Since the beginning of recorded popular music, there have been few moments where music changed overnight, either with an album, an event, or a concert which is engraved in history forever for generations to read, or hear about. One is February 9th, 1964, when the Beatles first performed on the Ed Sullivan Show, playing “All My Loving”, “Till There Was You”, “She Loves You”, “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand”. From their signature mops, to their stellar discography of 12 brilliant albums in eight years, the Beatles changed everything, inspiring fashion trends, and some of the greatest bands that followed their lead (the list of acts is endless). With the Beatles’ success, record companies saw the importance of the rock band that played their own music, and signed anything that played guitars and that had long hair. Music had gone a quick transition from the rhythm and blues into Rock and Roll suddenly, being influenced by the likes of Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, Bob Dylan and throngs of other musicians started bands, got signed and made some of the best music for the next twenty years.
Fast forward to September 24th, 1991, music has been ruled by this thing called Hair Metal, which combines heavy metal instrumentation with sugar-coated production, a cute singer, videos about hot women and other pop music clichés. Rock music was in a bad spot during this time. Metallica had just released their supposedly “sellout” record the Black Album, U2 no longer visited the Joshua Tree, they sought to use drum machines instead of their actual drummer, and Guns N’ Roses were making double-albums which only had two good songs combined among them. In other words, rock music WAS in a bad place, when the “Grunge” (I’ll use this term very loosely) trio Nirvana released Nevermind, their critically acclaimed second effort, and their major label debut.
The album debuted number 144 on the Billboard 200 album chart; by late October, the album was top 40; on January 11, 1992, it hit number 1. Helped by the chaotic video for the lead single “Smells like Teen Spirit” the album exploded into the mainstream, and suddenly kids were no longer looking for pictures of Poison or Bon Jovi, but for albums that were similar to Nevermind, and found out a whole group of new bands that were peers, or influences of the group.
(Dave Grohl, Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic. Nirvana! Ladies and Gentlemen)
Looking for a term to name this “revolution”, the mass media had “Grunge”, which was used to describe most bands that came out of the North-West, specifically from Seattle, and that had a noisy-guitar driven sound. Similar to when the Beatles came through, major labels started signing anything that was from Seattle, and bands like Mudhoney and the Melvins were suddenly releasing records for Reprise and Atlantic Records respectively. It was no longer cool to spray up your hair, or to sing about girls, instead you had to scream out very personal lyrics, in order to be popular. Grunge was in full motion, and the Alternative Nation had finally caught the public eye. It appeared that the late 60’s/ early 70’s period of musical diversity, this time influenced by Nirvana, was going to happen all over again, which meant that good rock music was going to come out as well. What could have possibly gone wrong?
Kurt Cobain’s suicide, Pearl Jam’s boycott of the mainstream, the Lemonheads, Green Day, Silverchair, Nu-Metal, boy-bands and girl-groups are some of the correct answers to this question, and in reality, the business itself had become saturated, as labels now had too many bands which weren’t selling well. The mainstream chewed out “grunge” almost as fast as it swallowed it in. Desperate for some quick cash, they went back to signing anything that sounded popular, except popular this time (1995-1996) meant sounding like Nirvana, and this formula of business clichés has been the norm ever since: average-quality albums, 1 breakthrough single, monster appeal music videos, band on the cover of album, 2 or 3 other singles to milk out that breakthrough, trying to relieve the MASSIVE cash-cow that was Nevermind.
So what did Nevermind change? What was it that critics herald it or hate it for? What was it that made even 8 year-old wear Kurt Cobain shirts? It is said that a great band can be pointed out by the number of bad imitators that come after, and some of those imitators can be heard on your radio right now. If anything, Nevermind is the reason WHY there is so much bad music out there, why Nickelback has had 4 top-ten albums in the U.S., why Linkin Park continues to sell arenas around the world. Nevermind made the formula for success and every label has used it for the past 20 years, particularly now, that they are facing several financial troubles due to the rise of illegal downloading of music. They could use a cash cow.
Thank you Nevermind
Now, truth be told, there is still great rock music coming out today. Problem is that since they haven’t signed with major labels, they release their music on small independent record labels, which itself is great, but this means that fans spend considerably longer amounts of time looking for new music, which can become tiring. Why go to a record store and check out new music from up-and-coming artists, when you can buy the new Jennifer Lopez album, which at least is catchy and danceable, on iTunes from the comfort of your home?
No, REALLY. THANK YOU
The closest this generation has come close to a Nevermind moment has been the Strokes and their debut album Is This It. They had the fans, they had hits on “Last Nite”, “Someday” and “Hard to Explain” and they definitely had the press behind them (the NME going as far as putting them on their cover before they even released a record). But what they missed was the video; they didn’t have that “Smells Like Teen Spirit” which could have potentially turned them into world-wide superstars. The Killers were too 80’s for critics, Arcade Fire probably never had a song played on mainstream radio, and Kings of Leon responded to “Sex on Fire” and “Use Somebody” with the pretty catchy, but unoriginal Come Around Sundown. No band has had that perfect storm, right time, right moment record, which even your mother could like.
On the business model of music today however, something like Nevermind is less likely to happen, as music itself has made that 180-degree turn for the better in terms of quality. A classic example of this would be Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs winning the Grammy for Album of the Year this past February. Back in 1991, this would have been considered to the Pixies winning that same award for Doolittle. This was the first time an Independently released record won this honor, and while the Grammys have come to be the running joke of the day (or any music award for that matter), seeing Barbra Streisand butcher the name of the album on her amazement, was a little surreal. It meant that there still were people out there looking for quality in music, and while good music will always be made, it could use the anarchistic storm that was Nevermind back in the 90’s. Music could use that kick the groin every once in a while, it would make it fun for a change.
Bands Mentioned (which are worth reading about……)
-The Beatles
-The Who
-The Rolling Stones
-Bob Dylan
-Chuck Berry
-Elvis Presley
-Mudhoney
-The Melvins
-Pearl Jam
-Nirvana
-The Strokes
-U2
-Metallica
-Guns N’ Roses
-The Killers
-Kings of Leon
-Pixies
Albums Mentioned or described (which you may end up buying in a near future)
-Nevermind
-Achtung Baby
-The Black Album
-Use Your Illusion I and II
-Come around Sundown
-Doolittle
-The Suburbs
-Is This It
Songs Mentioned (which you should check out on Youbube)
-All My Loving - The Beatles
-Till There Was You - The Beatles
-She Loves You – The Beatles
-I Saw Her Standing There – The Beatles
-I Want to Hold Your Hand – The Beatles
-Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
-Last Nite - The Strokes
-Someday - The Strokes
-Hard To Explain - The Strokes
-Sex On Fire - Kings of Leon
-Use Somebody - Kings of Leon
No comments:
Post a Comment