Melissa Auf der Maur’s Memoir Mirrors 1990s Rock Attitude and Excess
Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur’s memoir goes beyond clichés to offer a truly compelling perspective on the bohemian community of 1990s rock.
Kurt Cobain
How Nirvana Destroyed Rock’s Toxic Masculinity
Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain despised rock music’s posturing machismo, mocked its fundamental assumptions, and then utterly destroyed the genre.
‘In Utero (30th Anniversary Super Deluxe)’ Re-Canonizes Nirvana’s Best Album
Nirvana’s In Utero is both an acknowledgment of the deleterious impact of fame and a real-time endeavor to use that fame to beneficial ends.
The 10 Best Nirvana Songs
Nirvana’s songs melded heavy riffs, captivating pop hooks, dynamic verse/chorus shifts, and soul-scarred catharsis into the most notable rock of the 1990s.
Smells Like MTV: Music Video and the Rise of Grunge
MTV's central role in delivering grunge to a national audience in the early 1990s demonstrated the network's power as a creator and definer of culture.
Hole’s Drummer Gets Clean with Clarity in ‘Hit So Hard’ Memoir
Patty Schemel's Hit So Hard is one of the most honest -- but moreover, one of the most useful -- addiction memoirs in recent history. Courtney Love should read.
Legacy and Oblivion: 25 Years of Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’
Nevermind, while containing most of the hits for which Nirvana is celebrated is, of the four primary releases, the least emotionally and aesthetically complex.
The Sad Rest of Kurt Cobain
Nick Soulsby’s interview book for completists is not meant to entertain -- it's a 500-page death march.
‘I Found My Friends’ Is a Drop in the Bucket of the Nirvana Story
Nick Soulsby tries to crack the case of Nirvana, the watershed band that very few saw coming.
The Legacy of Kurt Cobain
Twenty years since the world learned of Kurt Cobain's death, what impact does he have on rock music today?
I Was Young When I Left Home: How Kurt Cobain’s Voice Resonates
There are times when you hear Kurt Cobain sing that you believe no other voice has ever told the truth about suffering. But it's more complicated than that, isn't it?
Counterbalance: Nirvana’s ‘MTV Unplugged in New York’
I gazed a gazeless stare. We walked a million hills. As the 20th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death approaches, Counterbalance takes a look at Nirvana's landmark acoustic performance.