Archive Panic: You wouldn't think so at first for such a relatively short-lived band with only three LP albums, the Unplugged album, Incesticide and some live albums. But when you get into the absurd amount of old homemade demos and obscure live performances that have been made publicly available on old bootlegs and then YouTube, far more than most bands, it creates quite a rabbit hole to go down. Even people who have been fans since the band was active can always find something new.
At the 1992 American Music Awards, Nirvana (along with fellow Grunge band Alice in Chains) lost Favorite Heavy Metal/Hard Rock New Artist to Firehouse. Yes, the glam metal band that made "Love of a Lifetime".
Consolation Award: Nirvana's only Grammy win could be considered this. After six unsuccessful nominations, the band finally won a Grammy award in 1996 for Best Alternative Music Performance for MTV Unplugged in New York. Seeing as how the band had already broken up by then after Kurt's suicide in 1994, this was obviously the last chance the Grammys had to award the band.
Nirvana recorded three songs by The Vaselines: "Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam" (from MTV Unplugged in New York) and "Son of a Gun" + "Molly's Lips" {from Incesticide).
"Oh, Me" "Lake of Fire" and "Plateau" by Meat Puppets, from MTV Unplugged in New York. What's really funny about this is that 2/3 of the band played with Nirvana on the cover.
"Turnaround" by Devo, from Incesticide. Justified since the Devo version was only released as a B-Side.
"The Money Will Roll Right In" by Fang, "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" a folk song famously recorded by Leadbelly, for some people "Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks.note Itself a translated cover of a Jacques Brel song.
Creator Worship: The band is treated this way similarly to The Beatles, with Kurt in particular being seen as something of a tragic messiah by anti-mainstream music fans. As such, criticizing them is bound to get a ton of backlash, and even doing something as little as remixing or just covering their music is considered treading on sacred ground.
Epic Riff: "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Come as You Are", "Heart-Shaped Box", "All Apologies", "Rape Me", "Serve the Servants", "Polly", "In Bloom", "About a Girl", "Dive", "Sliver", and many more.
The guitar riffs from "Sifting", "Mr. Moustache", and "Swap Meet", as well as the bassline to "Big Cheese", are some of the highlights of Bleach.
Epileptic Trees: The conspiracy theories that Courtney Love killed Kurt.
Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Just about every Nirvana song has been interpreted as being about drugs, suicide, Cobain's childhood, or a combination of all three. Cobain himself wrote "Why in the hell do journalists insist on coming up with a second-rate Freudian evaluation of my lyrics, when 90 percent of the time they’ve transcribed them incorrectly?".
Gateway Series: When somebody mentions a grunge, and alternative rock band in general, Nirvana is usually the first one to come into people's minds.
Nirvana's record company greatly underestimated how popular Nevermind would be, and they thought it might certified gold by September 1992 if everybody worked hard. This was based on the number of copies Sonic Youth's Goo had sold. It was certified gold and platinum in November 1991, and ended up selling 30 million copies worldwide.
The record company also believed that "Lithium" would be the big hit off of Nevermind. While "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was the first single, it was only expected to appeal to college radio listeners.
Dave's eventual friendship with Slash, considering the band's undisguised hatred for Guns N' Roses.
Hype Backlash: Given their extensive praise as important musicians, many modern listeners fail to see the attraction mainly due to Cobain's sloppy guitar playing style.
Indeed, it is difficult to understand how much of a breath of fresh air Nirvana was without having lived through the bombardment of cheesy, manufactured hair metal power ballads during The '80s, as well as the Milli Vanilli scandal. There’s a reason this wiki calls Nirvana the Seinfeld of Music.
Dave Grohl: We knew something was happening because the atmosphere at the gigs just changed, they went from being cool, hipster underground people in a club to, like jocks were coming to the show. That was the first thing like 'You've got these jocks here, y'know, that's kinda strange, they like our music? You used to kick my fucking ass for listening to this music!'
Misaimed Merchandising: The band has inspired T-shirts, a couple Kurt Cobain action figures, an exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, and an appearance by Cobain in Guitar Hero 5.
Speaking of Guitar Hero 5, Courtney complained about Activision using Kurt's likeness and threatened to take legal action... until Activision produced the contract she'd signed giving them permission to do so. As the CEO put it: "The check's been cashed." Presumably, Courtney also signed off on the action figures and exhibit. She definitely was the one behind the publication of Kurt's journals.
"Creep" by Stone Temple Pilots (not "Half the Man I Used to Be") is also wrongly credited to Nirvana.
Mis-blamed: Courtney Love didn't exactly help Kurt's state of mind, but she wasn't solely responsible for getting him hooked on heroin; that was mostly down to Kurt's "self-medicating" for the stomach problems he had suffered for most of his life. The Charles Cross biography suggests, however, that it was the reverse — it was Kurt who got Courtney back onto heroin.
Not-So-Cheap Imitation: Frontman Kurt Cobain admitted to being heavily influenced by The Pixies, even mentioning in an interview that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was his attempt at writing a song like theirs. Today, Nirvana are one of the most renowned bands of all time, whereas The Pixies - while not exactly obscure - are considerably less famous.
Periphery Demographic: Their music is especially popular with feminists. Kurt Cobain was a self-proclaimed feminist himself and very vocal about the inherent sexism in most rock music at the time, much of which is clearly reflected in Nevermind, especially "Polly." (See also the liner notes to Incesticide, where he explicitly condemns bigotry and rape and says he doesn't want bigots buying his music or attending his shows.) Cobain was also very said to have been very In Touch with His Feminine Sidenote He once told and interviewer that he was probably gay or bisexual, but wasn't allowed to find out due to his homophobic environment, having many close female friends who gave him a greater appreciation for femininity and female visibility.
Nevermind: "Smells Like Teen Spirit", of course, but also "Come as You Are", "Lithium" and "In Bloom" definitely count, as does the "Something in the Way", which was never released as a single, yet is widely popular and a charting hit nevertheless.
Incesticide: "Sliver".
In Utero: "Heart-Shaped Box", followed by "Rape Me" and "All Apologies". Notable are also "Dumb" and "Pennyroyal Tea".
MTV Unplugged: Their covers of "The Man Who Sold the World", "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" and "Lake of Fire".
Nirvana: "You Know You're Right".
Squick: "Mexican Seafood" is sort of the musical equivalent of a Grossout Show, featuring such delightful imagery as "Now I vomit cum and diarrhea / on the tile floor like oatmeal pizza". Perhaps it's fortunate that the verses are nigh unintelligible even by their standards.
The main riff in "Breed" sounds a-lot like Link Wray's "Run Chicken Run".
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" smells like Boston's "More Than a Feeling", though Cobain always insisted he intended the song to be a "The Pixies ripoff" and called it "a stupid riff... a 'Louie Louie' riff".
On that note, "Dumb" is often thought of as a copy of "Smells Like Teen Spirit"'s riff, when in actual fact "Dumb" was first performed in 1990 and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was not written until 1991. The 1990 version of "Dumb" has the exact same chords that were later used in "Smells Like Teen Spirit"; the In Utero version has them transposed to a different key.
"Come As You Are" sounds like Killing Joke's "Eighties", and the band were reportedly brought to court over it.
"Milk It" has a chorus riff that sounds very similar to Melvins' "It's Shoved" - Kurt Cobain was a Melvins fan and roadie before forming Nirvana, so it may have been intended as a Shout-Out.
Stuck in Their Shadow: Krist Novoselic is by far the least famous member of the core trio. Unlike Dave Grohl, who became a superstar in his own right by fronting Foo Fighters after Kurt Cobain's suicide put an end to Nirvana, Krist has since kept a relatively low profile. Almost all of his post-Nirvana musical contributions have been with various underground bands, some of which were rather short-lived.
They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Many people hate "Smells Like Teen Spirit", including Cobain himself, because it sounds too much like Boston's "More Than a Feeling".
Trans Audience Interpretation: "Been a Son" has been speculated by some people to be about a transgender woman and her parents' shameful reaction.
, Nirvana only received 7 Grammy nominations and won just one. Posthumously.