And if you wouldn't mind I would like to POLL... Nirvana's Bleach

^one for the sticker

yea I think Nirvana are more to my tastes with each passing album (admittedly nothing rare from bands with so few LPs). It's good but most of it I never listen to outside the album whereas that isn't true of the noise stuff on in Utero.

speaking of stickers my copy has a really big silver one obscuring a lot of the sleeve pic that says "THIS IS NIRVANA'S FIRST ALBUM"

Bleach was an instant classic to my young ears. I also love the pop aesthetic of Nevermind but this one definitely dipped its toes into, like, actual filthy grunge of the 80s and not what the mainstream was calling grunge.

In Utero was noisy but in more of a carefully controlled way. Though it was exactly the right pivot from Nevermind

the noise songs on in utero are still noisy pop songs it's like he couldn't help himself

I wonder how much nirvana's specific tortured relationship with pop translates to younger generations of fans since it's a product of such a different time - I feel like I barely understand it myself growing up in the 00s - the concerns that azerrad puts such weight on in his books are only vaguely familiar, like the last gasp of countercultural faith/disillusionment in the revolutionary potential of rock or something (except the revolution has been downscaled to a subcultural or psychological one by this point). there's something admirable but also tragic and ridiculous about it. which cobain was probably much too aware about

Cobain loved pop and pop hooks, I have a feeling he simply didn't want to overuse it on Bleach due to potential backlash, he made comments in interviews about how he was worried about putting "About a Girl" on the album given its pure 60s pop nature, the song which was inspired by listening to the Beatles the day before or something.

given his regrets about how supersized Nevermind made the band, I'm sure he was actually worried about what eventually happened - becoming a rock star and having no idea how to deal with the pressure, also the worries of becoming corrupted like so many before him. plus like all young naive rockers, there was probably a 'scene credibility' concern.

Not that Nevermind wasn't itself a groundbreaker for poppier alternative rock gaining a much larger foothold in the mainstream.

I wonder how things would have been different if In Utero and Nevermind were reversed, like if he followed up his punk/grunge/sludgey debut with an album that was still noisy but added folksier/poppy hooks, and then put out the pure pop album afterward. like how much did In Utero rely on what came before it to obtain its popularity, obviously Nevermind gave it a built-in fanbase, but would the demos for In Utero have gotten them a major label deal, and would a sufficient number of people have bought it to where they'd keep their deal? I mean I suppose it could have, the demos that got them the DGC deal didn't include "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Come As You Are" (though "Lithium" and "In Bloom" were on it).

idk that Cobain could have handled being a rockstar no matter how he got there, but it being a little less sudden and more drawn out might have been easier on him.

I find it interesting that people from the punk/indie/metal/noise worlds seem more likely see nirvana as pop while for a lot of pop/rap/r&b fans nirvana is probably some of the least "pop" sounding (to them) music they listen to (I was so puzzled as a teen reading all the critics calling them pop) - but there are loads of people who don't like much rock or heavy music who love nirvana - obviously it's the tunes but other heavy bands have tunes so it's something else as well

(I don't want to start a whole thing about pop vs rock, definitions, overlaps, evolution of associated value judgements - it's been done to death- just using them as shorthand)

being a rock star seems bad for people in general even without being already unstable and having he weird baggage of being the first real punk/indie rock star in the US and the contradictory demands of fame and the industry and new fans and the various scenes he had a toe in with their bizarre internal moral-aesthetic sets of rules - I'm not surprised he self destructed I would have done

the mellow in utero songs probably could have been enough to get signed in an alternate universe but unless he either shakes the baggage of his subcultural past or stops trying to be a pop star I still can't see it going well. best case scenario may be something like george michael

(I don't want to reopen this can too much but if certain fan theories about gender are accurate then his agonised attraction/repulsion thing about his own poppiness makes a lot more sense)

xxp same thing with the Beatles iirc

If "Big Long Now" made it to this record it would have been the best song on here.

there's something a bit monochromatic about this album

According to one of the bios Cobain specifically crafted the record to fit into the narrow range of what was "appropriate" style and subject matter at Sub Pop and in American independent music of the era, and he resented having to limit himself. Of course, he would spend the rest of his life being conflicted between these poles of pop and punk:

the various scenes he had a toe in with their bizarre internal moral-aesthetic sets of rules