Welcome to Yang Zixuan's "Forced Time", each issue for young people to answer questions (by the way pretend to be forced).
Of course, if you have an urgent problem to be solved, you can also ask questions to Yang anchors through the comment area or private message, and you can also jump to the original question of Zhihu through the "read the original article" at the end of the article to watch more answers from other zhuangbility respondents.
So the question we're going to answer today is:
Nirvana is not overrated, kurt Cobain is a genius and hard worker, and his diligence may not be realized by many people.
But many music fans in China may not understand the real nirvana... On the one hand, there is the language factor, and on the other hand, many people have really only heard of "New York Unplugged" - in fact, the latter is in a sense more alienated to the musical core of Nirvana.
What is the historical importance of Nirvana? A simple one-sentence summary:
They let negative emotions such as decadence, pain, inner struggle, etc. enter the mass aesthetic.
Nirvana
Before them, in any country and any style, the public appreciated the positive, joyful, love and other emotions in music, even if there were extreme emotions, it was definitely not mainstream.
It's like punk was popular before, but punk hasn't become the main theme of mainstream music.
But Nirvana has managed to infect a generation with negative emotions, and until then, dissecting inner pain is not a commendable thing.
People like Kurt Coburn who cry out "Rape Me, Rape Me" in their lyrics, don't say that in the history of rock and roll, the entire history of music has been subversive.
And the logic of traditional rock and roll is the logic of "Fuck You, Fuck You"...
Knowing this, you will know why Kurt Cobain is a cultural icon and a spiritual totem, and why there are so many suicidal musicians, but there are very few reasons why he can become a god like him.
Kurt Cobain
Most of Nirvana's music is about the negative theme of suffering, and their music is a long-term use of lo-fi and various noises to deliberately create a "dirty mess" feeling.
Kurt Cobain's self-loathing mood was that after the band achieved commercial success, it had to challenge the radio DJ of the time with more noise, so there were freaks like "In Utero", and a lot of the noise was actually unnecessary.
But the most ironic thing is that the more they abuse themselves, the more "maverick" they are, more famous, and more commercial achievements... This plunges them into deeper self-doubt.
And when Kurt Cobain committed suicide, every demo he recorded, or even some unsystematic motives, was taken out by these record companies to make money.
If you experience how contrary this is to what he hated most in his lifetime, you will understand the tragic color of this character even more.
The other side of the Nirvana saga is their combination of genius and hard work.
Perhaps in the "deified" version of many music fans, Kurt Coburn is an immortal genius, taking some poison every day, holding a guitar and pulling twice, and those legendary songs are born.
In fact, this is not the case, the same batch of Seattle bands, have had a hard process of exploration, and Kurt Coburn is particularly sad, he has no formal music education, he is also very sad to be left-handed.
So later, Billy Cogan, the lead singer of The Smashing Pumpkin, once seriously recalled the process of Cobain nestling in the basement and repeatedly studying the strings — why is this chord and that chord harmonious?
And don't forget, Kurt Cobain is a left-handed man with a right-handed piano, which is almost as difficult as a nightmare, and he has to put in a lot more effort than most ordinary people.
If you've tried practicing Nirvana songs, you'll find that in many places they don't press the normal "chords" at all, but "press a few notes" on the guitar.
It's been 18 years since I first came into contact with Nirvana's music in high school, but I can still hear some of the details from their music that I didn't notice.
And those songs, in fact, are like the shadow of Kurt Cobain's heart, and when you seriously understand his emotions at that time, you will find that you are staring at a dark abyss.
This kind of emotion is actually rare in the music of other excellent grunge bands of the same period.
And the most damning thing is that, in fact, since Nirvana, it is difficult for anyone to replicate their same suffering.
Like Nickelback, can you tell them how bad they are? It seems that it can't be, but when they use the same routines as Cobain and sing songs like "If Everyone Cared", you will know that the era of real grunge has passed, and today's bizarre Trap and electronic music will remind people of the era of drunken gold fans represented by long-hair metal.
But the kind of painful music that Nirvana represents, like a wooden thorn in the palm of your hand, will always make people faintly painful, and you can never completely ignore them.
Perhaps in the next era, when suffering becomes the theme of the times again, people will become more aware of the true status of nirvana.