Hard as it may be to believe, it has been MANY years since Nirvana's release of Nevermind, the album that most people who still could be referred to as Generation X-ers consider the seminal alternative rock LP of all time. Nirvana's crunching guitars and mangled lyrical stylings may not have the lasting artistic influence of, say, Bach, but for many people the band's widespread commercial and critical success marked a key turning point in radio rock n' roll. The slickly produced, monotonous and insipid music that ruled the 1991 airwaves was finally getting some real competition from bands like Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and others. It was okay to mosh. But where has that passion, that feeling gone to again?
Where it began (enter Nirvana)
Although the late 80's were sprinkled with great guitar rock bands like the Pixies and Husker Du, these bands were little known on a global level. Popular music was concerned more with image and superficial entertainment as what it has grown to again today. This, of course, left the music cold and lacking of any truly emotional qualities. Even the hip-hop and rap of the day was of the light beer, dance hall, diluted to 1% of its strength variety. This atmosphere festered and bred a more apathetic music listener. This tendency also had other disastrous side effects like the decline of live music on a local level as well as many other detrimental by-products, but that's a whole other story. Anyway, the point is pop music was breeding a whole generation of music listeners who were void of passion, and as a result many believed rock music to be dead. Enter Nirvana.
“The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, 'Yes.' And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?' My answer to that would be, 'No.'”
- Aaron Copland
Nirvana's sound so brimmed over with passion and intensity that it at first appalled its listeners. Their music was not the frivolous, feel-good tunes or the passive background music to which people had grown accustomed. Suddenly, listeners had something to feel passionate about. This passion is the key. It didn't matter if you loved or hated Nirvana. What mattered was that you had a feeling, and the "Nirvana difference" wasn't just in the sound. Nirvana didn't smile for the camera and thank you for buying their album.
“Why The Grateful Dead Were the Greatest American Rock Band:, BlogCritics, BlogCritics, 2014, web, 16 April 2014
In closing, the undoubtable influence of music, more specifically of Rock ‘n’ Roll on American society is responsible for a number of changes to the status quo. These range from sexual liberation and racial desegregation all culminating with other influences to create an intergenerational identity. Despite the desperate attempts of older generations to smother these influences, these changes ultimately shaped the years that followed, molding the country into what it is today. Along the way these changes as well as individual involvement in them has also eased the lives of many through empowerment and a feeling of community and purpose. Despite a lull and renewal Rock ‘n’ Roll continues to serve as an agent of influence and change in today’s youth culture and continues to burn in the heart of past generations of loyal fans.
“We’re just musically and rhythmically retarded. We play so hard that we can’t tune our guitars fast enough. People can relate to that.” Kurt Cobain’s thoughts on why his band, Nirvana was such a massive success in an unexpected way. A heroin shooting, guitar strumming musician who sang the barely audible lyrics which spoke so loudly for the angst ridden youth of America had such an important influence on our culture that over twenty years later, the details around his suicide are still heatedly debated. The impact that Cobain had on the world was intense at the time and can still be found today; the music he wrote for Nirvana had influence on the music industry, his unintended voice to angst-ridden society and even the fashion industry cashed in on his style.
By the end of Nick Broomfield's controversy-plagued documentary Kurt & Courtney, I think I knew as much about Broomfield himself as I knew about Kurt Cobain or Courtney Love. The film might have begun as a biographical study, exploring the tempestuous tives of Nirvana lead singer Cobain and Courtney Love both before and after their 1992 marriage, but that's not the story it ends up telling. Instead, it becomes the tale of Broomfield's ongoing battle with Love over the making of the film -- her successful efforts to persuade MTV to withdraw funding, her objection to the use of
Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam, Alternative Grunge bands from the 90s, were very influential to today’s bands. Grunge music started in the early 90s, mainly from the Seattle scene. Metallica, Kiss, and even Led Zeppelin helped make alternative music start. Although these bands were very famous in the 90s, many of them suffered from substance abuse and even depression. After years of being famous some bands split completely, some formed new bands with members in other bands, and even some stayed together and play together today. All bands believed that people should be able to afford music and listen to what they enjoy, not what other people want you to listen to. Bands from the 90s have influenced some of
Classic rock albums had really art on them. Nowadays there is always some trashy looking guy or girl on the front and it’s just saddening. There was always something new. There was never the same looking album cover on and album. Now all of the album covers look the same.
In 1985 Cobain started the band Nirvana. The band went through several changes before finally becoming Nirvana. In 1987 the band was playing in several locations. In 1988 the band landed their first record deal. Cobain’s music mainstreamed the grunge sound. Nirvana rose very quickly to become stars. “Nirvana was, briefly, the most popular band in the world largely because of the cult of personality that grew around Cobain” (Headlam, 1996).
In the mid-1990s, rock and roll experienced another of its many transitions. During the early ‘90s, the “grunge” scene, emanating from Seattle and its surrounding area, enthralled the youth of the time with the music of such acts as Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana. This surge in high-distortion, high angst rock snapped the genre out of the doldrums of glam-metal, which, for a long time, dominated the “rock music” racks of record stores across America.
The biggest influential song on Nirvana’s Nevermind album was the first song, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” It reached number 6 on the Top 40 Charts. This song was groundbreaking for Nirvana and the alternative music scene as a whole. After the release of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” white, middle-class youth of the United States finally had a style of music to call their own and express their “teenage anthems” (Stuessy, Joe). This was the first song to emerge from alternative rock and to be known in the mainstream of rock and roll, expressing their generation’s expectations, “...here we are now, entertain us”(Stuessy, Joe). “Smells like Teen Spirit” was Curt Cobain’s “attempt to write the ultimate pop song”(Nevermind, Nirvana). He used the soft-loud dynamics of his favorite band, the Pixies. The insidious hooks also showed his admiration for the Beatle’s John Lennon(Nevermind, Nirvana). The style used in this song is simple, plain, loud, and straight-forward. Musically, there is nothing very “innovative” or difficult. However, the reason it is important to rock history is because it brought America’s attention to the once before underground style of grunge. “A driving drum beat, powered by Novelsek’s rhythmic bass, and a memorable guitar riff and solo, mix perfectly with Kurt Cobain’s depressing yet humorous lyrics” (Kastner, Patrick). While it has certainly been overplayed in the past years, it is still an essential part of Rock history.
One of my long-standing philosophical ‘worries’ is what I describe as a ‘cognitive dilemma’ in relation to musical communication. How can an art form which lacks a discursive element and addresses itself primarily and indeed immediately to the auditory sense, be discerned as conveying ‘truth’ or ‘profundity’? The power is amply attested — so much so that alone among the arts music occasionally figures as a ‘surrogate religion’. The pieces of this kaleidoscope — ideas culled from Schopenhauer, Langer, Jung and others — did not fall together until recently after reading Peter Kivy’s Music Alone, an account of his quest for musical profundity which ends (as he confessed) in failure, but from whose dissection of the presuppositions I gained a platform for a synthesis of my own.
Although considered the day Rock ‘n’ Roll was born, many other events in American history have given foundation to this much loved idea. Rock ‘n’ Roll is much more than just music, rather it is the movement which underlines cultural imperialism. Rock had been promoting a culture of comfort and freedom from social constraints as well. Although the style of ‘Rock music’ is easily adaptable into many different sounds, it is still thoroughly identified by its definingly amplified rhythm. The sudden worldwide popularity of rock and roll resulted in an unparalleled social impact. Rock ‘n’ Roll influenced lifestyles, fashion, attitudes, and language in a way few other social developments have equaled. The social impact is so large that rock stars are worshipped worldwide. In its early years, many adults condemned the style of music, placing a stigma on its name, and forbid their children from listening and following its ways. Many considered Rock ‘n’ Roll culture as a bad influence to all people, but as the genre aged and the now not-so-young crowds had matured, Rock was respected and
There is a growing body of work in the philosophy of music and musical aesthetics that has considered the various ways that music can be meaningful: music as representational (that is, musical depictions of persons, places, processes, or events); musical as quasi-linguistic reference (as when a musical figure underscores the presence of a character in a film or opera), and most especially, music as emotionally expressive. Here I will focus on the last topic, for I believe it will be useful for researchers in music perception and cognition to avail themselves of the distinctions that aestheticians have worked out regarding the musical expression of emotion.
The music was recorded as an emotional release from the loss of a band mate. The emotion clearly shines through, and the callbacks to classic Nirvana techniques pays tribute to the lost band. The album does not attempt to be anything more than it is: a catchy, energetic, emotional release. The album’s clear accomplishment of this is evident by the success it has seen despite the modest beginnings of a small cassette release. The catchy melody and lyrics set a baseline for the work of the Foo Fighters and gave promise of the growth to
The American rock band Nirvana impacted American culture and society by paving the way for the punk rock subculture into mainstream corporate America. Punk rock music stems from the rock genre but has its own agenda. The crux of punk rock is that it is a movement of the counterculture against the norms of society. Punk rock in itself is made up of a subculture of people who rejected the tameness of rock and roll music during the 1970s. (Masar, 2006, p. 8). The music stresses anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian ideas in its lyrics as well as scorns political idealism in American society. Before Nirvana unintentionally made punk rock a multi-million dollar commercialized genre of music, underground rock paved the way for the punk rock genre by creating core values that punk rockers drew upon.
First, let us define what grunge is and where it comes from. Grunge as defined by web encyclopedia alt.culture is the cumulative influences of punk and ‘70s heavy metal (plus rain, coffee, cheap, potent beer, and occasionally heroin), a cohort of Seattle bands developed a soulful hard rock variant that was instrumental to alternative music’s early-‘90s move underground (altculture. com). Among the bands included in the definition Nirvana would be mainly the one that made this phenomenon popular. Released in 1991, Nevermind—a record by an obscure band working in a genre considered as hopelessly uncommercial—launched the grunge phenomenon and marked an era of unprecedented exposure for alternative acts. Then other bands like Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden, Candlebox followed the trail that Nirvana started in the grunge w...