Nirvana - Nevermind

I used to have a weird mental block about Nirvana in my teenage years. I think it stemmed from the way I was introduced to them - through downloading “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on Limewire and playing it endlessly while I saved up the money to buy my first Nirvana album, which was MTV Unplugged. I’d heard how great Unplugged was, but as the extent of my Nirvana knowledge was the pure raging beauty of Teen Spirit, I was thrown off by the acoustic set and didn’t really enjoy it. I should also mention that I didn’t have high speed internet until college, so I had no way to research what I was getting into (for context, pirating a single song on my parents’ dial-up internet took like 7 minutes to download). So I decided based on that insurmountable evidence (and one of the best live albums of all time) that Nirvana was whiny and pouty and annoying, and despite using Teen Spirit as my baseball walkout song for years, I maintained I wasn’t a huge Nirvana fan.

Man, I was an idiot. Or maybe I was just uneducated, but that’s kind of the same thing.

Every song on Nevermind would be the crowning achievement of any lesser band. How many rock acts in the 90’s would have killed for a single song on the level of “Breed,” “In Bloom,” “Polly,” or “On a Plain”? And these are only a few of the all-time perfect pieces on this album. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is channeled from the essence of the universe, “Come As You Are” is so pure it freaking shines even with a foot-thick layer of grunge piled on top, and “Lithium” is half full-tilt angst and half effortlessly flawless. I can’t explain why so much angst and anger makes me so fricking happy to listen to, but it does.

This album defines a genre, a time period, and a legendary genius all at once. I think it should be the first thing we play for aliens whenever they land on Earth. This album is a 10/10 for me, without question.

Jams

• They’re all jams, goodness gracious

From the roundup Jamwise #37 - Best Albums of 1991.