"As is more understood than the existence of potato chips is the popular insight "After hair metal, Nirvana came in and changed everything". What Nirvana was, was nothing other than the fulfillment of underground rock as constituting the critical quality of music. What would previously be heard as cacophonous and blatantly a-tonal was somehow heard as the greatest sound in the world of that day. This popular fullfillment though was not a victory for music itself, but the victory of immaturity as the identity of what quality music was. Years and years after Nirvana saturated popular music with despair and no real clue for how instruments were to be played, bands would adapt this same style as the evidence of their own instincts, which was negating any sense of personal transcendence for the way of a conspicuous identity in downtrodden personality. The music itself, which often consisted of chorus's where 2 or 3 words would be shouted behind 3 power chords running a speed circle, signified the absolute ease in which anyone could make non-pleasant sounding music. Its with this in mind that immaturity is not to be an analogy for simplicity like many had tried to make it out as. This immaturity in the form of the popularization of music for angry children who tended to live in 2-floor suburban houses, struck not a primal instinct for nature, but the modern instinct for entitlement, which was nothing other than one's insistence for being angry in the face of nothing appearably worth getting angry over. The problem though, was not the fact that nature will have its say in the growth of those younger in age, but that this form to be grown out of was recognized as the most pure quality for the listener, making any sense of musical taste and development static in the face of this puerile sound. The reason for this static sojourn in lugubriousness was not the musical experience of listening to Nirvana, but the most grotesque phenomena to come from the relativity of the social-human in the later half of the 20th century, which was nothing other than the idea of relativity (postmodernism) becoming herd-animalized, when outright expression (for its own sake) became the form of the herd. It's not as if expressionism first saw its ascension in Nirvana and the popularization of vexed underground music though. It has no claim for an appearance in originality. In the earlier part of the 20th century, one was treated to the forms of this mode of music in the likes of Schoenberg ("Survivor from Warsaw") and Alan Berg. The difference was, this music was not herded. One who went to see Schoenberg at the theater knew what he was hearing was purposely not pleasant, and was an index for madness that had no want for being identified by the herd, mostly because there was no herd to easily identify. It's with this in mind that we come to the most fundamental problem of pop music, which is the over exaggerating (over-rating) of bands to mass popularity and herd-mentality. There is no more identifiable band than Nirvana to display this phenomena where a band becomes over-rated purely for identities own sake, in this case, the identity for what is unmusical. This popularity for identifying in what is unmusical is the effect of popular culture in its technological developments combined with the intellectual insistence in the relativity of truth. In other words, when the camera starts taking pictures of angry children wearing dirty clothes. The challenge then for pop music, if its to win for itself true transcendence, is the negation of its own basic form, which is the negation of ones want to be seen a certain way by others via a camera or video recorder, and a rigorous turning to identifying the absolute truth in the universe. It is here where one will find how a band like Nirvana was never something to be idolized, but something to be quickly grown out of. "
I think Nirvana and The Beatles are overrated for the same reasons. In my opinion they both made very good music, and they both "spearheaded" movements. However, them being at the forefront was just right place/right time.
There were bands before and during their times that were doing what they did, and doing it arguably better than they were. They were just the most famous of their respective movements. Movements that were bound to happen anyway.
That's why I think The Beatles/Nirvana are overrated, it's nothing to do with specific albums. Although they are two bands that, as a result of their fortune of being at the right place at the right time, got a lot of press and a lot of acclaim. This caused people, even today, to be shit scared of saying a bad word against them.
A) Then you're not really disagreeing with me. You just covered all bases, in fact. They're considered the most influential and greatest band ever at music by a lot of people (For lots of reasons that don't even involve actual music), that is precisely why they are overrated.
B) Do you lot have alarms that ring whenever someone says anything negative about The Beatles?
While I like both bands a lot, I do think that Nirvana and AC/DC are two of the most overrated bands in rock music...
That's not to say that they didn't make good music, cuz they did...
It's just, that when you compare Nirvana to the likes of Alice in Chains, Faith No More, and other good bands of the time, they just don't sound as good or write as good songs as them...
And AC/DC is just flat out overrated... Same with their song Back in Black... Highway to Hell and For Those About to Rock are so much better... THOSE songs deserve all the praise Back in Black gets...
Nirvana's influence wasn't so much musical as arguably they had limited talent...it was more a social influence...they hit the nail on the head with a certain niche of the youth world...and while there are alot better bands from the grunge scene that make, in my opinion, far better music...they didn't connect with thier people as totally as nirvana did
so yeah...musically they are overrated...especially if you didn't relate to them and their message
KMC Community Forums
Feb 29th, 2008 06:46 PM
Joanna Newsom! why is she on the list...
