Please donate to help save PopMatters. We are moving to WordPress in December out of necessity and need your help.

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.

                                      
Books
    
        Hole's Drummer Gets Clean with Clarity in 'Hit So Hard' Memoir
    
Megan Volpert

        03 Nov 2017
    
Music
    
        Legacy and Oblivion: 25 Years of Nirvana's 'Nevermind'
    
PopMatters Staff
John Amen

        19 Sep 2016
    
Music
    
        The Sad Rest of Kurt Cobain
    
Megan Volpert

        12 Jul 2016

Recent

Books

'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.

Music

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?

Music

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.

Books

Howard Sounes' '27' Has That Train Wreck Kind of Appeal

This is an exhaustive, if exhausting analysis of the debauchery and bad decisions that link the most famous members of the "27 Club".

Music

Nirvana: Nevermind (Deluxe Edition)

Over time, it has become clear that this is an album about the feelings of one man (not a generation), and his struggle between rock purity and pop sensibility is what makes this classic.

Music

Rock 'n' Roll 101: How to Handle a Dead Young Rock Star

In the wake of Amy Winehouse's death, record industry types and music journalists dusted off their Rock 'n' Roll 101 handbooks, revisiting the chapter on how to report on a Young Rock Star's death. Has it been handled any differently this time around than in the past?

Music

Evolution Calling: Tool - "Eulogy" and "H"

In the latest Between the Grooves series, Sean McCarthy undertakes a track-by-track examination of the concept of change in Tool's 1996 classic, Ænima, this time looking at "Eulogy" and "H".

Music

Why Shouldn't Miley Cyrus Smell Like Kurt Cobain?

Didn't Kurt Cobain perform as a teenage girl? If Nirvana did inspire an entire generation, then we really should be receiving Miley Cyrus' cover performances in a much more educated fashion than we are.

Film

Afraid of a Ghost: Inside the 'All Apologies' Meme

Why did the Robert-Pattinson-as-Kurt-Cobain myth take in more people than any April Fool? Because it seemed too uncomfortably true to be bullshit.

Tom Goulter

Books

Grunge by Michael Lavine and Thurston Moore

Sub Pop's first lens on the grunge scene offers an early look at the signs of flannel to come, and the distinctive regional imprints on the sounds that followed punk.

Music

Rebels Wit Attitude: Nirvana

In this excerpt from PopMatters' new book Rebels Wit Attitude, Iain Ellis discusses how Nirvana were a rocking perfect storm of punk’s attitude, metal’s riffs, and pop hooks.

Books

Lady Lazarus by Andrew Foster Altschul

Lady Lazarus is a naked lunch. The circuit is closed. The simulacrum ironically, paradoxically, signifies everything.

Reviews

Kurt Cobain

Schnack has gone to great lengths to humanize Cobain and offer more than the usual icon worship usually attributed to such a tragic figure.

Jessica Suarez

Books

Nirvana by Everett True

One of the author's major assertions, expressed through quotes of others, is that Nirvana remains a powerful entity owing much to the fact that Kurt Cobain is gone.

Leslie Joseph

Reviews

'Step It Up and Go' Gives North Carolina Music Its Dues

Collapse Expand Reviews

BROWSE ALL ALBUM REVIEWS

Features

¡Printing the Revolution!: The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now (excerpt)

Collapse Expand Features

PM Picks

Collapse Expand Pm Picks

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.

Nick Soulsby tries to crack the case of Nirvana, the watershed band that very few saw coming.

Twenty years since the world learned of Kurt Cobain's death, what impact does he have on rock music today?

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?

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.

This is an exhaustive, if exhausting analysis of the debauchery and bad decisions that link the most famous members of the "27 Club".

Over time, it has become clear that this is an album about the feelings of one man (not a generation), and his struggle between rock purity and pop sensibility is what makes this classic.

In the wake of Amy Winehouse's death, record industry types and music journalists dusted off their Rock 'n' Roll 101 handbooks, revisiting the chapter on how to report on a Young Rock Star's death. Has it been handled any differently this time around than in the past?

In the latest Between the Grooves series, Sean McCarthy undertakes a track-by-track examination of the concept of change in Tool's 1996 classic, Ænima, this time looking at "Eulogy" and "H".

Didn't Kurt Cobain perform as a teenage girl? If Nirvana did inspire an entire generation, then we really should be receiving Miley Cyrus' cover performances in a much more educated fashion than we are.

Why did the Robert-Pattinson-as-Kurt-Cobain myth take in more people than any April Fool? Because it seemed too uncomfortably true to be bullshit.

Artist/producer PC Muñoz mines for gems and grills the greats.

Sub Pop's first lens on the grunge scene offers an early look at the signs of flannel to come, and the distinctive regional imprints on the sounds that followed punk.

Pop Heroism, One Song at a Time

In this excerpt from PopMatters' new book Rebels Wit Attitude, Iain Ellis discusses how Nirvana were a rocking perfect storm of punk’s attitude, metal’s riffs, and pop hooks.

Lady Lazarus is a naked lunch. The circuit is closed. The simulacrum ironically, paradoxically, signifies everything.

Schnack has gone to great lengths to humanize Cobain and offer more than the usual icon worship usually attributed to such a tragic figure.

One of the author's major assertions, expressed through quotes of others, is that Nirvana remains a powerful entity owing much to the fact that Kurt Cobain is gone.