Maybe transcendent is the wrong word here, but basically, what are the songs which just DID IT, you know what I mean, where the course of popular music just pivoted and went in a different direction. People know I'm a Nirvana fan, and even though I actually kind of hate the song now I would say Teen Spirit is one of those songs. There are obviously other examples though so say them you wankers.
No, but I get your point. Kind of hard to explain really, so I guess in the example of SLTS, it didn't just bring Nirvana through, it brought all their contemporaries through as well. Without that song we may never have heard of Soundgarden or the rest. Rapper's Delight would be another example, there are far better hip hop tracks but that was the one that brought everything to the surface. Without that song music might sound very different today.
I knew Soundgarden before I knew Nirvana, though (insert scared hiding under chair smilie here) Sorry, bruv
Lol in all seriousness though, as much as I like Soundgarden, they owe their mainstream success to Nirvana, it goes without saying. And I don't think Nirvana would have exploded in the way they did without SLTS.
I think Pearl Jam's success and "Hunger Strike" had a bigger impact on Soundgarden's mainstream popularity than anything to do with Nirvana. Popularity that was deserved as they were way better than either Pearl Jam or Nirvana As a 14 year old at the time (Soundgarden became popular) I don't recall anybody linking Soundgarden with Nirvana at all
I think Nirvana's enduring popularity has a lot to do with Cobain killing himself ... I never heard a single soul call him the "voice of a generation" until he was dead... if anything people joked about A) not being able to tell what he was singing or B) figuring it out and then saying "what the fuck does that mean?" I had a free subscription to Rolling Stone at the time and days after he had died there he is on the cover and all this stuff about "voice of a generation" out of nowhere ... I was baffled... I was 16 at the time and I remember thinking "MY generation??" (I was stoned so in a perfect mood to ruminate on such things) and I sat there thinking about my high school and the people in it and trying to see if any of it could be connected to Kurt Cobain or his lyrics... I couldn't see even the most faint correlation... two years later in my yearbook, two separate dorks had as their yearbook quotes "It's better to burn out than to fade away" and each of these know-nothing cunts misattributed the quote to Kurt Cobain in spite of it being the words of Neil Young from a song released when Kurt Cobain was 12... voice of a generation
Soundgarden, like it or not, were totally lumped in with the whole grunge phenomenon. It's just a fact. I guarantee that more than half of the articles written about Cornell's death would have referenced Kurt or Nirvana at some point. The quintessential grunge band will always be Nirvana and the grunge 'anthem' will always be Teen Spirit. Whether you think Soundgarden were better is irrelevant (you are wrong by the way, but that isn't important). It's just the way it is.
I don't disagree that Kurt's suicide essentially solidified his position in the so-called 'pantheon' of legends, so to speak. I would also agree that they weren't doing anything that original, the Pixies had been doing it for years, but mate come on. Nevermind was fucking colossal, the album was huge and made the alternative mainstream. They were massive when he was alive and the "voice of a generation" bullshit was being thrown around when he was living and breathing.
Whatever the first song Elvis played on the Ed Sullivan Show, I believe it was 'Don't be Cruel', would probably qualify, same for whatever The Beatles first song was.
I simply disagree with the notion that Nirvana alone were responsible for "Grunge" being a thing, or that they were the biggest reason... In my real time experience, that was not how I perceived it happening... Pearl Jam, if anything were more responsible... the "uniform" of grunge didn't look like what Cobain was wearing, it looked like what Eddie Vedder was wearing... As for Cornell's suicide, well obviously it would reference Cobain since they were contemporaries from the same city ... I've seldom read anything about the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison or Janis Joplin that didn't reference each other ... doesn't mean one begat the other
I was a record buying teenager at the time and I never heard anybody say that shit until he was dead ... my friends and I were all dumbfounded by that postmortem assertion (yes, we were the kind of teenagers that would discuss something like that) because it was news to us
Nirvana were clearly the hammer that broke through to the mainstream. It's as obvious as the sky is blue. Anything else is revisionist nonsense. Pearl Jam were big but Nirvana got there first dude, you survey 100 random people and ask them to name a grunge band, you know as well as I do which name is going to come out on top - by a distance as well. That name would have come out top in March '94 as well, just so we are clear.
Are you seriously trying to say Nevermind, on the back of Teen Spirit, were not utterly huge at the time? I think pretty much everyone of Kurt's contemporaries, including Cornell I imagine, would have said they were, and that they owe at least some of their commercial prosperity to the success of Nevermind.
I think it was She Loves You, you're right. That's a good example though, it's obviously not their best song, but the direction of the music industry pivoted and changed forever on that performance.
I'm not saying any such thing ... I'm saying that the idea that Cobain was some Lennonesque figure to my generation was unheard of until after he was dead especially since most of the people that liked his music (never mind teenagers who didn't even listen to it) couldn't even make out what he was saying most of the time
Dude, Ten - whilst released before Nevermind - only started really shifting units in '92, after Nevermind exploded.
Well your musical tastes put all of ours to shame. Us normal people are susceptible to mass media and pop culture. So we couldn't be expected to be so against the grain as to have known about sound garden before nirvana. My guess is, when both these bands came around you dismissed them (" they're no Led Zeppelin").
I get what you're saying and I'm obviously experiencing it from across the pond. However, let's be real here, the Lennon comparisons were always going to be applied retrospectively because no one saw it coming, people thought you were going to get at least a decades-worth more music from the dude, and suddenly you're just left with 3 years of mainstream material where you have to sum it all up. That says it all though, 3 years man. Has any band made that kind of impact with such a small period of commercial success? The Sex Pistols maybe, that's it off the top of my head. Yeah the untimely death helps but plenty of other famous musicians died young, but aren't as well remembered.
Lennon comparisons are daft ... Lennon was around for 16 years and was a BEATLE, for fuck's sake Anybody that thinks Nirvana is in that conversation for popular culture IMPACT is certifiably insane
Obviously Cobain isn't on the same level as Lennon, there will always be hyperbole with these things, but with that being said you can't minimise their impact. In fact I would say nobody has come close to replicating their impact since, at least when it comes to guitar music. And again, every other band who fell under the grunge label owes at least some part of their commercial success to them. It's just the truth you big slag.
Besides, being called "this/that generation's Lennon" is more about style, personality and musical approach than a direct comparison of talents.
