7/20/2023 0 Comments Nirvana nevermind cover remakeWithout hearing a peep of it, that in itself seems poetic, or maybe even prophetic. And here Sturgill goes cutting a Nirvana song. This leads us all to Sturgill Simpson, whom many have compared to that biblical “Country Music Savior” or modern day Kurt Cobain that could come in and so completely reshape the current music paradigm, it would usher in an entirely new era of substantive entertainment that would be lasting for generations and save us all from the current scourge of simplistic pap. Or we assign the absolution for all previous burdens to a cult of personality figure from the past. And so as creatures of habit, we take burdens, many of which would be more fairly assigned to our own shoulders or the shoulders of many, and lump them onto this one person. There seems to be something intuitive to the human design to expect all of the ills of society to be resolved by one person, whether that’s a popular music artist, a Presidential candidate, or a Messiah busting through the clouds to usher in the rapture. Undoubtedly, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana were incredibly important to what happened to popular music in the early 90’s, but we’re always looking for just one, when many are usually to blame. 1991 wasn’t just the story of one man, one song, one band, or one album. Nevermind wasn’t even Nirvana’s first record, and it’s popularity was preceded, paralleled, and eventually bested by Pearl Jam’s Ten, and was bolstered by a crowd of other grunge artists who were also important to the revolution in popular music at that time. Just like Hank Williams, just like Townes Van Zandt, the tragic and poetic death of Kurt Cobain has inexorably skewed our perspective on his influence and importance in popular culture. But this theory has always involved a bit of revisionism and myopic perspective. It has been said often about country music, and about popular music in general, that we need a “Nirvana moment”-meaning a point in time when everything we know about music is turned upside down, and an era of more authentic and raw expressions is ushered into the popular culture.
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