Nevermind

[nev-er-mahynd, nev-er-mahynd]

Nevermind is the second studio album by the American rock band Nirvana, released on September 24, 1991. Produced by Butch Vig, Nevermind was the group's first release on Geffen Records, which signaled its move away from Seattle-based independent record label Sub Pop. Front man Kurt Cobain sought to make music outside of the restrictive confines of the Seattle grunge scene, drawing influence from groups such as the Pixies and its use of loud/quiet song dynamics.

Despite low commercial expectations by the band and its record label, Nevermind became a surprise success in late 1991, largely due to the popularity of its first single, "Smells Like Teen Spirit". By January 1992 it had replaced Michael Jackson's album Dangerous at number one on the Billboard charts. The album has been certified ten times platinum (10 million copies shipped) by the Recording Industry Association of America. Nevermind was responsible for bringing alternative rock to a large mainstream audience, and would subsequently be regarded as one of the best rock albums of all time.

Background

Nirvana was a band from Aberdeen, Washington, formed by Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic, that had signed to Seattle independent record label Sub Pop. The group released its debut album Bleach in 1989, with Chad Channing on drums. However, Channing left Nirvana in 1990, and the band was in need of a permanent drummer. After seeing a show by hardcore punk band Scream, Novoselic and Cobain were impressed by the group's drummer, Dave Grohl. Following Scream's unexpected disbandment, Grohl contacted Novoselic, made his way to Seattle, and was soon invited to join the band. Novoselic said in retrospect that when Grohl joined the band, everything "fell into place".

Meanwhile Cobain was writing a number of new songs. Feeling disillusioned by the heavy detuned rock popular in the Seattle grunge scene and which Sub Pop had built its image upon, Cobain at the time was listening to bands like R.E.M., The Smithereens, and the Pixies, and began writing more melodic songs as a result. A key development was the single "Sliver", released on Sub Pop in 1990 (before Grohl joined the band), which Cobain said "was like a statement in a way. I had to write a pop song and release it on a single to prepare people for the next record. I wanted to write more songs like that. Grohl said that the band at that point often made the analogy of likening their music to children's music, in that the band tried to make its songs as simple as possible.

By the start of the 1990s Sub Pop was experiencing financial difficulties. With rumors that Sub Pop would sign up as a subsidiary for a major label, the band decided to "cut out the middleman" and start to look for a major label. A number of labels courted the band, but Nirvana ultimately signed with Geffen Records based upon the recommendation of its management, who also managed the band's idols (and recent Geffen signings) Sonic Youth, and Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon.

Recording and production

In the spring of 1990, Nirvana began planning its second album for Sub Pop, tentatively titled Sheep. For the album, Sub Pop head Bruce Pavitt suggested Butch Vig as a potential producer. Nirvana particularly liked Vig's work with Killdozer and called Vig up to tell him, "We want to sound as heavy as that record." In April of 1990, the band travelled out to Vig's Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin to begin work on the album. Most of the basic song arrangements were completed by that time, but Cobain was still working on lyrics and the band was unsure of which songs to record. Ultimately, eight songs were recorded: "Immodium" (later retitled "Breed"), "Dive" (later released as the b-side to "Sliver"), "In Bloom", "Pay to Play" (eventually renamed "Stay Away" and given a new set of lyrics), "Sappy", "Lithium", "Here She Comes Now" (released on Velvet Underground Tribute Album: Heaven and Hell Volume 1), and "Polly". The band had planned to record more tracks, but Cobain blew his voice out on "Lithium", forcing them to shut down recording. Vig was told that the band would come back to record more songs, but the producer didn't hear anything for a while. Instead, the band used the sessions as a demo tape to shop for a new label. Within a few months, the tape was circulating amongst major labels, creating a buzz around the group.

After signing to Geffen, a number of producers for the album were suggested, including Scott Litt, David Briggs, and Don Dixon, but Nirvana held out for Vig. Novoselic noted in 2001 that the band was already nervous about recording on a major label, since the producers suggested wanted percentage points for the album, and they optioned for Vig, whom they felt comfortable collaborating with. Afforded a budget of $65,000, Nirvana recorded Nevermind at Sound City Studios in Los Angeles, California in May and June 1991. Nirvana was originally set to record the album during March and April 1991, but the date kept getting pushed back in spite of the band's anxiousness to begin the sessions. To pay for gas money to get to Los Angeles, Nirvana played a show where they played "Smells Like Teen Spirit" for the first time. The band sent Vig some rehearsal tapes prior to the sessions that featured the Smart Sessions songs along with some new ones, notably "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Come as You Are".

When it arrived in California, Nirvana did a few days of pre-production where the band and Vig tightened up some of the song arrangements. The only recording carried over from the Smart Studios sessions was the song "Polly", which included cymbal crashes performed by Chad Channing. Once recording commenced, the band worked eight to ten hours a day. The band members tended to take two or three tries at instrumental takes; if the takes weren't satisfactory at that point, they would move on to something else. The group had rehearsed the songs so much before recording started that often only a few takes were needed. Novoselic and Grohl finished their bass and drum track in a matter of days, but Cobain had to work longer on guitar overdubs, singing, and particularly lyrics (which sometimes were finished mere minutes before recording). Cobain's phrasing was so consistent on various takes that Vig would mix the takes together to create overdubs. Vig often had to trick Cobain, who was averse to performing multiple takes, into recording additional takes for overdubs. In particular, Vig convinced Cobain to double-track his vocals on the song "In Bloom" by telling him "John Lennon did it." While the sessions went well generally, Vig said Cobain would become moody and difficult at times: "He'd be great for an hour, and then he'd sit in a corner and say nothing for an hour."

After the recording sessions were completed, Vig and the band set out to mix the album. However, after a few days, both Vig and the band members realized that they were unhappy with how the mixes were turning out. As a result, they decided to call in someone else to oversee the mixing, with DGC supplying a list of possible options. The list contained several familiar names, including Scott Litt (known for his work with R.E.M.) and Ed Stasium (known for his work with The Smithereens). However, Cobain feared that bringing in known mixers would result in the album sounding like the work of those bands. Instead, Cobain chose Andy Wallace (who had co-produced Slayer's 1990 album Seasons in the Abyss) from the bottom of the list. Novoselic recalled, "We said, 'right on,' because those Slayer records were so heavy. Wallace ran the songs through various special effects boxes and tweaked the drum sounds, completing about one mix per day. Both Wallace and Vig noted years later that upon hearing Wallace's work the band loved the mixes. After the album's release members of Nirvana expressed dissatisfaction with the polished sound the mixer had given Nevermind. Cobain said in Come as You Are, "Looking back on the production of Nevermind, I'm embarrassed by it now. It's closer to a Mötley Crüe record than it is a punk rock record."

Nevermind was mastered on the afternoon of August 2 in The Mastering Lab in Hollywood, California. Howie Weinberg started working alone when no one else showed up at the appointed time in the studio; by the time Nirvana, Andy Wallace, and Gary Gersh arrived, Weinberg had mastered most of the album. One of the songs mastered at the session, a hidden track called "Endless, Nameless" intended to appear at the end of "Something in the Way", was accidentally left off initial pressings of the album. Weinberg recalled, "In the beginning, it was kind of a verbal thing to put that track at the end. Maybe I misconstrued their instructions, so you can call it my mistake if you want. Maybe I didn't write it down when Nirvana or the record company said to do it. So, when they pressed the first twenty thousand or so CDs, albums, and cassettes, it wasn't on there." When the band discovered the song's omission after listening to its copy of the album, Cobain called Weinberg and demanded he rectify the mistake. Weinberg complied and added about ten minutes of silence between the end of "Something in the Way" and the start of the hidden track on future pressings of the album.

Release

Nevermind was released on September 24, 1991 with 46,251 copies of the album shipped to American record stores; 35,000 copies were shipped in the United Kingdom, where Bleach had been successful. The lead single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had been released on September 10th with the intention of being a base-building cut among alternative rock fans, while the next single "Come As You Are" would be the song that would possibly garner more attention. The band set out on a short American tour four days before the release date to support the album. Geffen Records hoped that Nevermind would sell around 250,000 copies, which was the same level the record company had achieved with Sonic Youth's Geffen debut Goo. The best estimate was that if the band, the management, and the label all worked really hard, the record could possibly be certified gold by September of 1992.

The album debuted on the Billboard 200 at position 144, which was high enough for the album to also top the Heatseekers chart. Geffen shipped about half of the initial US pressing to the American Northwest, where it sold out quickly and was unavailable for days. Geffen reputedly put production of all other albums on hold in order to fulfill demand in the region. Nevermind was already selling well, but over the next few months the album momentum increased significantly as "Smells Like Teen Spirit" unexpectedly became more and more popular. The song's video had received a world premiere on MTV's late night alternative show 120 Minutes but it soon proved so popular that the channel began playing it during the day. The record was soon certified gold, but the band was relatively uninterested in the achievement. Novoselic recalled, "Yeah I was happy about it. It was pretty cool. It was kind of neat. But I don't give a shit about some kind of achievement like that. It's cool—I guess.

As the band set out for their European tour at the start of November 1991, Nevermind entered the Billboard Top 40 for the first time at number 35. By this point "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had become a genuine hit and the album was selling so fast none of Geffen's marketing strategies aimed at different sales levels could be enacted. Geffen president Ed Rosenblatt told the New York Times, "We didn't do anything. It was just one of those 'Get out of the way and duck' records. Nirvana found as they toured Europe during the end of 1991 that the shows were dangerously oversold, television crews became a constant presence onstage, and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was almost omnipresent on radio and music television.

Nevermind became Nirvana's first number one album on January 11, 1992, replacing Michael Jackson at the top of the Billboard charts. By this time Nevermind was selling approximately 300,000 copies a week. "Come As You Are" was finally released as the second single in March of 1992; it peaked at number 32 on the Billboard charts. Two more singles, "Lithium" and "In Bloom," were released from the album. Nevermind eventually spent two hundred and fifty-two weeks on the Billboard 200.

Nevermind was certified Gold and Platinum by the RIAA on November 27, 1991, and was certified Diamond on March 24, 1999. It was also certified Diamond in Canada (1,000,000 units) by the CRIA on March 19, 2001.

Critical reception

Upon the album's release, several mainstream newspapers and magazines gave Nevermind positive reviews. Karen Schoemer of The New York Times wrote, "With 'Nevermind,' Nirvana has certainly succeeded. There are enough intriguing textures, mood shifts, instrumental snippets and inventive word plays to provide for hours of entertainment." Schoemer concluded, "'Nevermind' is more sophisticated and carefully produced than anything peer bands like Dinosaur Jr. and Mudhoney have yet offered. Entertainment Weekly gave Nevermind an A- rating, and reviewer David Browne argued that on Nevermind Nirvana "never entertain the notion" of wanting to sound "normal," compared to other contemporary alternative bands. Concluding his very enthusiastic review for the British Melody Maker, Everett True wrote that "When Nirvana released Bleach all those years ago, the more sussed among us figured they had the potential to make an album that would blow every other contender away. My God have they proved us right.

Rolling Stone gave the album three out of five stars; reviewer Ira Robbins wrote, "If Nirvana isn't onto anything altogether new, Nevermind does possess the songs, character and confident spirit to be much more than a reformulation of college radio's high-octane hits. The Boston Globe was less enthusiastic about the album; reviewer Steve Morse wrote, "Most of Nevermind is packed with generic punk-pop that had been done by countless acts from Iggy Pop to the Red Hot Chili Peppers," and added "the band has little or nothing to say, settling for moronic ramblings by singer-lyricist Cobain.

Nevermind was voted as the best album of the year in The Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll; "Smells Like Teen Spirit" also topped the single of the year and video of the year polls. Nevermind topped the poll by a large majority, and Village Voice critic Robert Christgau wrote in his companion piece to the poll, "As a modest pop surprise they might have scored a modest victory, like De La Soul in 1990. Instead their multiplatinum takeover constituted the first full-scale public validation of the Amerindie values--the noise, the toons, the 'tude--the radder half of the [Pazz & Jop poll] electorate came up on.

Nevermind has continued to garner critical praise since its release. The album was listed at number seventeen on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Time placed Nevermind, which writer Josh Tyrangiel called "the finest album of the 90s," on its 2006 list of "The All-TIME 100 Albums. In 2004, the Library of Congress chose Nevermind as one of fifty albums to be added to the National Recording Registry that year.

Pressings and re-releases

In 1996, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab released Nevermind on vinyl as part of its ANADISQ 200 series, and as a 24-carat gold CD. The CD pressings included "Endless, Nameless". The LP version sold out quickly of its limited pressing, but the CD edition stayed in print. In 1999 the Nevermind album was re-released in a collectors box set with the 1993 album In Utero.

Music

Cobain, Nirvana's main songwriter, fashioned chord sequences that were based mainly around power chords and wrote songs that combined pop hooks with dissonant guitar rhythms. His aim for Nevermind's material was to sound like the "Bay City Rollers getting molested by Black Flag". Many of the songs on Nevermind feature shifts in dynamics, where the band changes from quiet verses to loud choruses. Dave Grohl said this approach originated during a four-month period prior to the recording of the album, where the band would experiment with extreme dynamics during regular jam sessions.

Guitar World wrote, "Kurt Cobain's guitar sound on Nirvana's Nevermind set the tone for Nineties rock music." On Nevermind, Cobain played a 1960s Fender Mustang, a Fender Jaguar with DiMarzio pickups, and a few Fender Stratocasters with humbucker bridge pickups. The guitarist used distortion and chorus pedals as his main effects, the latter used to generate a "watery" sound on "Come as You Are" and the prechoruses of "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Krist Novoselic tuned down his bass guitar one and a half steps to D flat "to get this fat-ass sound".

Lyrics

Grohl said that Cobain told him, "Music comes first, lyrics come second," and Grohl believes that above all Cobain focused on the melodies of his songs. Cobain was still working on the album's lyrics well into the recording of Nevermind. Additionally, Cobain's phrasing on the album is often difficult to understand. Vig asserted that clarity of Cobain's singing wasn't paramount. Vig said, "Even though you couldn't quite tell what he was singing about, you knew it was intense as hell." Cobain would later complain when rock journalists attempted to decipher his singing and extract meaning from his lyrics, writing "Why in the hell do journalists insist on coming up with a second-rate Freudian evaluation of my lyrics, when 90 percent of the time they've transcribed them incorrectly?"

Charles R. Cross asserted in his 2001 biography of Kurt Cobain, Heavier Than Heaven, that many of the songs written for Nevermind were about Cobain's dysfunctional relationship with Tobi Vail. After the relationship ended, Cobain began writing and painting violent scenes, many of which revealed hatred for himself and others. Songs written during this period were less violent, but still reflected an anger absent from Cobain's earlier songs. Cross wrote that "In the four months following their break-up, Kurt would write a half dozen of his most memorable songs, all of them about Tobi Vail". "Drain You" begins with the line "One baby to another said 'I'm lucky to have met you'", quoting what Vail had once told Cobain, and the line "It is now my duty to completely drain you" refers to the power Vail had over Kurt in their relationship. According to Novoselic, "'Lounge Act' is about Tobi", and the song contains the line "I'll arrest myself, I'll wear a shield", referring to Cobain having the K Records logo tattooed on his arm to impress Vail. Though "Lithium" had been written previous to Cobain knowing Vail, the lyrics of the song were changed to reference her. Cobain also said in an interview with Musician that "some of my very personal experiences, like breaking up with girlfriends and having bad relationships, feeling that death void that the person in the song is feeling–very lonely, sick.

Packaging

The album's tentative title Sheep was something Cobain created as an inside joke towards the people he expected to buy the record. He wrote a fake ad for Sheep in his journal that read "Because you want to not; because everyone else is. Novoselic said the title was inspired by the band's cynicism about the public's reaction to Operation Desert Storm. Cobain grew tired of the title as recording sessions for the album were completed, and suggested to Novoselic that the new album be named Nevermind. Cobain liked the title because it was a metaphor for his attitude on life and was grammatically incorrect.

The Nevermind album cover shows a baby swimming toward a US dollar bill on a fishhook. According to Cobain, he conceived the idea while watching a television program on water births with Grohl. Cobain mentioned it to Geffen's art director Robert Fisher. Fisher found some stock footage of underwater births but they were too graphic for the record company. Also, the stock house that controlled the photo of a swimming baby that they subsequently settled on wanted $7,500 a year for its use, so instead Fisher sent a photographer to a pool for babies to take pictures. Five shots resulted and the band settled on the image of a three-month-old infant named Spencer Elden, the son of the photographer's friend Rick Elden. However, there was some concern because Elden's penis was visible in the image. Geffen prepared an alternate cover without the penis, as they were afraid that it would offend people, but relented when Cobain made it clear that the only compromise he would accept was a sticker covering the penis that would say "If you're offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile.

The back cover of the album features a photograph of a rubber monkey in front of a collage created by Cobain. The collage features photos of raw beef from a supermarket advert, images from Dante's Inferno, and pictures of diseased vaginas from Cobain's collection of medical photos. Cobain noted, "If you look real close, there is a picture of Kiss in the back standing on a slab of beef. The album's liner notes contain no complete song lyrics; instead, the liner contains random song lyrics and unused lyrical fragments that Cobain arranged into a poem. The complete lyrics to the album would appear in the liner notes of the "Lithium" CD single in July, 1992.

Legacy

Nevermind not only popularized the Seattle grunge movement, but brought alternative rock as a whole into the mainstream, establishing its commercial and cultural viability. Nevermind's success surprised Nirvana's contemporaries, who felt dwarfed by its impact. Fugazi's Guy Picciotto later commented: "It was like our record could have been a hobo pissing in the forest for the amount of impact it had. [...] It felt like we were playing ukuleles all of a sudden because of the disparity of the impact of what they did". In 1992, Jon Pareles of The New York Times described that in the aftermath of the album's breakthrough, "Suddenly, all bets are off. No one has the inside track on which of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of ornery, obstreperous, unkempt bands might next appeal to the mall-walking millions". Record company executives offered large advances and record deals to bands, and previous strategies of building audiences for alternative rock bands had been replaced by the opportunity to achieve mainstream popularity quickly.

Michael Azerrad argued in his Nirvana biography Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana (1993) that Nevermind marked the emergence of a generation of music fans in their twenties in a climate dominated by the musical tastes of the baby boomer generation that preceded them. Azerrad wrote, "Nevermind came along at exactly the right time. This was music by, for, and about a whole new group of young people who had been overlooked, ignored, or condescended to. Rolling Stone wrote in its entry for Nevermind on its 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, "No album in recent history had such an overpowering impact on a generation -- a nation of teens suddenly turned punk -- and such a catastrophic effect on its main creator."

Track listing

All songs were written by Kurt Cobain, except where noted.

"Smells Like Teen Spirit" (Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, Dave Grohl) – 5:01
"In Bloom" – 4:14
"Come as You Are" – 3:39
"Breed" – 3:03
"Lithium" – 4:17
"Polly" – 2:57
"Territorial Pissings" – 2:22
"Drain You" – 3:43
"Lounge Act" – 2:36
"Stay Away" – 3:32
"On a Plain" – 3:16
"Something in the Way" – 3:55

"Endless, Nameless" (6:44) is a hidden track on some copies of the record.

Chart positions

Charts (1991)	Peak position
Top Heatseekers	1
Finnish Albums Chart	1
UK Albums Chart	7
Charts (1992)	Peak position
Billboard 200	1
Portugal Albums Chart	1
Holland Albums Chart	2
ARIA Charts	2

Charts (1992)	Peak position
Switzerland Albums Chart	2
Austrian Albums Chart	2
Norwegian Albums Chart	2
New Zealand Albums Chart	2
Spanish Albums Chart	2
German Albums Chart	3
Hungarian Albums Chart	12
Sweden Albums Chart	13
Japanese Albums Chart	24

Personnel

Kurt Cobain (appears on the credits for the "Monkey Photo" as Kurdt Kobain) – vocals, guitar, photography
Krist Novoselic (credited as Chris Novoselic) – bass guitar, vocals
Dave Grohl – drums, vocals
Nirvana – co-producers, engineers
Butch Vig – co-producer, engineer
Kirk Canning – cello on "Something in the Way"
Chad Channing – cymbals on "Polly" (uncredited; song recorded when he was still in the band)
Jeff Sheehan – assistant engineer
Andy Wallace – mixing
Howie Weinberg – mastering
Michael Lavine – photography
Robert Fisher – artwork, art direction, design, cover design
Craig Doubet – assistant engineer, mixing
Kirk Weddle – cover photo
Spencer Elden – infant in cover photo

References

Classic Albums—Nirvana: Nevermind [DVD]. Isis Productions, 2004.
Azerrad, Michael. Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana. Doubleday, 1993. ISBN 0-385-47199-8
Berkenstadt, Jim; Cross, Charles. Classic Rock Albums: Nevermind. Schirmer, 1998. ISBN 0-02-864775-0
Cross, Charles. Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain. Hyperion, 2001. ISBN 0-7868-8402-9
Sandford, Christopher. Kurt Cobain. Carroll & Graff, 1995. ISBN 0-7867-1369-0