One of my favourite bands of all time is Nirvana, because this was the first rock band I started listening to at the age of twelve and this established my taste of music until nowadays. However, they had a big influence on their contemporary pop-rock musical industry in the early nineties, as well. Despite the fact that they released only three studio albums in seven years, Nirvana is often regarded as one of the most influential, effective and remarkable rock bands of the century.
This trio from Seattle appeared in the public consciousness in 1991 with their single “Smells Like Teen Spirit” full with pure, raw emotions which was new that time. Nirvana was formed by Kurt Cobain singer/guitarist and Krist Novoselic bassist in Aberdeen, Washington in 1987. During their career, they had six drummers. Dave Grohl, who joined the band in 1990, was the longest-lasting. They released their first album Bleach in 1989; thereby they established itself as part of the grunge scene of Seattle. They often used quiet verses with heavy and very loud choruses and these dynamic contrasts became typical Nirvana sounding. As I mentioned it before, the complete popularity and success was after releasing the first single, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” from their second album Nevermind. Lead singer Kurt Cobain said the reason for he wrote this song was that he was feeling "disgusted with my generation's apathy, and with my own apathy and spinelessness." Krist Novoselic also added: "Kurt really despised the mainstream. That's what 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' was all about: The mass mentality of conformity."
Kurt Cobain soon realized that in the media he was considered as the “spokesman of a generation” and the band was often referred to the “flagship band of...
... middle of paper ...
...s taken to hospital because of drug overdose. The bad news had arrived her in the rehab centre. Kurt Cobain’s body was found by an electrician visiting some days after the suicide. At first, the worker thought that he saw a mannequin on the floor until he recognized the blood. the body of Kurt Cobain was lying on the floor, the shotgun still pointed at his chin. He also left a goodbye letter addressed to his wife and his one and a half year-old daughter. The note ended with the words "I love you, I love you." Two days later, about 5,000 people arrived in Seattle for a candlelight vigil. The crowd was singing and listening the tape where Courtney Love read out loud the goodbye letter and due to their anger, they fought with the police. They were very desperate. After this unfortunate event, several distressed teenagers in the U.S. and Australia killed themselves.
“Why The Grateful Dead Were the Greatest American Rock Band:, BlogCritics, BlogCritics, 2014, web, 16 April 2014
The Grateful Dead are one of the rock bands that helped shape music into what it is now. The band is known for their signature live performances, which includes improvisational sections that can last for up to half an hour. The Grateful Dead has had many different members who all influenced their unique sound in a different way.
90’s was separated from bands like Nirvana who changed the scene of the rock industry
Woodstock became a symbol for a whole generation by the coming together of the political environment, the pop culture, and the current events of the time. The ‘baby boomers’ were searching for ways to separate themselves from their parents’ generation and see themselves as a more loving, compassionate, tolerant group of people. Woodstock came at a time of the youths desperation for authority and gave them beliefs they could live with. They wanted to revolt against the political chaos that they had been enduring during this memorable decade, and Woodstock was a symbol of this for the youth.
There possibly isn't an album in history that is as genre defining as Nirvana's Nevermind. Released in 1991, it single handedly was responsible for the birth of what became to be known as grunge and has gone on to sell over 10 million copies in the United States alone (Stuessy, Joe). It reached number 1 in 1991 and was the first album to bring Seattle grunge to the mainstream audience (Stuessy, Joe). Nevermind is a mix of slow, dark songs and fast paced grunge rock songs. With its grinding guitars, pounding drums, and lead singer, Kurt Cobain's distinctive voice, Nevermind found a distinctive way to fuse alternative punk with 70's rock (Nirvana, Nevermind).
The Who, a band defined by their destructive stage performances and appeal to the rock ‘n’ roll scene of the 1960’s, revolutionized the music world with their hit “My Generation” in the fall of 1965 (Erlewine). The four band members, Pete Townshend, Rodger Daltrey, John Entwistle, and Keith Moon, took the world by storm with the song as it appealed to the younger population and defiantly projected hatred towards the old and wise (Greene, Simon, and Schuster). “My Generation” was a call to the conservative adults of the 1960’s that traditional principles were of the past, and the vibrant, young aged had arrived and were there to stay (Shmoop Editorial Team).
Although the style of ‘Rock music’ is easily adaptable to 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.
Rock and’ roll has been credited with the birth of the so called generation gap, the difference in values and attitudes between one generation and another, especially between young people and their parents. It might have broken the last few vestiges of the traditional boundaries of the family, but it was not the instigator of the break itself. What started this shift were the decades following the end of World War II.
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.
Cobain had grown up in a small town named Aberdeen. Washington. His childhood was disrupted by the divorce of his parents when he was eight. The success of Nirvana gave Kurt the authority to be the "spokesman" of his generation. Nirvana's music gave way to hundreds of other underground bands, but with this success came the media's attention and the almost total loss of privacy that came with it (Kurt Kobain's Obituary).
Works Cited Page Amirault, Andrew. "The Murder of Kurt Cobain." Online. Tiacnet. 5 Dec. 1998. Available http://www.tiac.net/users/tobya Bozza, Anthony. "Kurt Cobain." Rolling Stone. 27 January 1994: 37 Jones Jr., Malcom. "The Fallout of the Burnout." Newsweek. 25 April 1994: 58 Katz, John. High Times. April 1996: 94 Kurt and Courtney. Dir. Nick Broomfield. Perf. Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love. Roxie Releasing. February 27, 1998. "The Kurt Cobain Internet Shrine." Online 10 Mar. 1999. Available http://kurt-cobain.com Lewis, Roger. "Dead Men Don't Pull Triggers: Observations on the death of Kurt Cobain." Online. Globalserve. 4 Jan. 1998. Available http://web.globalserve.net/~artnet/dmdpt97f/html. Wallace, Max and Ean Halperin. Who Killed Kurt Cobain? The Mysterious Death of an Icon. May Wallace: 1999
In high school Cobain befriended a gay student and had to endure bullying from people who though he was gay. Cobain later admitted that he was “gay in spirit” and “probably could be bisexual” (“The Dark Side,” 1992). He dropped out of high school two weeks before graduation because he did not have enough credits, and became a janitor. It was in high school, however, that the beginnings of Cobain’s career were formed. He met Krist Novoselic, and later co...
Our entire lives have been shaped by the events happening around us. Along with us many factors in our day to day lives have evolved too, including musical genre. One such genre is rock. Rock is a genre for the youth, by the youth, it has evolved to stay with the times and stand up for what’s right. In this essay I will prove why rock is a good example to show how genre has been defined, maintained, constructed and negotiated through the past 60-70 years since the very first Proto Rock song came out.
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...
AllMusic, an encyclopedia dedicated to music, outlines a defining characteristic of alternative or indie rock as “operat[ing] outside of the mainstream” (Allmusic, “Alternative/Indie Rock”). One of the defining characteristics of ‘90s alternative music, then, was that it went against the grain, contra to mainstream music. Nirvana situated themselves well within this genre by creating music that defies musical convention. Their final album, In Utero, with its offensive musical style and exclusionary subject matter signified an overt attempt to thwart the band’s own popularity and remain alternative to the mainstream music scene, but failed, undermining the definition of alternative rock and permanently altering the alternative rock genre. Nirvana