![\"Kurt](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Kurt-Cobain-Nirvana-Musician-1990s-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ \tHBO Documentary Films)<\/p>\n
Wed 31 December 2025 20:45, UK <\/p>\n
By the time that Nirvana blew up, Kurt Cobain<\/a> was never going to take the term \u2018grunge\u2019 all that seriously. <\/p>\n He may have liked the idea of a lot of people liking his band, but there was a lot more to it than simply cashing in on the trend of flannel shirts. The corporate side of the business wasn\u2019t something that appealed to him at all, and when he talked about his own body of work, he wanted to make it his personal mission to leave the genre labels behind when working on his material. <\/p>\n After all, grunge had already been a buzzword since before Nirvana even formed. Melvins and Mudhoney had been early adopters of that DIY sound that bridged punk rock with heavy Black Sabbath riffs, and while Bleach does have a lot of the hallmarks of that sound, Cobain wasn\u2019t exactly looking to become a second-rate Melvins. He wanted something more, and Nevermind took everything about Seattle and turned it into a calling card for alternative rock. <\/p>\n Which is strange because, stylistically, there\u2019s nothing about Nevermind that necessarily screams \u2018grunge\u2019 in the traditional sense. The guitars are roaring, yes, but there\u2019s a lot more tunefulness behind Cobain\u2019s melodies that are straight-up Beatlesque in places. It\u2019s easy to picture Mudhoney performing a song like \u2018School\u2019 off their first record or even tunes like \u2018Breed\u2019, but chances are people would have been dumbfounded if they tried to write a song like \u2018Come As You Are\u2019<\/a> or \u2018On a Plain\u2019.<\/p>\n This was a new kind of rock and roll aesthetic, and Cobain didn\u2019t seem to like any of it. He may have been proud of the songs, but he wanted to make sure the slick production was something that never happened again. He didn\u2019t want to be thrust into the same arenas that Guns N\u2019 Roses were playing, and by the time that he started working on In Utero, he was determined to create the gnarliest-sounding record he could muster.<\/p>\n And boy did he deliver. The fact that the label nearly rejected the first cut of In Utero already primed people for a dense listening experience, but with Steve Albini\u2019s production, the whole record feels a lot more raw than anything Nirvana would ever do. It feels like you\u2019re practically in the room with Dave Grohl as he\u2019s bashing away at the drums, but Cobain\u2019s vision was for them to make the dirtiest record of their career and move on.<\/p>\n