The story of Nirvana is about as famous as they come. A band formed by high school friends Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic, they took years to iron out their sound. After making waves on the underground, drummer Chas Channing left and was replaced by Dave Grohl, the missing piece of the puzzle. What ensued…
While a member of bands like Rapeman, Big Black, and Shellac, Steve Albini also founded the recording studio Electrical Audio. And thanks to his knowledge off the stage, he helped record countless songs for bands like The Jesus Lizard, the Breeders, PJ Harvey, and the iconic Nirvana. Sadly, on May 7, news broke that the…
Nirvana’s Nevermind is such a cultural behemoth that everyone has their favourite track. The record is a complete masterpiece from start to finish, and no matter what Kurt Cobain would say about it after the trio were catapulted to Beatles-esque fame, every song is an unfettered classic. Naturally, given music’s inherent subjectivity, listeners can make…
A new documentary by the BBC is to be unveiled surrounding the death of Kurt Cobain. The frontman of Nirvana took his own life on April 5th, 1994, which brought the band to an end. The documentary, entitled Moments That Shook Music: Kurt Cobain, sets out to take the viewer through the final hours of…
Danny Goldberg, the former manager of Nirvana, has claimed that Kurt Cobain was interested in working on solo material away from the band. Goldberg, having just releases his new book on managing Nirvana, Serving the Servant, on the same date that marked 25 years since Cobain killed himself, has opened up about his close friendship…
Nirvana’s meteoric rise to fame brought both opportunities and challenges for Kurt Cobain. While he appreciated reaching a wider audience, he grappled with the notion of selling out and maintaining his independence as a rock musician. Cobain’s introspective struggles were reflected in his music, including the song ‘I Hate Myself and I Want To Die’,…
The album Nevermind is the pinnacle of Nirvana’s commercial and critical success in part thanks to the immediacy of its songs. From the opening guitar strums of the lead single ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’, the record is filled with catchy hooks and lyrics aplenty. Yet some of the lyrics are definitely easier than others to…
For any great songwriter, everything normally comes back to the melody. You can have the greatest guitar tone ever heard or a set of lyrics that will hit you in the heart the minute that you hear them, but if there isn’t some type of throughline connecting them together, you’ve got absolutely nothing. While Kurt…
Kurt Cobain got sick of the formula behind Nirvana’s songs. He noted “About a Girl” had some similarities to R.E.M. songs. “About a Girl” was a hit. Nirvana and R.E.M. were both integral parts of 1990s classic rock. During an interview, Kurt Cobain said Nirvana released a song called “About a Girl” that was similar…
Few frontmen have transformed the rock realm quite like Kurt Cobain did. As the driving force behind Nirvana, he brought nihilistic grunge to teenagers who were growing tired of hair metal and changed the rockstar persona with his open support for feminism and equality. With little help from his bandmates Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl,…