You know, I like NIrvana, but bored with them before long, and I've tried several times to revamp a love for them. Maybe they were overrated, but like others said, they completed the package and ran with it like no one else.
In my mind, what they accomplished was to take fringe elements that existed well before them and package them in a very stripped down, listenable format, shrowded in an attitude and a cause, and hoist it into the tremendously influential musical movement it became.
I was in my mid-20s when Nirvana was huge...here's my take.
Rock was troubled. There was no important rock band anymore. Guns and Roses had petered out...the 60s monsters were in their 50s and therefore too old to inspire us kids, the 80s hair bands were all gone or not important anymore. REM was doing 'Losing My Religion' quiet music.
It had been a long time since any significant mainstream guitar music had happened. We had all grown up on Journey and Foreigner and whatever...guitar music the effortlessly turned out catchy, important music song after song. Then that stopped.
Until Nirvana came in and blew off the roof. The band had it all. A new, vivid sound, attitude, style, and they could write song after song, interesting, edgy and catchy. It was like a reprieve for white rock and roll. It felt like rock was not dying.
But then Kurt did die, and rock with it. The last rock band that mattered.
Rock and Roll
No rest, no peace, keep rocking.
1954-1995
That's why Nirvana is important and not overrated.
Nicely said, Agip.
agip wrote:
But then Kurt did die, and rock with it. The last rock band that mattered.
Ummm have you heard of Nickelback?
wawaweewa wrote:
agip wrote:
But then Kurt did die, and rock with it. The last rock band that mattered.
Ummm have you heard of Nickelback?
Excellent! Will be my next thread. “Nickelback is the most underrated of all time”
Concupiscurd wrote:
Bob Dylan's string of albums in the 60s from the Freewheelin Bob Dylan to Nashville Skyline is pretty much unrivalled for any solo artist that i can think of. And for good measure add his mid 70s masterpieces Desire and Blood on the Tracks. Most likely the most influential songwriter of all time certainly if you polled other musicians. He is impossible to be overrated.
pavement88 wrote:
Hard to disagree. Bob Dylan is also the most overrated musician of all time. Something can be good but still overrated.
Yeah, he was great, but like I said, still overrated.
I don't think that Nirvana is overrated. They're not rated highly are they? They're pretty good. They're not great, but pretty good. Most people that I can think of dislike Nirvana. I don't think that they could be overrated.
wawaweewa wrote:
And Kurt Cobain is probably the most overrated musician, if not top 5. He wasn't that good of a musician, and by all accounts he was a complete garbage human being. I like some Nirvana songs, but I think they definitely lose their appeal after you get through your moody, teenage 'nobody understands me, I'm so deep' phase.
Who cares? John Mayer is supposedly a guitar virtuoso. Can you even sit through one of his garbage songs?
Your body is a wonderland
Your body is a wonder... BLEEEHHHHHHHH???
You're correct that they were overrated, but they were only one in a long serious of overrated MTV pop-rock heroes, and were big as their end of 80s predecessor Def Leppard. The fork was already in them when Cobain offed himself, after which history was rewritten to glorify them.
In reality they were obscured by much better acts like Jane's Addiction.
Concupiscurd wrote:
Bob Dylan's string of albums in the 60s from the Freewheelin Bob Dylan to Nashville Skyline is pretty much unrivalled for any solo artist that i can think of. And for good measure add his mid 70s masterpieces Desire and Blood on the Tracks. Most likely the most influential songwriter of all time certainly if you polled other musicians. He is impossible to be overrated.
You should check out a singer named Joni Mitchell.
Nirvana brought rock back. Kurt Cobain died in 1994. Kind of hard to sustain a band without its essential force.
Def Lepard was among the worst bands of all time. Never ever compare them to Nirvana.
Am I the only one who thinks Nirvana was a great band, but really dislikes Smells Like Teen Spirit?
Nevermind has a number of fantastic songs but Smells Like Teen Spirit is not one of them IMHO.
agip wrote:
But then Kurt did die, and rock with it. The last rock band that mattered.
Lol. Absurd.
Radiohead. The Strokes. LCD Soundsystem. The Hold Steady. Japandroids. Arcade Fire. American Football. Yuck. Cymbals Eat Guitars. Gaslight Anthem. Gorillaz. Walkmen. White Stripes. War On Drugs. Jawbreaker. Jeff Rosenstock. The Killers. Lucero. Drive By Truckers. Wonder Years. Modest Mouse. Mountain Goats. The National. Neutral Milk Hotel. Oso Oso. Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Silver Jews. Brand New. Titus Andronicus. Vampire Weekend.
Not to mention the million-and-one rap and hip-hop acts that took punk rock ideals and adapted them to a new genre.
Rock didn’t die, you just stopped paying attention.
I'm of an age growing up in the 1980s where I was too young to grasp the late 70s punk movement and grunge hadn'treally evolved. At the end of the day I just had to fall back on the Clash and Sex Pistols to deal with my late teen angst. So when Nirvana came along it was totally irrelevant to me. Plus I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. I had gone to parties and small music halls to hear local bands playing what I considered poor "punk" music with original songs that in hindsight was grunge. So I never found Nirvana that innovative. They just sounded like a random band plucked from the local scene and then given top notch music production.
What baffles is me is how forgotten the Sex Pistols have become in terms of their impact. To me the Sex Pistols is the only real punk band there ever was.
elvid32 wrote:
I don't think that Nirvana is overrated. They're not rated highly are they? They're pretty good. They're not great, but pretty good. Most people that I can think of dislike Nirvana. I don't think that they could be overrated.
This take, and agip's are closest to the mark, for me.
Nirvana's importance is not because they were great or particularly talented musicians. Their importance, rather, lies in having made an epochal album - Nevermind - which dramatically changed the music landscape in a similar way to "Bringing it All Back Home" (Dylan), "Sgt Pepper" (Beatles) and "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back" (Public Enemy) had done. The significance is in the creation of a sea-change in popular music subsequent to the release of the album.
Suddenly...everything is different.
Nirvana put a lot of bands (especially "hair bands") out of business immediately, and simultaneously spawned a whole new genre of music.
how are they rated? wrote:
I think most people would rate Nirvana as a not so technically great band that had a knack for writing some catchy grunge tunes. Seems appropriate.
agree-timing was everything- Nevermind came out in '91 right at the start of the grunge era and the end of the "glam rock"era. not the best Seattle band by any means....Soundgarden and Pearl Jam were better bands in my opinion, but Nirvana seemed to lead the way...a great time to be in college!
I remember the first time I heard it... it was on a tape player and it blew my mind. I was 13 years old.
paul72 wrote:
how are they rated? wrote:
I think most people would rate Nirvana as a not so technically great band that had a knack for writing some catchy grunge tunes. Seems appropriate.
agree-timing was everything- Nevermind came out in '91 right at the start of the grunge era and the end of the "glam rock"era. not the best Seattle band by any means....Soundgarden and Pearl Jam were better bands in my opinion, but Nirvana seemed to lead the way...a great time to be in college!
The reason i could never get engrossed in Nirvana was because their songs were too repetitive and didn't seem to go anywhere. But what a sound! They hit that to perfection, but within any and every song, i was bored by the end of the second verse.
SoundGarden has some amazing stuff, and very prolific. Black Hole Sun, Fell on Black Days, etc. were just masterful.
Afghan Whigs from the 90's - i discovered after the fact, but they were making great music then. And still around today (Algiers)
And of course, Alice in Chains was just a powerhouse of superb rock from back then.
As important precursors to Nirvana. Husker Du and the Replacements were more to my liking. Of all these, those two Minn. bands are so freakin' pivotal i can't stand it.
greatest rift wrote:
I remember the first time I heard it... it was on a tape player and it blew my mind. I was 13 years old.
This is it. It was commercially viable while a lot of the stuff that predated wasn't. They put it all together and it caught on like nothing else.