What Nevermind Means Now

[Originally written and posted 7/28/11]
So, Nevermind is 20 years old in September. If this makes you feel old, then we're in the same boat. SPIN magazine did a retrospective article with various artists and musicians stating what Nevermind meant to them. I am not nearly interesting or famous enough for a corporate music magazine to care what I have to say, but here it is for anyone else to see.

Nevermind came out when I was in the 5th grade. My parents weren't divorced yet, but all the signs were pointing that way, no matter how they tried to cover it up. My mom's alcoholism was just in it's budding stages, but being only 11 years old, I was starting to feel confused and betrayed by her choices. My dad just wasn't around, "working" all the time. I was a definitive outcast at school. I'd fallen to the elementary version of Mean Girls and quite literally had exactly one friend and a whole gang of girls who hated me for no other reason than one girl turned on me one day. All stories for other blogs, I'm sure.

I was pretty much the picture of disaffected youth that was a mainstream in the early 90s. A very young, preteen version of it, but definitely in it. I still remember the first time I heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit" I was at a 5th grade dance. I was sitting in a corner completely ignored, because Ashley was sick that day. Immediately I felt a sense of comfort. There was always something about Kurt's voice that just implied he understood how you felt.

I know that it's a very narcissistic point of view that a lot of teenagers and preteens felt, but that's the one joy of being a teenager: It's joyfully, unabashedly all about you and you feel no need to apologize about it. As the years went on, Nirvana released better music and rereleased a first album with more raw emotion than anything else they ever did. There's always a special spot though for that first listening, that first time you felt like someone else maybe got it. Throughout all the gawkiness and bad decisions that shaped my teenage years, that was always there. I wouldn't say that it saved my life, because that honor is reserved for other forms of music, but it got me through. It gave me enough comfort to get to the point where I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

That's one of the reason I think Nirvana is still relevant today, while being played on classic rock stations. (Sorry, for that making you feel old again thing...) Some part of us will always feel like we don't quite fit, but someone like Kurt crosses generations and speaks to new ones. There are moments where I feel lost inside myself and the only soundtrack that really fits is early 90s rock, with all it's wallowing and sense of disaffection.

I leave this with the best quote I found in the magazine about the album (that has little to do with anything I've written): "...Nevermind felt like the first entire album of my generation that didn't feel like it was on loan from the generation just before us."