| You may think Nirvana are overrated, but they deserve credit for changing music in the early 90s. It's easy to look back now and say, 'Nirvana were just ripping off The Meat Puppets and The Pixies and Sonic Youth', but those bands, and hundreds more, would barely warrant a footnote in music history if Nirvana hadn't broken the music industry open.
If you weren't around then, you really can't understand how bad radio and mtv were, but trust me, they were bad. It wasn't just grunge that Nirvana carried into the spotlight, it was industrial and art rock and electronica and noise pop and punk and alt rock and alternative too. If Nevermind hadn't been such a huge hit in 1991, we wouldn't have had our 7 year respite from cock rock and bubblegum pop on our radios and most of your favorite bands, including Tool, Radiohead, Beck, Pearl Jam, NIN, Massive Attack and Wilco, would never have crossed your radar. |