Nirvana

After signing to major label DGC Records in 1991, Nirvana found unexpected mainstream success with "Smells Like Teen Spirit", the first single from their landmark second album Nevermind (1991). A cultural phenomenon of the 1990s, Nevermind was certified Diamond by the RIAA and is credited for ending the dominance of Hair metal.

Characterized by their Punk aesthetic, Nirvana's fusion of Pop melodies with Noise, combined with their themes of abjection and social alienation, brought them global popularity. Following extensive tours and the 1992 compilation album Incesticide and the EP Hormoaning, the band released their highly anticipated third studio album, In Utero (1993). The album topped both the US and UK album charts, and was acclaimed by critics. Nirvana disbanded following Kurt Cobain's suicide in April 1994. Various posthumous releases have been overseen by Krist Novoselic, Dave Grohl, and Kurt Cobain's widow  Courtney Love. The posthumous live album MTV Unplugged in New York (1994) won Best Alternative Music Performance at the 1996 Grammy Awards.

Nirvana is one of the best-selling bands of all time, having sold more than 75 million records worldwide. During their three years as a mainstream act, Nirvana received an American Music Award, Brit Award  and Grammy Award, as well as seven MTV Video Music Awards and two NME Awards. They achieved five number-one hits on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart and four number-one albums on the Billboard 200. In 2004, Rolling Stone named Nirvana among the 100 greatest artists of all time. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility in 2014.

They practiced material from Kurt Cobain's Fecal Matter tape but started writing new material soon after forming.

During its initial months, the band went through a series of names, including Skid Row, Pen Cap Chew and Ted Ed Fred. The group settled on Nirvana because, according to Kurt Cobain, "I wanted a name that was kind of beautiful or nice and pretty instead of a mean, raunchy punk name like the Angry Samoans."  Kirst Novoselic and Kurt Cobain moved to Tacoma and Olympia, Washington respectively. They temporarily lost contact with Aaron Burckhard, and instead practiced with Dale Crover of the Melvins. Nirvana recorded its first demos in January 1988.

In early 1988, Dale Crover moved to San Francisco but recommended Dave Foster as his replacement on drums. Dave Foster's tenure with Nirvana lasted only a few months; during a stint in jail, he was replaced by Aaron Burckhard, who again departed after telling Kurt Cobain that he had too much hungover to practice one day. Kurt Cobain and Kirst Novoselic put an ad seeking a replacement drummer in The Rocket, a Seattle music publication, but received no satisfactory responses. Meanwhile, a mutual friend introduced them to drummer Chad Channing. Chad continued to jam with Kurt and Kirst; however, by Chad's account, "They never actually said 'okay, you're in.'" Chad played his first show with Nirvana in May 1988.

No one told Jason Everman he was fired; he later said he had quit. Although Sub Pop did not promote Bleach as much as other releases, it was a steady seller, and had initial sales of 40,000 copies. However, Kurt Cobain was upset by the label's lack of promotion and distribution. In late 1989, Nirvana recorded the Blew EP with producer Steve Fisk. In an interview with John Robb in Sounds, Cobain said the band's music was changing: "The early songs were really angry... But as time goes on the songs are getting poppier and poppier as I get happier and happier. The songs are now about conflicts in relationships, emotional things with other human beings."

In April 1990, Nirvana began working on their next album with producer Butch Vig at Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin. Kurt Cobain and Kirst Novoselic became disenchanted with Chad Channing's drumming, and Chad expressed frustration at not being involved in songwriting. As bootlegs of Nirvana demos with Vig began to circulate in the music industry and draw attention from major labels, Chad Channing left the band. That July, Nirvana recorded the single "Sliver" with Mudhoney drummer Dan Peters. Dale Crover filled in on drums on Nirvana's seven-date American West Coast tour with Sonic Youth  that August.

In September 1990, Buzz Osborne of the Melvins introduced the band to drummer Dave Grohl, whose Washington, D.C. band Scream had broken up. Dave Grohl auditioned for Krist Novoselic and Kurt Cobain days after arriving in Seattle; Krist Novoselic later said, "We knew in two minutes that he was the right drummer." Grohl told Q Magazine: "I remember being in the same room with them and thinking, 'What? That's Nirvana? Are you kidding?' Because on their record cover they looked like psycho lumberjacks... I was like, 'What, that little dude and that big motherfucker? You're kidding me'."

Initially, DGC Records was hoping to sell 250,000 copies of Nevermind, the same they had achieved with Sonic Youth's Goo. However, the first single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" quickly gained momentum, boosted by major airplay of the music video on MTV. As it toured Europe during late 1991, the band found that its shows were dangerously oversold, that television crews were becoming a constant presence onstage, and that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was almost omnipresent on radio and music television. By Christmas 1991, Nevermind was selling 400,000 copies a week in the US.

In January 1992, the album displaced Michael Jackson's Dangerous at number one on the Billboard  album charts, and topped the charts in numerous other countries. That month Nevermind reached number one, Billboard proclaimed, "Nirvana is that rare band that has everything: critical acclaim, industry respect, pop radio appeal, and a rock-solid college/alternative base." The album eventually sold over seven million copies in the United States and over 30 million worldwide. Nirvana's sudden success was credited for popularizing Alternative rock and ending the dominance of Hair metal.Citing exhaustion, Nirvana decided not to undertake another American tour in support of Nevermind, instead opting to make only a handful of performances later that year.

In March 1992, Kurt Cobain sought to reorganize the group's songwriting royalties (which to this point had been split equally) to better represent that he wrote the majority of the music. Dave Grohl and Kirst Novoselic did not object, but when Kurt Cobain wanted the agreement to be retroactive to the release of Nevermind, the disagreements between the two sides came close to breaking up the band. After a week of tension, Cobain received a retroactive share of 75 percent of the royalties. Bad feelings about the situation remained within the group afterward.

Amid rumors that the band was disbanding due to Kurt Cobain's health, Nirvana headlined the closing night of England's 1992 Reading Festival. Kurt personally programmed the performance lineup. Nirvana's performance at Reading is often regarded by the press as one of the most memorable of the group's career. A few days later, Nirvana performed at the MTV Video Music Awards; despite the network's refusal to let the band play the new song "Rape Me", Kurt strummed and sang the first few bars of the song before breaking into "Lithium". The band received awards for the Best Alternative Video  and Best New Artist categories.

DGC Records had hoped to have a new Nirvana album ready for a late 1992 holiday season; instead, it released the compilation album Incesticide in December 1992. A joint venture between DGC and Sub Pop, Incesticide collected various rare Nirvana recordings and was intended to provide the material for a better price and higher quality than bootlegs. As Nevermind had been out for 15 months and had yielded a fourth single in "In Bloom" by that point, Geffen/DGC opted not to heavily promote Incesticide, which was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America the following February.

In Utero topped the American and British album charts. Time critic Christopher John Farley wrote in his review, "Despite the fears of some alternative-music fans, Nirvana hasn't gone mainstream, though this potent new album may once again force the mainstream to go Nirvana." In Utero went on to sell over 5 million copies in the United States. That October, Nirvana embarked on its first tour of the United States in two years with support from Half Japanese and The Breeders. For the tour, the band added Pat Smear of the punk rock band Germs as second guitarist.

In November, Nirvana recorded a performance for the television program MTV Unplugged. Augmented by Pat Smear and cellist Lori Goldston, they broke convention for the show by choosing not to play their best known songs. Instead, they performed several covers, and invited Cris and Curt Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets to join them for renditions of three Meat Puppets songs.

In early 1994, Nirvana embarked on a European tour. Their final concert took place in Munich, Germany, on March 1. In Rome, on the morning of March 4, Kurt Cobain's wife, Courtney Love, found Kurt Cobain unconscious in their hotel room and he was rushed to the hospital. Kurt had reacted to a combination of prescribed Rohypnol and alcohol. The rest of the tour was canceled. In the ensuing weeks, Kurt Cobain's heroin addiction resurfaced. Following an intervention, Kurt was persuaded to enter drug rehabilitation. After less than a week, he left the facility without informing anyone, then returned to Seattle. One week later, on April 8, 1994, Kurt Cobain was found dead of a self-inflicted shotgun wound  at his home in the Denny-Blaine neighborhood of the city.

The box set, With the Lights Out, was released in November 2004. The release contained early Kurt Cobain demos, rough rehearsal recordings, and live tracks. An album of selected tracks from the box set, Sliver: The Best of the Box, was released in late 2005.

In April 2006, Courtney Love announced that she was selling 25 percent of her stake in the Nirvana song catalog in a deal estimated at $50 million. The share of Nirvana's publishing was purchased by Primary Wave Music, which was founded by Larry Mestel, a former CEO of Virgin Records. Coutney Love sought to assure Nirvana's fanbase that the music would not simply be licensed to the highest bidder: "We are going to remain very tasteful and true to the spirit of Nirvana while taking the music to places it has never been before".

The performance featured the premiere of a new song written by the four, "Cut Me Some Slack". A studio recording was released on the soundtrack to Sound City, a documentary film by Dave Grohl. On July 19, 2013, the group played with McCartney again during the encore of his Safeco Field "Out There" concert in Seattle, the first time Nirvana members had performed together in their hometown in over 15 years.

In 2014, Kurt Cobain, Kirst Novoselic, and Dave Grohl were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. At the induction ceremony, Kirst Novoselic, Dave Grohl and Pat Smear performed a four-song set with guest vocalists Joan Jett, Kim Gordon, St. Vincent and Lorde. Kirst Novoselic, Dave Grohl and Pat Smear then performed a full show at Brooklyn's St. Vitus Bar with Joan Jett, Kim Gordon, St. Vincent, J Mascis  and John McCauley of Dear Tick as guest vocalists. Dave Grohl thanked Aaron Burckhard, Dale Crover, Dan Peters and Chad Channing for their time in Nirvana. Jason Everman also attended.

At Clive Davis' annual pre-Grammy party in 2016, Kirst Novoselic and Dave Grohl reunited to perform the David Bowie song "The Man Who Sold the World", which Nirvana had covered in their MTV Unplugged performance. Beck accompanied them on acoustic guitar and vocals. In October 2018, Kirst Novoselic and Dave Grohl reunited during the finale of the Cal Jam festival at Glen Helen Amphitheater  in San Bernardino County, California, joined by guest vocalists John McCauley and Joan Jett. In January 2020, Kirst Novoselic and Dave Grohl reunited for a performance at a benefit for The Art of Elysium at the Hollywood Palladium, joined by Beck, St Vincent, and Dave Grohl's daughter, Violet.

In September 2021, the BBC documentary When Nirvana Came to Britain was released to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Nevermind, featuring interviews with Dave Grohl and Kirst Novoselic. That month, a 30th-anniversary edition of Nevermind was announced, containing 70 previously unreleased songs.

Azerrad stated that by acknowledging that they had grown up listening to Black Sabbath and Aerosmith, they had been able to move on from their derivative early sound.

Nirvana used dynamic shifts that went from quiet to loud. Kurt Cobain sought to mix heavy and pop musical sounds, saying, "I wanted to be totally Led Zeppelin in a way and then be totally extreme Punk rock and then do real wimpy pop songs." When Cobain heard the Pixies' 1988 album Surfer Rosa after recording Bleach, he felt it had the sound he wanted to achieve but had been too intimidated to try. The Pixies' subsequent popularity encouraged Kurt Cobain to follow his instincts as a songwriter. Like the Pixies, Nirvana moved between "spare bass-and-drum grooves and shrill bursts of screaming guitar and vocals". Near the end of his life, Kurt Cobain said the band had become bored of the "limited" formula, but expressed doubt that they were skilled enough to try other dynamics.

Cobain's rhythm guitar style, which relied on power chords, low-note riffs, and a loose left-handed technique, featured the key components to the band's songs. Kurt Cobain would often initially play a song's verse riff in a clean tone, then double it with distorted guitars when he repeated the part. In some songs the guitar would be absent from the verses entirely to allow the drums and bass guitar to support the vocals, or it would only play sparse melodies like the two-note pattern used in "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Cobain rarely played standard guitar solos, opting to play variations of the song's melody as single note lines. Kurt Cobain's solos were mostly Blues-based and discordant, which music writer Jon Chappell described as "almost an iconoclastic parody of the traditional instrumental break", a quality typified by the note-for-note replication of the lead melody in "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and the atonal solo for "Breed". The band had no formal musical training; Kurt Cobain said: "I have no concept of knowing how to be a musician at all what-so-ever... I couldn't even pass Guitar 101".

Dave Grohl's drumming "took Nirvana's sound to a new level of intensity". Michael Azerrad stated that Grohl's "powerful drumming propelled the band to a whole new plane, visually as well as musically", noting, "Although Dave is a merciless basher, his parts are also distinctly musical—it wouldn't be difficult to figure out what song he was playing even without the rest of the music".

Up until early 1992, the band had performed live in, concert pitch. They then began tuning down either a half step or full step as well as concert pitch. Sometimes all three tunings would be in the same show. By the summer of that year, the band had settled on the half step down tuning (E♭).

Kurt Cobain noted, "We play so hard we can't tune our guitars fast enough". The band made a habit of destroying its equipment after shows. Kirst Novoselic said he and Kurt Cobain created the "Shtick" in order to get off of the stage sooner. Kurt Cobain stated it began as an expression of his frustration with previous drummer Chad Channing making mistakes and dropping out entirely during performances.

Following Kurt Cobain's death, numerous headlines referred to Nirvana's frontman as "the voice of a generation", although he had rejected such labeling during his lifetime.

In 1992, Jon Pareles of The New York Times reported that Nirvana had made other alternative acts impatient for similar success: "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 groups were 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 an epochal generational shift in music similar to the Rock-and-Roll explosion in the 1950s and the end of the baby boomer generation's dominance of the musical landscape. Michael 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." Fugazi frontman Guy Picciotto said: "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."

Nirvana is one of the best-selling bands of all time, having sold more than 75 million records. With more than 28 million RIAA-certified units, Nirvana is also one of the best-selling music artists in the United States. They have achieved ten top 40 hits on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart, including five number-ones. Two of their studio albums and two of their live albums have reached the top spot on the Billboard 200. Nirvana has been awarded one diamond, three multiplatinum, seven platinum and two gold-certified albums in the United States by the RIAA, and four multiplatinum, four platinum, two gold and one silver-certified albums in the UK by the BPI. Nevermind, their most successful album, has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums ever. Their most successful song, "Smells Like Teen Spirit", is among the best-selling singles of all time, having sold 8 million copies.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has inducted two of Nirvana's recordings, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "All Apologies", into its list of "The Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll". The museum also ranked Nevermind number 10 on its "The Definitive 200 Albums of All Time" list in 2007. In 2005, the Library of Congress added Nevermind to the National Recording Registry, which collects "culturally, historically or aesthetically important" sound recordings from the 20th century. In 2011, four of Nirvana's songs appeared on Rolling Stone's updated list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", with "Smells Like Teen Spirit" ranking the highest at number 9. Three of the band's albums were ranked on the magazine's 2012 list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", with Nevermind placing the highest at number 17.

The same three Nirvana albums were also placed on Rolling Stone's 2011 list of "The 100 Best Albums of the Nineties", with Nevermind ranking the highest at number 1, making it the greatest album of the decade. Time Magazine included Nevermind on its list of "The All-Time 100 Albums" in 2006, labeling it "the finest album of the 1990s". In 2011, the magazine also added "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on its list of "The All-Time 100 Songs", and "Heart-Shaped Box" on its list of "The 30 All-Time Best Music Videos". Pitchfork Media ranked Nevermind and In Utero as the sixth and thirteenth greatest albums of the 1990s, describing the band as "the greatest and most legendary band of the 1990s."

Nirvana was announced in their first year of eligibility as being part of the 2014 class of inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on December 17, 2013. The induction ceremony was held April 10, 2014, in Brooklyn, New York, at the Barclays Center. As the accolade was only applied to Kurt Cobain, Kirst Novoselic and Dave Grohl, former drummer Chad Channing was not included in the induction, and was informed of his omission by SMS.

Albums

Final lineup

Former members