{"id":490477,"date":"2026-03-23T06:32:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T06:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/490477\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T06:32:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T06:32:10","slug":"nirvana-would-have-pivoted-to-new-wave-if-kurt-cobain-had-lived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/490477\/","title":{"rendered":"Nirvana would have pivoted to new wave if Kurt Cobain had lived"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Kurt<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ \tHBO Documentary Films)<\/p>\n

Sun 22 March 2026 20:00, UK <\/p>\n

It was always hard to really get a gauge on what Kurt Cobain<\/a> wanted out of life as a musician. <\/p>\n

As much as people loved the idea of him playing \u2018Smells Like Teen Spirit\u2019 until the end of time with Nirvana, there was a piece of him that seemed to be above the idea of being treated like a god every single time that he performed with his bandmates. He knew that he was no better than the average songwriter of yesteryear, and if he had the voice of the people for a few years, the least he could do was be brutally honest about the kind of music that he would have wanted on the charts.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a good chance that some of Cobain\u2019s all-time favourite acts didn\u2019t have a snowball\u2019s chance in hell of getting on the charts. There was a lot of bands that had some great tunes in their arsenal that would become legendary like REM and Pixies, but if you were to look through the biggest bands that were in his record collection, Butthole Surfers weren\u2019t exactly going to be given the same kind of time that The Rolling Stones used to get back in the day, even if their name was eye-catching.<\/p>\n

Because, really, a lot of Cobain\u2019s idols didn\u2019t get into the business to become famous. He was in the business of making musical art every single time he played, and there was no reason to think that he would ever be on the charts when the biggest names in music at the time were Guns N\u2019 Roses and Poison. He never wanted that kind of attention anyway, but time had a few other plans when he started performing.<\/p>\n

Then again, it\u2019s not like Cobain openly tried not to have a hit. No one makes songs like \u2018In Bloom\u2019 and \u2018Come As You Are<\/a>\u2019 without a little bit of a desire to be on the radio, and while it took the rest of the world a few weeks to catch on and knock Michael Jackson off the top of the charts, what Nirvana was playing had an almost elementary level of simplicity compared to everything else.<\/p>\n

Which checks out, given that Cobain was one of the biggest punk fans in his circle. He loved the idea of making music to rebel against the establishment, but compared to everyone else who was trying to copy the likes of Black Flag in the hardcore scene, he was more focused on learning from bands from the new wave scene, like Devo and The B-52s, whenever he performed.<\/p>\n

You wouldn\u2019t hear it from his music, but Cobain felt that new wave was where he felt the most comfortable whenever he performed, saying<\/a>, \u201c[New wave] had punk-rock roots, but it was easier to swallow for the media and middle America, and that\u2019s kinda what I think about our music. We\u2019re getting more new wave as the days go by. I think we\u2019re gonna reinvent new wave. That\u2019s what our music is sounding like, we\u2019re using a lot more FX boxes.\u201d<\/p>\n

While you\u2019re not going to hear nearly as much influence from new wave when listening to an album like In Utero, you can hear a lot of what Cobain is talking about if you look through their B-sides. Incesticide is full of songs that have that new wave angle, and when they weren\u2019t outright covering Devo songs on the album, they were showing people some acts that they might have never given a shot to at the time like The Vaselines.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There was never any reason to think that Cobain was going to be putting on a boiler hat and make a song that Mark Mothersbaugh would have written, but it was all in the attitude. The biggest new wave acts of all time were interested in reinventing the wheel, and Cobain figured he\u2019d do everything he could to give rock and roll a firm kick in the ass if it meant not dealing with Guns N\u2019 Roses.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ HBO Documentary Films) Sun 22 March 2026 20:00, UK It was always hard to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,6795,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-490477","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-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}