I dunno how long Nirvana’s been on my list. Kinda forever? It’s just such a huge name, it’s iconic. I think I kinda flip flop between going out of my way to listen to those kinds of artists and band. They help me understand how other people contextualize music (and give me a more generalizable credibility, though I try not to be too motivated by that). But also, I’m not looking to accept the default pop-culture music canons that people have already developed and attached meaning to. I’m looking to make my own canon, one which hopefully gives me tools to understand people and the meaning they’ve already made of music, but which also allows me to make my own meaning of music. The way I listen to music is connecting, because it exposes me to a breadth of characters that I otherwise might never encounter and gives me something with which I can relate to. But, it’s also inherently separating, because nobody else really does it like me, and so the meaning that I make isn’t really ever going to line up with the meaning anybody else makes.
Story of my life, really.
Anyway. Nirvana is aight. Bleach is fine, but also I didn’t like it. Nothing about it stuck out to me, nothing about it was particularly engaging or fun to listen to. It felt derivative and bland— this is always a tricky (and kinda dumb) thing to say about older stuff, because literally it’s probably groundbreaking and I actually like the derivative stuff better ’cause the derivative stuff has the advantages of being able to learn from the original stuff. It doesn’t sound like everything else, everything else sounds like it.
So then, what I guess I’m really saying is just that I didn’t like it very much. Not that deep. Moving on. Nevermind kinda slaps. I don’t think it’s my favorite of its kind, but it is very good. For this one, it makes sense to me that it would be essential to the scene, that it could have been so inspiring. I can see it. In Utero is pretty good. Nevermind felt like they got their act together and made something good, moving away from the unfocused energy of Bleach. In Utero felt like they went back to Bleach and made it decent instead of not-quite-bad. It’s still not my favorite, still not really my jam, I don’t think, but I can see the appeal.
I’m gonna give this one a B-, too. Pretty good. I don’t love it, but it’s aight, pretty good.
Nirvana complete, now listening to: Olivia Dean
tunafruitsandwitch 