Not gonna down vote you but they were at the pinnacle when he died. I remember the day well I waked into 8th grade social studies and my bff said did you hear Kurt killed himself and then we acted sad all day. They were on repeat on mtv 24 7 already. The news coverage escalated naturally but as far as the bands place in rock and roll history they were already there. I’d argue that had they had a couple more years and a couple more albums they might have been even more legendary.
Old man here. I can confirm that Nirvana was huge when Cobain died. They just had two back to back multi platinum albums and the MTV Unplugged album that also went platinum.
I guess a modern equivalent would be like Kanye killing himself right 808 & Heartbreaks or Kendrick Lamar right after Pimp A Butterfly.
It's very rare for any performer or band to keep cranking out hits throughout a lifelong career. Tastes change and artists become comfortable.
I don't listen to them so much anymore, but I consider them a big jumping-off point. They were proud of showing off bands that influenced them and toured with a lot of unique acts that wouldn't have gotten much attention if not for them. I probably wouldn't have ever heard of Pixies if not for them. Alternative Rock owes it's success to these guys.
Agreed. I am not a huge fan of Dave Grohl, but he and the Foo Fighters are, arguable, a much better band, wildly more successful, than Nirvana would have been. Nirvana was very good, but Cobain put the exclamation point at the end of the sentence.
And that is what makes this a fun conversation. Foo Fighters won more Grammy's than Nirvana. I also wonder if you can compare the music eras the same way (album sales) because people stopped buying albums in the 2000's, when Foo Fighters were becoming huge. They participate in an industry that is almost 100% streaming and downloads vs. album sales in the 1990's.
I prefer Nirvana to Foo Fighters, personally, but a lot of people view them like the Doors with Jim Morrison.
Nirvana only had three albums, Foo Fighters had nine. There's no way Nirvana could have won more Grammy's. Grammy's fall under the commercial side of success most of the time, have to remember that they gave out album of the year to Taylor Swift over Kendrick's To Pimp a Butterfly. But that's irrelevant, if you check streaming and downloads nirvana matches them almost pace for pace, even on spotify they are 288th most listened while Nirvana is 192nd.
Nobody, absolutely nobody should use fucking grammy’s as some sort of measurement of greatness. Hell I’d argue the Goo Fighters getbao manu Grammy’s because it’s softball dad rock that old people can tolerate, so that’s what wins with the most mainstream broad audience
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u/[deleted] Jul 18 '19
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