![\"Was](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Was-Kurt-Cobain-right-to-dismiss-Bleach-as-too-one-dimensional-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Album Cover \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n
Tue 30 September 2025 6:00, UK <\/p>\n
As counterintuitive as it sounds, sometimes an artist is the last person who should have an opinion on their own work. They\u2019re too close to it, it\u2019s too muddied with personal experiences, self-esteem and all that other subjective stuff. So when Nirvana<\/a>\u2018s Kurt Cobain brushed off one of his records as too one-note, that\u2019s an opinion to take with a pinch of salt.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBleach just seemed to be really one-dimensional. It just has the same format,\u201d Cobain said in 1992. Only three years on from the release of that history-making debut, the singer already seemed to be over it as the band were promoting Nevermind<\/a>. <\/p>\n However, as they were looking forward and focusing on this new record, they definitely fell into the bad habit of stomping all over what came before, as if trampling it was an essential step in levelling up and climbing to a new place. In this case, Cobain walked all over Bleach as the debut was dull, stating, \u201cAll the songs are slow, and grungy, and they\u2019re tuned down to really low notes, and I screamed a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a dismissive take for an album that launched them as new icons, but the consideration of Cobain\u2019s opinion is more nuanced. First, the singer himself is failing to appreciate that this was a debut. For a band that began in a garage only a few years before, having a recording collection of 11 songs is already a triumph, and in this case, it was a triumph that gained them major attention. <\/p>\n Even despite the album being caught up in drama with their label and so not being promoted very well, it gained them critical attention and a cult following on college radios, which was exactly what allowed them to then level up on their sophomore release. <\/p>\n Bleach also has to be noted for what it really is, which is essentially a launching, spotlight record simply showing what they did best, which, at the time, was playing grunge. It sounds like a live album because at the time, they were a live band, and that was it. Perhaps what Cobain sees as being \u201cone dimensional\u201d is merely just a reflection of its rawness.<\/p>\n But in his eyes, knowing what the band\u2019s audience didn\u2019t, Bleach was somewhat held back by the band themselves. \u201cAt the same time that we were recording, we had a lot more songs, like \u2018About A Girl\u2019,<\/a> in fact, \u2018Polly\u2019 was written at that same time too. It\u2019s just that we chose to put more abrasive songs on the Bleach album,\u201d he said, so there was more dimension there and ready, adding to why Cobain seemed to dismiss this record immediately, given that his creative mind was already working on a different one. <\/p>\n It all begs an unanswerable question. Would Nirvana have succeeded as much if they\u2019d launched right in with Nevermind? Would that album have been as successful if it were their debut? Or did they first need to create a foundation with some plain and simple grunge and then go from there? We will never know. But as for the sound itself, listening to Bleach now<\/a>, it might be more samey than the band\u2019s other albums, but it doesn\u2019t make it any less gripping or any less essential in their recorded legacy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Album Cover \/ Alamy) Tue 30 September 2025 6:00, UK As counterintuitive as it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,12286,269,4159,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-462919","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-kurt-cobain","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-nirvana","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115292972334164642","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}