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Peter: Tonight’s a biggie! We’re doing Nirvana’s Nevermind! It’s an album that meant a lot to me when it first came out. How familiar were you with it going in to this?

Tyler: It might be a little nuts, but, despite being very familiar with a number of the songs here, I don’t know that I’d ever until now listened to Nevermind in its entirety. Scandal!

Peter: Interesting!

Tyler: My sister had a Nirvana phase, but I was eight or nine. An innocent! I loved Weird Al’s Off The Deep End, which obviously counts.

Peter: Ha! Shout out to the Weird Al fans.

Well, I’m going to make a bold statement. Are you ready?

Tyler: I’m bracing myself. Dialed 9 and 1.

Peter: I think Nevermind is the most important album to come out in my lifetime. In terms of cultural impact, I can’t think of anything even in the same ballpark. I think it rivals the arrival of The Beatles in America in terms of its impact and importance, and, for a variety of reasons that I won’t get into here, I don’t think anything like it will ever happen again.

Tyler: The only comparable album that comes to mind is Michael Jackson’s Thriller, but that’s a different story and scene. Not for nothing is it often mentioned that Nevermind knocked Jackson’s Dangerous off the top of the Billboard 200, a considerable victory. The game was reset after Nevermind.

Peter: Exactly. Nevermind changed the world.

I do think you’re right about Thriller being its closest competition, but I believe Nevermind had a greater impact on society. It changed more than just music.

Alright, let’s get to it.

Tyler: The first song here is the example you’d slap under “Nirvana” in a rock encyclopedia. “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” boosted by an iconic music video, announced the band to the mainstream, with authority.

Peter: It was a big deal! I’m here to tell you! I lived through it. Honestly, it was kind of jarring. It didn’t sound like anything else on the radio at the time.

It still kicks like a mule. This was my introduction to the loud/soft/loud dynamics that Kurt borrowed from The Pixies.

Tyler: I was pretty young, as noted, but I watched MTV and became well aware of this new band with the loud song and the frontman and his long blond hair.

Peter: As great as this song is, it has to be said that the lyrics are largely meaningless. This is a good example of the sound of the words being more important than the words themselves.

“A mulatto, an albino/A mosquito, my libido/yeah.”

Tyler: No traction for “Here we are now, entertain us?”

Peter: Well, that one did become something of a rallying cry for my generation. Summing up, in its way, the ennui of the era.

Tyler: It along with “Well whatever nevermind.”

Peter: Right. Another iconic bit.

This was the album’s lead single. It was an unexpected hit.

The success of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” paved the way for the rest of Nevermind. Without it, the album may well have been but a footnote in rock history.

Maybe not even that?

Tyler: Just another Buzz Bin band gone bust.

Peter: It’s another fun Sliding Doors style what if. I’ve never actually seen Sliding Doors, but still.

Tyler: Maybe there’s a Sliding Doors-like reality split in your current life. In the other world, you have seen Sliding Doors.

Peter: I saw it with my wife… Gwyneth Paltrow.

Only she was dead the whole time!

Okay, sorry.

Tyler: In Bob Newhart’s bed. Inside a snowglobe.

Twist humor!

Our next track is “In Bloom.”

Peter: Yes! “In Bloom” was the fourth and final single off Nevermind.

Tyler: Is it a Cobain takedown of Nirvana fans who have the band’s intent all wrong?

Peter: Yeah, I think so. This one seems more focused. The lyrics are more biting. “He’s the one who likes all our pretty songs/and he likes to sing along/and he likes to shoot his gun/but he knows not what it means.”

Forget what I said about the words not being important!

In my defense, “We can have some more/Nature is a whore” ain’t exactly Shakespeare.

Tyler: That’s a quote from Midsummer Night’s Dream!

The trio of tunes that opens up Nevermind is one hell of a launching pad. “Teen Spirit” into “In Bloom,” followed by our next song, “Come As You Are.”

Peter: Yeah, as special as “Teen Spirit” is, “In Bloom” and “Come As You Are” are both catchy as hell. They really keep the train rolling.

While “In Bloom” is more of a sustained roar, “Come As You Are” returns to the loud/soft/loud dynamics that define so much of the band’s output.

Side note, if you put a guitar in my hands and wait long enough, I will eventually start mindlessly playing the riff from “Come As You Are.”

Tyler: Podcast! Peter Noodles His Way To Nirvana. A hit in the making.

Peter: Finally! A purpose in life.

This song also has the sad distiction of hearing Kurt proclaim: “And I swear that I don’t have a gun/No, I don’t have a gun.”

Tyler: Grim irony.

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