsuits. Unfortunately, the cultish deification of Nirvana has resulted in a conundrum shared by only a handful of others, including the Beatles and Elvis Presley: when legend and apocrypha impede the enjoyment of a body of work on its own terms, objective analysis becomes difficult, if not impossible in this context, even playful assessments like “overrated” and “underrated” become inapplicable.

And like most myths, there is some degree of truth to it. The story goes something like this: Sheriff Kurt moseys into town just long enough to purge the spandex-clad outlaws before riding off into the sunset forever, leaving behind the Clinton Administration, Lollapalooza, and lucrative major label deals for flannel-flyin’ underdogs everywhere.

Nirvana nevermind songs list