NEVERMIND poll

start over

never been done?? amazing.
tough this, but since i saw the Classic Albums doc i think
Something In The Way.

i have been doing some mega 90s poll and discovered in my research that this poll has never been done. was going to start it next Tuesday but with today's news, made sense to do it now.

those other 90s polls:
Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream poll
I get up when I want except on Wednesdays when I get rudely awakened by the dustmen: Blur - Parklife poll
Built to Spill - Perfect from Now On. poll
The Elastica debut album poll

rank the songs on nirvana's "nevermind"

not trying to step on anyone's toes. this was going to happen anyways in a week, see the post just above.

haha i like the sheer inevitability of "this was going to happen anyways"!

uh you know at this point in my life it's either "breed" or "lounge act"

I'm interested in seeing which one of these tracks doesn't get a vote.

DRAIN YOU

write in vote for Endless, Nameless.

Track listing

All songs written by Kurt Cobain except where noted.
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" (Cobain, Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic) – 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" (Cobain, Grohl, Novoselic) -- 6:44 (hidden track on some copies of the record)

Tough to choose. The singles are so inured in my psyche, so I feel more fondness/nostalgia for the album cuts. But man, some of those singles are just terrific if I can just disengage them from all the terrible associations FM rock radio has created.

Breed! The drums on the intro, the hardcore pace, and "...Afraid, afraid, Ghosts!" And singing it was the most fun I've ever had at karaoke. It just takes over!

haha yeah if the first side were not burned into my head i might have picked "in bloom"

"in bloom," my favorite song in eighth grade vs "on a plain," one of the few songs of theirs i still enjoy

had to go with the former

Auto-piloted 'Lithium', as that was always the riff I liked best - Teen Spirit, but not Teen Spirit IYKWIM.

Don't tell me what I wanna hear.

Obviously done before. Still voting "Polly"

DRAIN YOU

― Clay, Thursday, June 23, 2011 1:44 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

On A Plain

LOL Geir loves "Polly"!

Betcha he hates "New Wave Polly"

Voted "On a Plain" but just as easily could've picked "Drain You". But come on:

I'll start this off without any words
I got so high I scratched 'till I bled
I love myself better than you
I know it's wrong so what should I do?

(Cobain, Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic)

I think many of my most favoritest Nirv trax have this songwriting credit.. Scentless Apprentice, Aneurysm, Endless Nameless..

I'm interested in seeing which one of these tracks doesn't get a vote.

I don't think that's happening this time.

Stay Away might be middle of the road enough that it squeaks by with a 0, but yea wouldn't be surprised if they all get at least 1...

(i mean middle of the road in that I don't see a lot of people pick it as their favorites, not sonically...)

On A Plain

drain you

as last time, as always, "Lounge Act", for me the real keeper from this album all these years later.

Lounge Act for sure, prob. my fav Nirvana song, swings like fuck.

― Euler, Tuesday, June 23, 2009 10:24 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark

i heard "Breed" on the other night, bass sound on that song is just ridiculous. but i'd already voted for "Drain You."

i wonder what non-singles have had the most radio play, i think i've heard "Breed" and "Polly" the most, and "Drain You" and "Something In The Way" and "On A Plain a little bit

my head says on a plain

my heart says teen spirit.

voted with my heart since teen spirit literally changed my life.

breed, but there are so many i might have gone with: in bloom, teen spirit, drain you, lounge act, on a plain, lithium...

love this album. i'm finally getting past the overplaying and negative contextual associations, to where i can just listen and enjoy it.

voted Lithium

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Drain You, with Breed a very close second.

on a plain

lounge act over breed and come as you are

gr80 is there a story about how slts changed your life?

In Bloom

xpost

more just like a watershed moment for me as a 12 year old listening to the top 9 at 9 on Boston's KISS 108 FM every nite

On a Plain

Breed.

This album is going to be key for teenagers for years imo.

I vividly remember hearing "teen spirit" on the radio for the first time, shortly after my 13th birthday. I was in the car with my dad, when he said those time-honoured words "I think that record is skipping" I knew instantly that this was the record for me. (in fairness I think he was half-joking.) a few weeks later I bought the CD (my first - altho i already had a decent collection of U2 and REM tapes) from a guy in my class who also didn't get Nirvana.

gonna vote On A Plain, altho I haven't listened to the album in years (have revisited In Utero more often).

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Close, but no cigar

Stay Away might be middle of the road enough that it squeaks by with a 0, but yea wouldn't be surprised if they all get at least 1...

― SBing crosby (Neanderthal), Thursday, June 23, 2011 5:34 PM Bookmark

surprised there isn't a gap of some kind between the top 8 and the bottom 4, if only cuz that's how i draw the line. either "come as you are" and "lounge act" deserve a little more ILX love, or "something in the way" and "territorial pissings" deserve less. but that's just me, hating as i will.

glad to see so much local support for and interest in the album, as it's all too often sneered at as an overrated alt-90s relic.

pleasantly surprised by all the love for drain you!

I'm happy with these results, esp top 2

ILM must have a hive mind, cos I voted On a Plain in this one, Stutter on Elastica poll
either that or i fall smack in the middle of the bell curve of "typical ILM user"

This Nevermind boxed set thing includes more "Boombox demos" that no one wants to hear.. and the tracklisting doesn't include "Endless Nameless" as far as I can tell. And of course there's one disc that's just a different mix of the entire album. Sounds pretty fucking amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRm8RmNGFq4&feature=player_embedded

i heard "Breed" on the other night, bass sound on that song is just ridiculous. but i'd already voted for "Drain You."

i wonder what non-singles have had the most radio play, i think i've heard "Breed" and "Polly" the most, and "Drain You" and "Something In The Way" and "On A Plain a little bit

― some dude, Friday, June 24, 2011 8:23 AM (10 months ago) Bookmark

lately i think "on a plain" might be the champ of this

yeah On a Plain is terrific

On a Plain got my vote last time and probably would again; what an earworm.

i meant specifically it's the champ of non-singles i've heard on the radio a lot, but yeah it may be my favorite song on the album these days too. lyrically it's almost like a thesis statement for kurt's nonsensical profundity.

Nevermind is 25 today. wow, i'm old.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/nirvanas-nevermind-10-things-you-didnt-know-w441220

some more good stuff:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/22/butch-vig-on-the-25th-anniversary-of-nirvana-s-nevermind-and-the-mediocre-state-of-music.html

I think there is so much music out there that is mediocre—not just EDM, but folk music, hip-hop music—because there’s so much music out there. Before, it was hard to put music out. So at the end of the day, you have to put out something that’s good. Whether it’s EDM or folk music, if it’s going to resonate some way you’re going to find an audience. And how many bands are on YouTube now? Ten million? You go through SoundCloud and check out all the EDM tracks out there and every now and then one sounds interesting, but a lot of it is really soulless. There’s no human passion in it, and it’s just a mixture of interesting sounds. I think people are going to get bored with that. Nirvana happened at the end of the ’80s because a lot of the music that was dominating the charts was very slick, and when Nirvana came along, it was so visceral and primal that it freaked people out, you know? They thought, ‘Wow, this is the real thing.’ The reason that record was so big is the timing. If Nirvana came out now with Nevermind, it would not have even remotely the same impact.

Butch is seriously overstating the quality of the music that was being released pre-internet.

MTV Classic has three Nirvana things in a row scheduled tonight. First up is the "making of / classic albums" doc. Last is Unplugged. In the middle *seems* to be just Nirvana videos celebrating this ann'y (based on the description). Hoping it's more than that, but if not, oh well.

Just FYI.

i remember hearing "Verse Chorus Verse" on a radio when it came out and being obsessed w that song but having no idea what it was called. this was before the internet and i had a BBS i used to download DOOM WADs and one of them was a Nirvana music mod that had that song. so for about a solid decade that's the way I heard that song.

no idea if Nevermind would make an impact nowadays. for one thing there's no MTV so you wouldn't have Teen Spirit on heavy rotation. for another it's an entirely different landscape and Kurt would have maybe said "screw this label business I'm going to be on SoundCloud"

it was a product of it's time. i actually saw Nirvana open up for Sonic Youth three months before Nevermind was released. they absolutely blew my mind that night. it was one of those moments were i knew i has witnessing something very special. best thing about Nirvana was the killing of hair metal. i hated the KNAC culture and it was something i could latch onto.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/I3FMoGC28iVPdOe1B0Mi-DNwPlfLhuObEcqSr7k1rk2thhCZE91HJQSU3NhZfntofvKMpRQPAY65jgKSBjZAEh3YJgjhTAQFpP-5Tvbn1aX1ni2CKkQc2D2U4TUFsvgeE5IBUaRaywMamw1Ty1524LFgH5pkB3lzKoMqaA1-1tgZyo8PiHZC86QzR0YfU_my4VTjP1_ceVppsJyh05GYOoPbiHeu766sa_-N419bP7gqKZcEn1tBge5YtbF6twOptLDsYD--00jYjXen5i2JKM9vfXyceJ8uphzACqdDReCeuD2Qk1QBlhbRegzsCW2j2CJdO-ZtB9lpraZIKjtzf1OARhXnn9SVt9yvQsiqSozIJ1GjJfqYHwEHFCG7VlLEyVZZPbdzJqpOiDN2kretqLrWttU-Hin9iCv5GeuyZruPPD515XSYZoBCf3suL0kSYQ08J9DDkuN4xjQ39FH2UDAwvbdjKXZcMo830Fl2T2VPt0-JEOJ60zlJ1oHok75cAICcOQYqQ2NLyP50qntFKhlFBMJOH3sDDcOQDP4ZHbpXNO9QLMOnIM5abuCt3DjZHi2fjVOw7gXGKOuJHKJeWGW3mDCfTZFUUpmimPpkvbwmrog9=w1689-h950-no

August 17, 1990:

Blew
Been a Son
Negative Creep
Drain You
Lithium
Floyd the Barber
Smells Like Teen Spirit
School
About a Girl
Love Buzz (Shocking Blue cover)
Sliver
D-7 (Wipers cover)
Territorial Pissings

I listened to this album this morning for the first time in at least 10 years. It's pretty good!

Incidentally, the other day I heard Hole's "Live Through This" for the first time. It's pretty good, too! I totally forgot I saw them live back in 1994 I think. Never saw Nirvana live, never really wanted to, nor do I regret missing them live. But yeah, "Nevermind" is pretty good!

It's a great record! I know it was trendy for a few years for some to knock Nevermind because of its relatively shiny mix, pop smarts and its status as a gateway album, but all of those things are just a few of the reasons why it's such a great record. I've lost count of the number of people I've spoken to with a deep interest in alternative rock that began with this album.

wow I thought come as you are was a consensus favorite!

these days it's Lithium