![]() (Which in 1994, you could probably argue, it was.) At this point, it’s tempting to lump Nirvana’s entire catalog into the overrated category, but obviously we can’t do that. ![]() were an anomaly and never should have been in the running for World’s Biggest Band. I think he would have laughed at the thought of being Guitar World magazine’s “guitarist of the ’90s.” Nirvana was an extremely talented group, one of my favorites, certainly, but as it stands now, Cobain and Co. Cobain himself admitted his band was nothing new and was always quick to promote the groups that influenced him. People were aware of punk rock, even if they weren’t seeing it on MTV all the time. With a straight face, Nirvana was called the most influential musical group since the Beatles, but will anyone make that assertion in 2010? The whole notion of Nirvana bringing anything to the mainstream or being innovative in any way is simply false: a result of the blind beatification of the shocked and grieving. Corporate radio has been more influenced by Pearl Jam than anyone else in the years since, and Pavement’s Slanted And Enchanted (released six months later) sold about 100th of what Nevermind did and probably had a greater impact on indie/alternative music than anything Nirvana ever recorded. We’ve had alternative bands crossing over into the mainstream pretty much constantly since the Beatles. If you just went by the “rock history books,” you’d think it was Nirvana that awakened the mainstream to alternative music, that radio today was ruled by Nirvana copycat bands and that Cobain was actually the spokesperson for a generation. But maybe a new rule should be made: No legacy assertions about a recently departed musician until that legacy has at least had a chance to show some signs of being real. ![]() In that short span of time, Nirvana managed to become one of the most popular and important alternative bands in the world, and after Cobain’s death, praise for the band was used as a salve by critics to heal the pain and signify the loss. It was less than three years between the release of Nevermind and Kurt Cobain’s suicide.
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