The music of Nirvana was always a beautiful contradiction. Despite the fact that the melodies spinning around in Kurt Cobain’s head may have been prime radio fodder from the first minute they hit your eardrums, he never wanted anything to do with the mainstream charts, either, practically doing everything he could to mess up his…
It’s hard to figure out what Kurt Cobain was saying at the best of times in Nirvana. Even though he may have been able to release his demons every time he stepped in front of a microphone, it was anyone’s guess whether he was going to say something unintelligible or consciously make up new lyrics…
If Nirvana had been able to carry on for a few more years, chances the major spotlight still wouldn’t have been aimed at Dave Grohl. He may have been an animal behind the kit, but outside of playing shows, Grohl seemed like the scrawny member of the band who would usually fade into the background…
The writer Graham Greene once said that “there is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in“. For Kurt Cobain, as for millions of people, that Promethean moment arrived when a certain band illuminated a brighter future. “At a really early age, I wanted to be a rock ‘n’…
There have been many songs connected by the same notes over the years. One of the most fascinating cases is that classic guitar riffs by Nirvana, Killing Joke, and The Damned are all eerily similar to each other. It’s never been clear how this happened, but it makes for some compelling reading and listening. The…
For any rock band dynamic, the drummer is usually the last person looking to come up with a song. Even Dave Grohl, frontman of the iconic rock band the Foo Fighters, subscribes to the theory that the last thing a drummer says before getting kicked out of a band is that they should try some…
out with their 1991 single ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. In the blink of an eye, the era of grunge had arrived. A sound that had been bubbling away underground for years was now at the forefront of musical fashion. It drew on hardcore punk, metal, sludge, and the harmonious melodies of 1960s pop to create…
When Nirvana first broke onto the scene, there’s a good chance that most fans weren’t paying attention to the lyrics. Although Kurt Cobain may have put time and effort into writing lyrics to songs like ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, his words were often incoherent from one line to the next, as he focused on the…
A US appeals court has reinstated a legal case against the rock group Nirvana, which alleges that the band published child sexual abuse images on the cover of their 1991 album, Nevermind. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a prior ruling from a lower court, stating that Spencer Elden, the baby featured on…
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’,…