The following is a Designated Cheerleader piece by @JustinWCornell for the Best Album of 1991 tournament. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you follow the link to vote in the tournament. Thanks!
Out of all the albums released in 1991, Nevermind is the one whose influence has lingered the most. What has endured about this album after 30 years are the songs. It still strikes me as remarkable how well Kurt Cobain could write for his band. The hooks are really strong— all of the songs on side 1 (the poppier side) are instantly recognizable — but Cobain knew how to pull back and leave space within a track as well. One of my favorite parts on the record is the instrumental middle section of “Drain You”, which almost feels like a drone led by a steady drumbeat and guitar feedback. And I believe what really makes “Smells Like Teen Spirit” so memorable is not just the opening riff, but the fact that it leads into the 2-note guitar melody of the choruses. The writing is elegant and balanced, especially considering the band’s off-balance image. The melodies feel surprising and a little ‘wrong’, but at the same time they feel like they have always existed. The lyrics are as passionate and as vague as you want in pop music. And yet the two slow songs that close out both sides reveal a great deal of emotional depth.
I bring up the writing first because it’s what still really hits now after five hundred listens, but the album’s sound was what made it ubiquitous in the ‘90s. Nirvana were not so much stylistic innovators as stylistic synthesizers, but the way they combined their influences took the best of other bands’ sounds and made them all gel together in a way that could appeal to a mass audience. And it should be noted that they promoted these bands who influenced them, and gave them a platform. (There are dozens of such bands; the one I hear most in Nevermind is The Melvins).
I was just 4 when this album came out. I can’t speak to it as a first-generation fan. I’m pretty sure I knew the Weird Al parody “Smells Like Nirvana” before I knew the original. But by the late ‘90s, when I was an alienated middle schooler who was getting bored of my dad’s classic rock but felt little connection with what had become of alternative, Nevermind felt like an ur-text for me and my friends. It sounded fresh, and fun, and it rocked! Dave Grohl’s heavy drum fills, Krist Novoselic’s melodic bass that drove the songs and allowed the guitar to freak out and add layers of noise, Kurt’s emotional vocals, so wild and so versatile— it all made sense to my 13 year old mind, in a way that most music did not make sense. Every track is burned into my mind (except the hidden “Endless Nameless,” which was not included on the copied cassette tape version that I had back then), so I don’t actually listen to Nevermind that often any more. But I hear it in all the rock music that came after it, and when I do put it on, it still gets me.
