Universal Truths about Nirvana.

I don't know much in this life, but I do know that there is one universal truth out there that no one can ever take for granted. This truth is that Nirvana was the most over rated band of all times.

That's right. I said it. I realize I've most likely committed musical sacrilege, but I mean it. Read on. And if you disagree, that's cool. Different opinions are what makes the internet a great place to be. So if you disagree, feel free to flame away in the comments.

Sure, Nirvana was supposed to be "the next Beatles" and they were supposed to "save music from itself". Well... guess what? Oh sure... they came along and saved music from the excess that was hair metal and Pop Music in the 1980s... but musical artists such as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and the Backstreet Boys were back on top not 5 years after Nirvana's last album.

I suppose it's unfair to say that Nirvana was incapable of "saving music" (whatever that means) by comparing them to the Pop Music that took their place in popularity after Cobain shuffled off the mortal coil. To be fair I should make comparisons to the more "rock" or "alternative" artists that came into popularity in the wake of Nirvana.

Let's see... the best examples I can think of from the late 90s were Limp Bizkit, Korn, and Kid Rock. And everyone knows all three of these bands were made of suck. Once again: that's right. I said it. Limp Bizkit, Korn, and Kid Rock all sucked. Limp Bizkit sucked especially badly, because their biggest claim to fame is that they took an awful George Michael song and made it worse. Yes, I'll admit that it seemed novel at the time to fuse metal and rap together to make some kind of illegitimate hybrid of awfulness. But if you listen to any of those songs now (particularly Kid Rocks "I am the Bull God"), they all sound so formulaic. Basically every song is Boy doesn't fit in with crowd. Local kids call boy gay. Boy runs from the mainstream to the comforting embrace of metal... but somethings missing from this big ole pile of angry: the perfect rap. I KNOW! WE'LL RAP OVER THE CRUNCHY METAL RIFFS! WHITE KIDS WILL EAT IT UP!!! And eat it up we white kids did.

And yes, Korn's first album was good, b/c at the time ole' boy had some things to get off his chest. But by the time we'd gotten to "Got the Life" in 99 everybody got it: Jonathan Davis didn't fit in, and everybody knows that the only way to let the world know that you don't fit in anymore is to do a colabo with the king of family movies Ice Cube and call it "Children of the Korn".

But yet I still bought the album.

Why? Because what else was I going to listen to at the time? The internet as we know it didn't really exist at the time. So your only avenue to find new music was to either listen to the crappy local station, or watch TRL. And the closest thing TRL played to rock was Korn and Limp Bizkit. So, if you liked the hard rock or the alternative... that's pretty much what you had to go with.

Start Sidebar: Right about now, you're probably thinking "This guy is an idiot. There were lots of great bands from the late 90s. What about Sublime, 311, Rage Against the Machine, or Tool?" I'm glad you asked. I'll explain in two sentences or less why these bands will (unfortunately) never matter as much to my particular era as Korn or Limp Bizkit.

Sublime: Sublime only got famous b/c the lead singer O.D.ed. Sure, they made three great albums, but you can't look me in the eye and say as many people would know about them if the mother hadn't decided to take too many drugs.

311: Their biggest hit was a thank you to their fans for being faithful to them for so long. If they really mattered that much, wouldn't they have had a hit before that one?

Rage Against the Machine: Too political. Plain and simple.

Tool: Too weird to ever be mainstream.

End Sidebar.

I hear I've strayed a bit from my original point. The point is: Nirvana will never be as impactful as people want them to be because they only really made three proper albums. When you look at bands like the Beatles, U2 (who I hate with a passion by the way), Lynyrd Skynyrd, or even your lesser known punk acts like Bad Religion that are thought to have had a lasting impact on music, they all have one common thread: They made a crap-load of albums.

With only three albums, it was impossible for people to get an idea of what "kind" of band Nirvana was. This was also complicated by the fact that, deep down inside, Cobain wanted to write pop songs. Once again, you didn't read wrong. I said it. Cobain wanted o write pop music. This is evidenced in the best Nirvana songs (About a Girl, All Apologies, Polly, Something in the Way, Heart-Shaped Box, and Lithium to name a few) are all essentially pop songs with a little harder edge.

The band's inability to establish a "voice" through a well developed body of work is further complicated by the fact that their final Studio album (In Utero), is almost %100 stylistically different from Bleach and Nevermind. Cobain wasn't comfortable with his celebrity as a popular artist. He never made any secret about the fact that he hated the day Smells like teen spirit made him a celebrity. Listen to "Rape Me" from In Utero sometime... it's very structurally similar to Teen Spirit, and the lyrics say a lot.

Note: Yes. I realize that they also made Incesticide (a b-sides and rarities album), Unplugged (a live concert album that is probably the band's crowning achievement), and From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah (which was just an awful mistake). However, none of these albums were albums that were completely new material intended to be listened to from strat to finish.

Lastly, I've never taken much stock in the notion that the music of the 1980s was this barren wasteland of awfulness. Sure, there were a lot of crappy bands, but there were a lot of great bands too (The Cure, The Smiths, Bauhaus, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and The Specials, to name a few). Yes, metal at the time was all slick, polished, and composed of bungholes who only got in to music to be famous... but guess what? SO DID MOST OF THE BANDS THAT CAME AFTER NIRVANA (Korn, Limp Bizkit, Smashing Pumpkins, and Stone Temple Pilots, to name a few).

Sorry if I broke your hearts. I didn't mean too. It's just my opinion, and I apologize if it's different from yours.

Ya'll stay classy... wherever ya'll is...

Blakely A-dam Sumner