RE: Why do people consider Kurt Cobain a genius?

sigh... wrote:

not too bright though, are you?

What's that supposed to mean?

wtf did barry white do?

nothing, barely a musician

opinions are opinions

I wouldn't call him a "genius" or even a "musical genius" because I believe those words are tossed around WAAAAAYYYY too often. But still, he was obviously very influential. I mean, Nirvana was a GIGANTIC band even before he killed himself (which has a GREAT deal to do with why people worship him so much now; do you see people wearing Eddie Vedder t-shirts?).

Whatever you think abot Kurt Cobain, here are three things I know for sure:

1. If you polled people who actually went through their youth in the 1990s (like I did, I'm 30), and asked them which song best personified the "sound" of the 1990s, I guarantee that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" would be number one. By a landslide. Just that opening guitar riff causes everybody my age to start going ape.

2. Nobody wore flannel or horizontal-striped shirts in the 1990s. And then Kurt Cobain and a bunch of people in the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video wore them. Suddenly, everybody in my entire damn middle school was wearing that look. That video also brought about mosh pit behavior. Just a fantastic video.

3. Kurt Cobain is a classic case of somebody who clearly did not WANT to be famous. His music was basically a way to rebel against anything that was popular. Then suddenly HE was popular. You know how it ended.

Who knows why people idolise filthy straggly haired men who shoot heroin and blow their brains out with a shotgun. I dont think he was a genius. I dont even like his taste of music, or his women. Matter of fact I can't think of one intelligent thing he's ever done. A loser? yes. A genius? I dont think so.

Nihilism is popular and thats why people admire Kurt Kobain, because he was a nihilist. He died for a reason.

Because he was.

Bleach is a very good album.

Nevermind & In Utero and Unplugged are brilliant albums...

Kurt was an astoundingly good writer and artist and performer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEVK-GMxfcY

And he was drop-dead...funny

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO4BF67pvsc

sigh... wrote:

not too bright though, are you?

An Historian wrote:

What's that supposed to mean?

Nothing. Nothing at all. Don't you worry your little head there, precious. It would just confuse you further.

ghostofbriansell wrote:

He's considered something special because he died young. See: James Dean, JFK, RFK, Pre, etc.

No shit Watson

I always found it funny that, when people were calling Cobain a genius, the first Foo Fighters album came out, and it turned out that Cobain wasn't even the best songwriter in his own band...

I don't know if he was a genius but he was a good shot.

Do they?

I don't recall ever seeing him referred to as a "genius" before. I even Googled it, and just didn't get many hits.

Now, he wrote some pretty good songs and recorded some pretty good music, so it's easy to understand why many people like him.

cobain was a fraud

he may have written some decent lyrics, but he and nirvana were just pixies wannabes

spent my time listening to the pixies instead of that stupid poser shite

frank black did it way better

See music from 1988

See music from 1992

That should do it.

Smells like...launched a decade plus of rock music that far and away demolished pretty much anything in the 80's besides metallica.

If you ask anyone who knows about music from a technical standpoint, you will hear that he was an atrocious guitarist, absolutely awful, and was not particularly muscially inclined or talented.

Musical preferences aside, it's because of the precedence they set. I was talking to my cousin who is ten years older than me and he was telling me about how when the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" music video was on tv, it blew peoples' minds. You have to understand, with a few exceptions, they had been literally been nothing that which was mainstream.

Roughhouse Doyle wrote:

I always found it funny that, when people were calling Cobain a genius, the first Foo Fighters album came out, and it turned out that Cobain wasn't even the best songwriter in his own band...

The first Foo Fighter album doesn't touch anything Nirvana did. That stupid "fingernails are pretty" song was the biggest disappointment of the 90s. Everything was so hyped up, and then that crap song was the first single. Terrible.

Nirvana was a good band that helped change the sound of music (for better or for worse). There were many bands before them that influenced them. Without the Meat Puppets, for example, one wonders if Nirvana would have existed. Doesn't this make the Meat Puppets more influential than Nirvana?

Whoosh wrote:

If you ask anyone who knows about music from a technical standpoint, you will hear that he was an atrocious guitarist, absolutely awful, and was not particularly muscially inclined or talented.

I'm no huge Nirvana fan myself, but as a guitar player and a fan of music, this seems almost completely irrelevant. It should be obvious to anyone who knows music from a technical standpoint that he wasn't trying to be a awesome guitar player. I remember reading an interview where he discussed his Fender Jaguar. He said he loved to play it because it would go out of tune in the middle of songs when you tried to palm mute it. Doesn't sound to me like the man really cared about being a great guitarist.

I just reread that, and it's almost painful to read with all the errors. Sorry.

Kurt Cobain didn't really invent a genre of music. If Nirvana's sound was completely original, I would be more comfortable with the term "genius". There were a lot of "grunge" bands in the Seattle underground that Kurt drew influence from. But he and his band were basically the first to take that style and write songs with catchy, mainstream appeal. Sort of like how Green Day took punk music, turned it into pop-punk, and sold gazillions of records. A Green Day is still selling a gazillion records. Is Billy Joe Armstrong a musical genius?

No, I think guys like Cobain and Armstrong may well be geniuses, but not musical geniuses. More like capitalists. They knew how to take something new that was happening in the underground and put it a prettier package to sell to the masses, getting rich and famous in the process. Which is a type of genius in itself. I mean, none of us here (I'm assuming) have been able to do that. And if you say you wouldn't want to get rich and famous by selling out because of your "principles", or whatever, you're probably lying. Most artists don't like the idea of selling out, but once the opportunity to stop living in an old van and playing for beers prensents itself, most people take it.

The Replacements were wearing plaid shirts, played loud and fast, and were a hell of a lot funnier and had better songs than Nirvana. If any band can be credited for changing music they ought to be.

Nirvana was the huge success so therefore every other band copied there music style and they all sounded the same. But the Pixies were playing that quiet-LOUD-quiet-LOUD stuff right before Nirvana got big also.

I guess for some reason commercial played Nirvana where they wouldn't have played that music before. Other bands paved the way for this to happen and MTV found it OK to run their videos all day long.