I feel a certain pride of ownership over Nirvana. Not that I had anything to do with the making of their music. I just love it. Perhaps it’s a matter of timing. When they were at their peak, I was at the peak age for loving a band like that. I was 12 years old in 1993 when their last studio album, In Utero, came out. I have a specific memory of buying that CD. I actually got the Nevermind CD that same day, and I remember feeling embarrassed that I didn’t already have it. It had come out two years prior. Where the fuck was I? Being 10, I suppose. In any case, they’re sort of the seminal band of my generation, or at least that’s how it feels to me, and that makes me proud. (What if you were 12 in 2007? Who do you love, Nickelback? Sucks to be you ;o)
People still love the shit out of Nirvana today. Sometimes that makes me feel possessive, but mostly I think it’s awesome. Not just people my age either. Young people. And when I say ‘young people’, I don’t just mean the children of people my age whose parents bought them some Nirvana pajamas at Urban Outfitters. I mean the angsty, pubescent, non-conformist kids of today. Kids who remind me of me in the early-mid 90s. So, what is it that makes the band so timeless that they’re still beloved in 2025?
Nirvana was able to make weirdness accessible but also stay weird. Why do we like weird music? (or movies or art or whatever?) Perhaps because weirdness feels honest. It signals that the artist isn’t pandering. Isn’t aiming for popularity. They’re just being themselves. And that honesty is profoundly attractive. When someone is being honest with you, it feels like you can have a true connection to them. Like they’ve sincerely let you inside their mind. And then, when you find something in there that you can relate to, you feel truly understood. Like you’re genuinely in this together with somebody else. Like you are not alone. When a pop singer sings their poppy pop song, it might be fun, but you don’t usually get that loneliness antidote that comes with honest weirdness. Or at least, I don’t.
Side note about Nirvana and the fundamentally lonely nature of human existence. I always thought the last lyrics in “All Apologies” that Kurt sings over and over again at the end of the song were “All alone is all we are.” But I just looked it up, and apparently I’ve been wrong about that since 1993. Fuck it though, I’m keeping my version. Anyway…
There are a lot of artists who are honestly weird, and there are even a lot of artists who are quite popular. But it’s a rare gem of an artist who can be both honestly weird AND super popular. This dichotomy really jumped out at me recently (and it’s what inspired me to write this essay) when I went back and listened to the song “Oh Me”.
First of all, it’s not a Nirvana song. They covered it during their iconic MTV Unplugged in New York show, and almost anyone who’s heard the song heard their version first. But the original is by a relatively obscure band called the Meat Puppets. To be fair, a lot of us 90s kids know who the Meat Puppets are, at least a little bit, although to be doubly fair, that’s mostly because Nirvana covered a few of their songs.
So recently, I was listening to the Unplugged in New York album. For whatever reason, after the cover of “Oh Me” had finished, I decided to search for the original Meat Puppets version. Frankly, I had never heard it. Back in the 90s, you couldn’t just search for a song on your phone and listen to it. You had to go get a CD. And while I remember liking the Meat Puppets’ single on the radio well enough at the time (“Backwater”), I had never gone and gotten any of their CDs.
I highly recommend you give the two versions a back-to-back listen. Here’s the Nirvana cover:
And here’s the Meat Puppets original:
I don’t know about you, but when I listened to that Meat Puppets version, I was like, “Damn that guy sounds like Kurt Cobain.” But of course, it was Kurt who sounded like that guy (whose name is Curt Kirkwood, remarkably enough, and yes, I just looked it up). They’re both beautifully weird in strikingly similar ways. But there’s a difference. It’s instantly clear that the vocal performance on the original will not reach the ears of the masses. It’s too weird. It’s over the line. It’s delightful for us weirdos who like extra weird music, but it’s not going on MTV.
It sorta feels like Cobain took some weird inspiration from Kirkwood, but then somehow knew how to tame the weirdness into something just a bit steadier, and stronger, and more confident. Or maybe he didn’t know how to do that at all, but it’s just what happened naturally when he sang it. In any case, I feel like there’s a clue here. And I feel like this somehow applies not just to music or art but to life itself.
Maybe the recipe is to be as weird as you can possibly push yourself to be. “Go into yourself,” like Rilke told the young poet. Dig down into the lonely depths of your weirdest weirdness. Be like the Meat Puppets guy. Sing like you don’t give a fuck if MTV plays you or not. But then, but then! Take that Meat Puppets version of whatever it is you’ve done, chew it up, swallow it, take a deep breath, light a few candles, calm the antsy freak weirdo in the pit of your stomach…and do the Nirvana version.
Not because it’s better. But because other people might understand you better. If you’re doing it right, they’ll still see your weirdness, they’ll still connect to your honesty, but maybe they’ll also feel that deeper strength. That special sauce, that whatever it is that keeps so many of us loving Nirvana, to this day, whether we first heard them in 1993 or 2025. 🔴
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