I was finishing my senior year in college, and remember watching MTV’s announcement of Kurt Cobain’s suicide, 20 years ago today. I admit I wasn’t surprised, as he always seemed like a tortured soul. Two decades later, I must admit, I still feel ambivalent toward Nirvana.
I was probably an oddball back then because I simply did not identify with grunge. In fact, I partially blamed it for the negative Generation X stereotypes that pervaded media in the early 1990s. We were labeled as “slackers,” “lazy,” “depressed,” and “apathetic,” and that horrible movie Reality Bites summarizes this myth. No one I knew sat around wearing flannel, constantly complaining about how life sucked. Grunge simply promoted that image and the bad rap my generation got, I thought.
Nirvana was the worst example of this, as everyone pointed to the band as “representing” my age group. Therefore I disliked them and grunge in general, and was relieved when the trend passed.
Fast forward 20 years, and I have mellowed somewhat on grunge. I still like very little of it: Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots are probably the two groups I can tolerate the most. I now appreciate Nirvana as a pure rock and roll band. Yes, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “Come as You Are,” and “In Bloom” are damn good rock songs. Their Unplugged appearance also impresses me more today, specifically Cobain’s emotional reading of “All Apologies.”
Do I better relate to him and the band? No. Do I equate Cobain with some of the greatest songwriters, as others have? Sorry, I don’t.
Yes, I still squirm when Nirvana and Kurt Cobain are proclaimed spokesmen of my generation. But Nirvana was a great rock band, injecting some grittiness into the charts when slick pop was dominant. Cobain also possessed a powerful voice that had impressive range, both emotionally and vocally.
Time has allowed me to simply appreciate them as, to put it more crudely, a kick-ass band rather than representatives of a so-called apathetic, disillusioned age group.
[amazon_enhanced asin=”B000003TA4″ container=”” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=”B002JN74VY” container=”” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=”B00E7SXPVW” container=”” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=”B000003TB9″ container=”” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=”B000003TAB” container=”” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /]
- How John Lennon Came Roaring Back on the Beatles’ White Album - November 22, 2023
- Five ‘With the Beatles’ Deep Cuts That Illustrate Their Lasting Debt to R&B - November 20, 2023
- Five Must-Hear Deep Cuts from the Beatles’ ‘Past Masters’ - March 7, 2023
