Nevermind
by Nirvana

"Nevermind" by Nirvana is currently ranked by the Rolling Stone magazine as the 17th greatest album of all time. This is due entirely to ignorance and bias. First off, the main riff of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is stolen from Venom. Venom is Metallica's biggest influence, along with every other early-mid 80's black, death, and thrash metal band. Among extreme metal enthusiasts, Venom's "Black Metal" album is widely considered to be among the very best the genres have to offer, on which the song "Countess Bathory" can be heard. Its riff has the same exact melody of the main riff of "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

Besides the fact that it's stolen and therefore invalid to begin with, the song's lyrics couldn't be worse:

a mulato
an albino
a mosquito
my libido, yeah
hey [x3]

Don't forget the other chorus:

hello, hello, hello, how low [x2]

Most choruses on this album are nonsensical 2-3 word phrases like this. The song does have a great solo, and even an intro! Even if the intro is just the main riff (still stolen) in acoustic form. Sadly, this is more than I can say for the rest of the album.

"Come As You Are," the 2nd most popular song from this album, is also stolen. This time it's stolen from Killing Joke, another band widely considered to be responsible for influencing an entire genre. The song is called "Eighties," and while the melody isn't identical, it's still the same notes, the same sound, but just slightly switched up. There's also the fact that the "chorus" of "Come As You Are" is just 1 simple word, repeated a few times....

The next most popular song on the album might be "Lithium." At least it's not stolen, but there's no great riff to speak of anyway. this one's chorus goes, "yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah......" He says it 24 times. Oh, this is also another of Nirvana's songs that has more than 1 chorus. The 2nd chorus goes like this, "I [X] you, I'm not gonna crack." Substitute "X" for simple go-to words like "kill," "like," "miss," and "love." Repeat 8, yes EIGHT, full times.

It seems to be popular for its soft verses followed by hard choruses. I'll dare to say that The Pixies have done it better on Doolittle. I'm not quite sure how I could do this, but it might have something to do with the fact that the "loud rocking choruses" here are meaningless and empty repetitions of "yeah" that gives me the gall....

I don't even believe Kurt Cobain himself liked the album. I take the message of the song "In Bloom" to be "this is pop trash, but you morons are all going to sing along with it, aren't you?" the chorus:

he's the one
who likes
all our pretty songs
and he
likes to sing along
and he
likes to shoot his gun
but he
knows not what it means [x3]
when I say "yeah"

It's also got this to say in one of its very short verses:

we can have some more
nature is a whore

He isn't much of a poet, is he? You might think that I'm biased and just quoting the very worst of it to make it look bad, but honestly the rest of it isn't much better. Let's take a look at "Breed" for example. The song's structure isn't, "intro, verse 1, bridge, solo, chorus, verse 2, chorus, outro," or something similar that you'd expect from a great song.... This one goes, "chorus 1, chorus 2, chorus 1, chorus 2." To each their own, I suppose. Besides that though, let's take a look at these choruses:

I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care
care if it's sold
I don't mind, I don't mind, I don't mind, I don't mind, I don't mind
don't have a mind

Ugh, actually enough of that one. Next chorus:

even if you have
even if you need
I don't mean to stare
we don't have to breed
we can plant a house
we can build a tree

Ugh, ditto for this one. It seems like giving it too much credit to even call it poetry's all time low. First grade grammar and vocabulary to boot. It doesn't get any worse. The nouns, like most on the album, couldn't be any more generic. The verbs couldn't be any more common. I'm not even talking about the overuse of the verb "is" or its forms. When they're using other verbs, they're as ineffective as "plant," and "build." These words are actually bigger than the average word he uses as well. The lines of this simple chorus (4-5 words long) are longer than the lines of his average verse.

Take "Polly" for example. The chorus:

Isn't me
have a seat
let me clip
dirty wings
let me take a ride
cut yourself
want some help
please myself
got some rope
haven't told
promise you
I'll be true
let me take a ride
cut yourself
want some help
please myself

Mostly 2-3 word phrases using exclusively elementary school vocabulary. The music behind it is just as simple. There is little to no bass or drums. The guitar is the same 3 second melody played from the first to the very last second of the song. It's truly terrible. The verses are all 4 short lines each, and just go to show that he can't rhyme and have meaning at the same time. This is one of the few times where he chooses meaning over rhyme, and it's just disturbing:


she asked me to untie her
a chase would be nice for a few


Notice how it's still simple.... The verses do devolve though, somehow. It's incredible that they could become any weaker, but in "Territorial Pissings" (huge words for this album, by the way!) the verses are a single sentence each. I'll nominate this one for the worst verse of all time while I'm at it:

never met a wise man, if so it's a woman

Thinking about it, it becomes clear why he usually sticks to collections of 2 and 3 word phrases. "If, then" statements don't even work like that, didn't anyone tell him to maybe change the lyrics? How do you logically come to the conclusion that, given something that has never happened, if it were to happen, it would have happened in such a way as to make the statement that it never happened still technically true? It's just logically impossible. He also seems to forget mid sentence what tense he's using. How many things could possibly be wrong with 1 verse, especially seeing as how it's just 1 sentence? It's just awful. I challenge anyone to find more wrong with any verse in history (per word of the verse).

The album closes with a weird, experimental track. Kurt admits influence from John Lennon, but hasn't anyone noticed the connection with this final song? How could it not immediately bring to mind the last track of "Revolver" (what I believe to be The Beatles' best album, why The Rolling Stone has it below "Pet Sounds" I can only guess to be because they didn't want 2 Beatles albums in a row on their list....).

There's not much more I can say about the rest of the songs that wouldn't sound like I'm repeating myself more than it already does. I will point out the fact that "Stay Away" ends with the less-than-poignant:

god is gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-ay

I guess it rhymes with the previous lyric "stay away"? It's laughable, really. Part of me almost feels like these guys are too stupid to even honorably poke fun at, and I wouldn't if it wasn't so highly rated (or if I cared in the slightest for honor). Something just needs to be said though....

"Nevermind" is by far the most overrated album of all time and this needs to get out. It deserves far less credit than it gets. Its popularity is due to 90's teens in their "I DON'T CARE, WHATEVER! NO MOM, GIVE ME SOME DAMN SPACE WHY DON'T YOU? LIKE, NO I DON'T WANT ANY COOKIES! I'M GOING THROUGH SOME SERIOUS *&^% RIGHT NOW! NOBODY UNDERSTANDS ME!" phase that only pathetic, angsty, immature children can go through. It deserves no more recognition than any Backstreet Boys album has gotten.

I'm sorry if the truth was too hurtful, but it's not "just opinion" any more than "Jimi Hendrix is a better guitarist than my grandmother" is an "opinion." It's an unforgivable insult to every album above it on the greatest list in Rolling Stone magazine. I'm asking society to please rethink it. Is it too soon to criticize it yet? Will I have to wait another generation? Do yourself a favor, get out of denial, and accept the facts already: Nevermind sucks. The world will be a much better place. (Edited)

Genius and dumb, innovative and unimaginative, original and non-original, thoughtless and thoughtful, meaningless and meaningful, alternative and pop, angry and happy, scary and doable, influential and dull, over-produced and lo-fi, sexy and unattractive, classic and garbage. If any album can fight continuously with all and more of these ideas and ideals and still come out being legendary, then Nevermind did it. I'd be biased to tell you my opinion of the record because they used to be my favorite band. But no matter how hard I try. I cannot dislike this record. Tremendous. (Edited)

From Mr. Shankly TOP 100 COMMENTER 10/03/2011 03:49 | #27992 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

'IF this album were to be erased from history tonight, you would find little on what precious darlings of what is called "indie."'

No! Nirvana did not invent indie rock, or even so-called alternative music. That would be Black Flag, Husker Du, The Replacements, R.E.M. The Pixies, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, and a bunch of other trailblazers that predated Nirvana by 5-10 years. Go read Route 66: On the Road to Nirvana or Our Band Could be Your Life to learn the history. What Nirvana does get credit for though is bringing alternative music into the mainstream. They were the band that kicked open the door, but there were countless bands that laid the foundation for Nirvana's success. As jojoexile wrote two posts down: "Timing is everything" and Nirvana was simply the right band at the right time.

(Edited)

From JulianR TOP 100 COMMENTER 06/26/2017 08:21 | #193237 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

It's some great music, I don't think any meaningful portion of the population seriously disagrees with that. But is the album in its entirety really better than Pet Sounds, In Rainbows, Wish You Were Here, The White Album, (insert any masterpiece ranked lower than 7th), etc? Probably not. I think an interesting thing to notice is that while it is ranked 7th, it is rated only an 86/100. The next album with a rating that low is ranked 23rd. This might point to a difference in perception of what it really means for music to be good that is highlighted by this album especially. While ratings seem more like a cold hard appraisal of the quality of the music, chart placements seem to be more emotionally based and tied to life experience and associations. I have noticed this not only on my own chart but on others' too. These facts might be highlighting the fact that this album was a real milestone in music for many people's lives and a seminal moment in music history. I really have no idea what the average age of people on this site is, but I'm guessing this is one of the few "great" albums that those of that generation were alive for. A couple earlier Radiohead albums, Doolittle, and Loveless are the only others I can think of off the top of my head, and none of those were so genre defining, paradigm shifting, AND mainstream is this.

That's my two cents
TL;DR: Nevermind likely has lots of emotional value for people, but isn't necessarily amazing musically (still great tho) (Edited)

From 1234567890 10/14/2009 03:52 | #6736 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

"Nirvana is most certainly an all time favorite band of mine, but i think that Nirvana's album Nirvana has better songs than Nevermind." LOL, that might be because its a greatest hits collection. (Edited)