Album StoryTrack 04
The deodorant, the swimming pool and the record that dethroned Michael Jackson
Nirvana’s second album was made quickly and on a modest budget. A few months after its release it was the number one album in the United States.
- Artist
- Nirvana
- Album
- Nevermind
- Year
- 1991
- Country
- USA
- Genre
- Grunge / Alternative Rock
- Reading time
- 2 min read
In spring 1991 Nirvana drove south from the Pacific Northwest with a set of new songs, a new drummer and a small budget. Kurt Cobain wanted the album to sound like the Pixies and the Beatles at the same time.
01The context
Nirvana released Bleach on the Seattle independent label Sub Pop in 1989. By 1990 several major labels wanted to sign them. They chose DGC, part of Geffen, partly on the advice of Sonic Youth.
Dave Grohl joined on drums in late 1990. His heavy, precise playing changed how Cobain’s new songs sounded and made them big enough for arenas the band had not yet played.
02How the album was recorded
Sessions took place in May 1991 at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, with Butch Vig producing. Vig had worked with the band before and knew how to get performances out of Cobain, who often refused to do more than a few takes.
The label thought the rough mixes were too raw for radio and brought in Andy Wallace to mix the album. Cobain later said the finished record sounded too polished, closer to commercial rock than to the punk bands he admired.
03The unusual story
The title “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came from a line that Cobain’s friend Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill spray-painted on his wall: “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit.” He read it as a revolutionary slogan. Teen Spirit was in fact a deodorant brand worn by his girlfriend at the time.
In January 1992 Nevermind replaced Michael Jackson’s Dangerous at number one on the Billboard 200. The moment is often used to mark the shift from eighties pop to the alternative rock of the nineties.
04Artwork and visual identity
The cover idea came from a documentary about underwater births that Cobain and Grohl had watched. Photographer Kirk Weddle photographed a baby, Spencer Elden, underwater in a pool in Pasadena. The dollar bill on a fishhook was added afterwards.
It became one of the best-known album covers ever made. Decades later it was the subject of legal disputes and a public debate about consent and image rights.
Sources & References
- 1.Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana (opens in a new tab). Michael Azerrad, Doubleday, 1993
- 2.Classic Albums: Nirvana, Nevermind (opens in a new tab). Isis Productions documentary, 2005
- 3.Billboard 200 chart archive (opens in a new tab). Week of January 11, 1992
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