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That’s just not true. Off the top of my head Lithium, Dumb, About A Girl have critical minor and major chords. Also part of what made him so good was how he pl

That’s just not true. Off the top of my head Lithium, Dumb, About A Girl have critical minor and major chords. Also part of what made him so good was how he played vocal melody and rhythm off of chords. So in some songs you might have plain power chords but the melody hits important major or minor notes. I don’t know what your definition for genius is but the guy wrote some of the best songs in human history and did so without a primary collaborator or big production crew of cowriters and collaborators. I think we can call him a genius.

tptacek 1y ago
I like Nirvana as much as the next 90s kid but there is no way these are the best songs in human history, or even in rock history, or even in "modern rock" history.
- thisismytest 1y ago
  Some of the best. More than one in the top 10,000.
  - jeswin 1y ago
    > some of the best songs in human history I think this was the statement he/she was disagreeing with. No doubt a genius, but when you phrase it like that it's more than genius.
    - tptacek 1y ago
      I don't know that I think he was a genius? If I don't think Husker Du, the Pixies, and Sonic Youth were genius-led bands, I'm not sure how a band that basically synthesized those bands and then lensed them through Guns n Roses could be genius. Is David Bowie a genius? Maybe, if we're generous? When I hear people call Cobain a genius I feel the way I do when I'm hear someone say they've never seen The Wire. Listen to Surfer Rosa and Rid of Me! None of this is to say Nevermind and In Utero aren't good; they're very, very good, I listen to them all the time 30 years later. But like, I still listen to Soundgarden every once in awhile too. They're not geniuses!
      - quesera 1y ago
        I mostly agree with you, but I suspect there's an element of just being the right age. I think of Kurt Cobain like an accidental Elvis Presley. Perfect for the moment, and (unlike Elvis) mostly organically grown, but with very clear antecedents. I cannot point to strong antecedents of Pixies, Sonic Youth, Throwing Muses, PJ Harvey, Cocteau Twins, Bauhaus, Einstürzende Neubauten, The Slits, Bongwater, Kate Bush, The Cure, etc. In a couple of these cases, I suspect my own ignorance. In others, I could (and might) argue all night! :) But I cannot assemble a case for not recognizing David Bowie as a (musical|performance) genius. I don't even enjoy his recordings very much, but he was artistically sui generis and enormously influential. Influence might not be a requirement of genius (I'm not sure), but surely a novel creativity is at the root of it?
        tptacek 1y ago
        Pixies antecedents are Husker Du and Sonic Youth. Sonic Youth was the Velvets and The Fall; I found a list of setlists from '70s CBGB and made a playlist, and you can hear Sonic Youth all over it. Throwing Muses (a favorite of mine) a little harder to pinpoint, feels to me like the product of a scene more than a direct evolution of clear antecedents, rather than an act like Dinosaur Jr. was a perversion of Neil Young. A good contrast to Nirvana. PJ Harvey is the Pixies antecedents plus Patti Smith. People say Beefheart; I don't know Beefheart well enough to say and have a deep suspicion of people who bring up Beefheart. Kate Bush is prog rock. Einsturzende is Can (or like a violent response to Can). The Cure is radio-friendly post-punk; their early stuff, which is the only stuff that comes close to holding up, is basically Wire.
        quesera 1y ago
        Interesting. I hear the echoes that you mention in Sonic Youth. I would add New York Dolls. But Sonic Youth also brought something new, more than most bands do. I've listened, as professional obligation, to the entire catalog of Velvet Underground, The Fall, New York Dolls, Iggy Pop. The Fall were the most inventive but Sonic Youth still exceeded them. I recognize that these are the giants upon whose shoulders so many other artists stand, though. As with The Cure, there are (at least) two Sonic Youths. I see The Top and Daydream Nation as the final recordings of their respective original incarnations. Interesting that you hear Throwing Muses as a product of a scene. I'd agree for the later records (post-House Tornado), but there was definitely no contemporary scene that the first few records fit into. I thought about including Lush in my previous list, but did not because, although they had a unique sound, they are a clear extension of the scene they emerged from. Again thinking of the first few releases (EPs) primarily -- after 1993 or so all Brit pop sounds alike for several years. Re: Kate Bush -- aside from the Fairlight (as successor to Moog) synth, and concept albums, I don't hear much prog rock in there. I think I may prefer to remain ignorant here! I also left out Siouxsie & The Banshees (again, ~1980-~1990), which was an inexcusable oversight!
- wyclif 1y ago
  It's because the fans who like Cobain's songs overpraise him or praise him in the wrong terms: "OMG Kurt Cobain is a genius songwriter." I think, and as this post suggests, it's much more the case that "Kurt Cobain had very good instincts for someone completely untutored" which is a different thing altogether.
  - quesera 1y ago
    I'm not sure how to differentiate "very good instincts in an untutored person" from "genius". I am very clear though, that "genius" and "intelligence" are unrelated but sometimes coincident.
  - mtalantikite 1y ago
    But I think most of us would take a musician with great instincts and not much theoretical understanding over one with extraordinary theory and poor instinct. How many thousands of boring jazz players have been pumped out by university programs over the past 50 years? Meanwhile John Lee Hooker could just vamp over a single chord and I could listen to it for hours. I'm remembering a scene in Hampton Hawes's autobiography where a well known piano teacher was telling him his students were starting to ask how to play like Hampton. He tells him he wants to give him lessons to help his technique, which he thinks will help his natural talent even more, but Hampton finds it boring and never goes back. The teacher framed Hampton's check he used to pay for the lesson and put it on his wall. All that's to say having great ears can bring you a long way.
    - wyclif 1y ago
      FWIW, I'm a huge fan of both John Lee Hooker and Jimmy Reed, who had similar vamp-based playing styles and were untutored, couldn't read music, &c. One of my guitar teachers knew Hooker and he even imparted "the secret of the guitar" to him, which he then passed down to me. But yeah, feel, instinct, and having good ears can carry you a long way especially for solo artists. I'm still glad I can read music and wouldn't trade that for (almost) anything, though.
      - 1y ago
- horns4lyfe 1y ago
  I don’t know how you can say with a straight face that smells like teen spirit isn’t one of the greatest modern rock songs. That riff is etched in music history at this point
  - tptacek 1y ago
    It's not even in my top 5 Nirvana songs. The riff you're talking about is Boston's "More Than A Feeling" --- so much so that they used to play a fake-out of "More Than A Feeeling" in concert. I like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" more than "More Than A Feeling", but not like, much more. 1. Where Did You Sleep Last Night Unplugged 2. Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle (or, interchangeably, "Rape Me", though the "blanket of ash" line gets me every time with Frances Farmer). 3. Lithium 4. Heart Shaped Box 5. Dumb (unplugged). It's not fair to make the #1 song a cover, but that performance merits it.
  - onlypassingthru 1y ago
    It's really twofold. You could also identify the song just from Dave's riffs.
    - dadrian 1y ago
      Dave’s riffs are also stolen from disco. Which again, is fine! I love them! Source: https://youtu.be/dZCrdSC2-1I https://youtu.be/dZCrdSC2-1I
  - dehrmann 1y ago
    It was culturally influential, signaled the end of glam rock, and was even dubbed the anthem of a generation, but it didn't showcase great songwriting. It's not fair because he had time to grow as an artist, but "Everlong" is a better song.
cue_the_strings 1y ago
Yeah, that's definitely 'the' Kurt thing, vocal melody completing power chords. I do hate how he (and the whole generation, and some of the punks before him + no wave crowd as well) pretended that they didn't know any music theory or practice at all. That was quite destructive for so many of us who aspired to play music in our teens, especially if you weren't exposed to music theory and practice in childhood through other means.
- jfengel 1y ago
  Did he pretend, or did he really not know? The blues was founded by people who rediscovered Western music theory on their own, in part because guitars lend themselves to it. Punks learned that they could play power chords because they work with the messy overdriven sound. Theory can explain it after the fact, and can extend your options (or at least save you time knowing what you want). I know a lot of "untrained" musicians had a fair bit of theory, but I don't know about Cobain.
  - senderista 1y ago
    The blues isn’t really compatible with conventional tonality: it’s basically major chords with added minor seventh (I won’t call them dominant sevenths because they don’t function as dominant chords), with minor pentatonic (plus added flat fifth) melody. There’s no way that combination can possibly work—but it does!
    - cue_the_strings 1y ago
      Yeah, the added flat fifth really isn't a Western European thing, that's what made it different, cool and appealing. Also the shuffle rhythm. But if you listen to a lot of blues, play a lot of it, play with other blues players, etc. You will notice there's a vocabulary, idioms, etc. You can learn them by ear. You can call them by names of songs or players (Bo Diddley beat), or by the number of bars, ... Well, all of that is kind of - theory. Also, knowing which things you wouldn't play because they don't fit the style, that's also theory.
    - 1y ago
mingus88 1y ago
[flagged]
- sunrunner 1y ago
  > Melodies will be in a key, using a set of notes. That’s kinda unavoidable. Schoenberg has entered the chat.
  - andybak 1y ago
    Arguably we tend to attempt to hear atonal music in a key (or temporal sequence of keys) despite it's attempt to avoid that. I suspect something similar about bitonality. We hear one of the keys and then try and interpret the other notes in relation to that. (warning. I am neither a music theorist or an expert in the psychology of music perception. But this is HN so yolo...)
    - sunrunner 1y ago
      > we tend to attempt to hear atonal music in a key Is it the case that much of this is influenced by individuals having grown up listening in an environment with music already structured around a central key and modulation around that? With the same idea also applying to an understanding (or feeling) of rhythm?
  - Biganon 1y ago
    Atonal music / serialism is insufferable pretentious bs that no one has ever listened to with pleasure, ever. It's a purely mathematical study, orthogonal to art.
    - sunrunner 1y ago
      I don't disagree regarding "listened to with pleasure" and I only remember actively listening to atonal music as part of a required syllabus. I do think it's perhaps a useful lens to use to look at 'traditional' tonal music through however, even if just to re-affirm that _some_ kind of order and structure is an important part in making something palatable to the ears (or the brain).
-__---____-ZXyw 1y ago
Surely if genius is to maintain any usefulness as a word at all, it has to mean more than that the person didn't work with a big production crew or have a "primary collaborator", whatever that means. How irrelevant! I'm not sure if this notion of "genius" helps people appreciate music or if it just worsens the idolising/othering aspect of it. If we are going to use the word, though, can we not attempt to reserve it for the uncontroversial candidates, like Art Tatum, for example.

tptacek 1y ago

I like Nirvana as much as the next 90s kid but there is no way these are the best songs in human history, or even in rock history, or even in "modern rock" history.

thisismytest 1y ago
Some of the best. More than one in the top 10,000.
- jeswin 1y ago
  > some of the best songs in human history I think this was the statement he/she was disagreeing with. No doubt a genius, but when you phrase it like that it's more than genius.
  - tptacek 1y ago
    I don't know that I think he was a genius? If I don't think Husker Du, the Pixies, and Sonic Youth were genius-led bands, I'm not sure how a band that basically synthesized those bands and then lensed them through Guns n Roses could be genius. Is David Bowie a genius? Maybe, if we're generous? When I hear people call Cobain a genius I feel the way I do when I'm hear someone say they've never seen The Wire. Listen to Surfer Rosa and Rid of Me! None of this is to say Nevermind and In Utero aren't good; they're very, very good, I listen to them all the time 30 years later. But like, I still listen to Soundgarden every once in awhile too. They're not geniuses!
    - quesera 1y ago
      I mostly agree with you, but I suspect there's an element of just being the right age. I think of Kurt Cobain like an accidental Elvis Presley. Perfect for the moment, and (unlike Elvis) mostly organically grown, but with very clear antecedents. I cannot point to strong antecedents of Pixies, Sonic Youth, Throwing Muses, PJ Harvey, Cocteau Twins, Bauhaus, Einstürzende Neubauten, The Slits, Bongwater, Kate Bush, The Cure, etc. In a couple of these cases, I suspect my own ignorance. In others, I could (and might) argue all night! :) But I cannot assemble a case for not recognizing David Bowie as a (musical|performance) genius. I don't even enjoy his recordings very much, but he was artistically sui generis and enormously influential. Influence might not be a requirement of genius (I'm not sure), but surely a novel creativity is at the root of it?
      - tptacek 1y ago
        Pixies antecedents are Husker Du and Sonic Youth. Sonic Youth was the Velvets and The Fall; I found a list of setlists from '70s CBGB and made a playlist, and you can hear Sonic Youth all over it. Throwing Muses (a favorite of mine) a little harder to pinpoint, feels to me like the product of a scene more than a direct evolution of clear antecedents, rather than an act like Dinosaur Jr. was a perversion of Neil Young. A good contrast to Nirvana. PJ Harvey is the Pixies antecedents plus Patti Smith. People say Beefheart; I don't know Beefheart well enough to say and have a deep suspicion of people who bring up Beefheart. Kate Bush is prog rock. Einsturzende is Can (or like a violent response to Can). The Cure is radio-friendly post-punk; their early stuff, which is the only stuff that comes close to holding up, is basically Wire.
        quesera 1y ago
        Interesting. I hear the echoes that you mention in Sonic Youth. I would add New York Dolls. But Sonic Youth also brought something new, more than most bands do. I've listened, as professional obligation, to the entire catalog of Velvet Underground, The Fall, New York Dolls, Iggy Pop. The Fall were the most inventive but Sonic Youth still exceeded them. I recognize that these are the giants upon whose shoulders so many other artists stand, though. As with The Cure, there are (at least) two Sonic Youths. I see The Top and Daydream Nation as the final recordings of their respective original incarnations. Interesting that you hear Throwing Muses as a product of a scene. I'd agree for the later records (post-House Tornado), but there was definitely no contemporary scene that the first few records fit into. I thought about including Lush in my previous list, but did not because, although they had a unique sound, they are a clear extension of the scene they emerged from. Again thinking of the first few releases (EPs) primarily -- after 1993 or so all Brit pop sounds alike for several years. Re: Kate Bush -- aside from the Fairlight (as successor to Moog) synth, and concept albums, I don't hear much prog rock in there. I think I may prefer to remain ignorant here! I also left out Siouxsie & The Banshees (again, ~1980-~1990), which was an inexcusable oversight!
wyclif 1y ago
It's because the fans who like Cobain's songs overpraise him or praise him in the wrong terms: "OMG Kurt Cobain is a genius songwriter." I think, and as this post suggests, it's much more the case that "Kurt Cobain had very good instincts for someone completely untutored" which is a different thing altogether.
- quesera 1y ago
  I'm not sure how to differentiate "very good instincts in an untutored person" from "genius". I am very clear though, that "genius" and "intelligence" are unrelated but sometimes coincident.
- mtalantikite 1y ago
  But I think most of us would take a musician with great instincts and not much theoretical understanding over one with extraordinary theory and poor instinct. How many thousands of boring jazz players have been pumped out by university programs over the past 50 years? Meanwhile John Lee Hooker could just vamp over a single chord and I could listen to it for hours. I'm remembering a scene in Hampton Hawes's autobiography where a well known piano teacher was telling him his students were starting to ask how to play like Hampton. He tells him he wants to give him lessons to help his technique, which he thinks will help his natural talent even more, but Hampton finds it boring and never goes back. The teacher framed Hampton's check he used to pay for the lesson and put it on his wall. All that's to say having great ears can bring you a long way.
  - wyclif 1y ago
    FWIW, I'm a huge fan of both John Lee Hooker and Jimmy Reed, who had similar vamp-based playing styles and were untutored, couldn't read music, &c. One of my guitar teachers knew Hooker and he even imparted "the secret of the guitar" to him, which he then passed down to me. But yeah, feel, instinct, and having good ears can carry you a long way especially for solo artists. I'm still glad I can read music and wouldn't trade that for (almost) anything, though.
    - 1y ago
horns4lyfe 1y ago
I don’t know how you can say with a straight face that smells like teen spirit isn’t one of the greatest modern rock songs. That riff is etched in music history at this point
- tptacek 1y ago
  It's not even in my top 5 Nirvana songs. The riff you're talking about is Boston's "More Than A Feeling" --- so much so that they used to play a fake-out of "More Than A Feeeling" in concert. I like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" more than "More Than A Feeling", but not like, much more. 1. Where Did You Sleep Last Night Unplugged 2. Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle (or, interchangeably, "Rape Me", though the "blanket of ash" line gets me every time with Frances Farmer). 3. Lithium 4. Heart Shaped Box 5. Dumb (unplugged). It's not fair to make the #1 song a cover, but that performance merits it.
- onlypassingthru 1y ago
  It's really twofold. You could also identify the song just from Dave's riffs.
  - dadrian 1y ago
    Dave’s riffs are also stolen from disco. Which again, is fine! I love them! Source: https://youtu.be/dZCrdSC2-1I https://youtu.be/dZCrdSC2-1I
- dehrmann 1y ago
  It was culturally influential, signaled the end of glam rock, and was even dubbed the anthem of a generation, but it didn't showcase great songwriting. It's not fair because he had time to grow as an artist, but "Everlong" is a better song.

cue_the_strings 1y ago

Yeah, that's definitely 'the' Kurt thing, vocal melody completing power chords. I do hate how he (and the whole generation, and some of the punks before him + no wave crowd as well) pretended that they didn't know any music theory or practice at all. That was quite destructive for so many of us who aspired to play music in our teens, especially if you weren't exposed to music theory and practice in childhood through other means.

jfengel 1y ago
Did he pretend, or did he really not know? The blues was founded by people who rediscovered Western music theory on their own, in part because guitars lend themselves to it. Punks learned that they could play power chords because they work with the messy overdriven sound. Theory can explain it after the fact, and can extend your options (or at least save you time knowing what you want). I know a lot of "untrained" musicians had a fair bit of theory, but I don't know about Cobain.
- senderista 1y ago
  The blues isn’t really compatible with conventional tonality: it’s basically major chords with added minor seventh (I won’t call them dominant sevenths because they don’t function as dominant chords), with minor pentatonic (plus added flat fifth) melody. There’s no way that combination can possibly work—but it does!
  - cue_the_strings 1y ago
    Yeah, the added flat fifth really isn't a Western European thing, that's what made it different, cool and appealing. Also the shuffle rhythm. But if you listen to a lot of blues, play a lot of it, play with other blues players, etc. You will notice there's a vocabulary, idioms, etc. You can learn them by ear. You can call them by names of songs or players (Bo Diddley beat), or by the number of bars, ... Well, all of that is kind of - theory. Also, knowing which things you wouldn't play because they don't fit the style, that's also theory.
  - 1y ago

mingus88 1y ago

[flagged]

sunrunner 1y ago
> Melodies will be in a key, using a set of notes. That’s kinda unavoidable. Schoenberg has entered the chat.
- andybak 1y ago
  Arguably we tend to attempt to hear atonal music in a key (or temporal sequence of keys) despite it's attempt to avoid that. I suspect something similar about bitonality. We hear one of the keys and then try and interpret the other notes in relation to that. (warning. I am neither a music theorist or an expert in the psychology of music perception. But this is HN so yolo...)
  - sunrunner 1y ago
    > we tend to attempt to hear atonal music in a key Is it the case that much of this is influenced by individuals having grown up listening in an environment with music already structured around a central key and modulation around that? With the same idea also applying to an understanding (or feeling) of rhythm?
- Biganon 1y ago
  Atonal music / serialism is insufferable pretentious bs that no one has ever listened to with pleasure, ever. It's a purely mathematical study, orthogonal to art.
  - sunrunner 1y ago
    I don't disagree regarding "listened to with pleasure" and I only remember actively listening to atonal music as part of a required syllabus. I do think it's perhaps a useful lens to use to look at 'traditional' tonal music through however, even if just to re-affirm that _some_ kind of order and structure is an important part in making something palatable to the ears (or the brain).

-__---____-ZXyw 1y ago

Surely if genius is to maintain any usefulness as a word at all, it has to mean more than that the person didn't work with a big production crew or have a "primary collaborator", whatever that means. How irrelevant! I'm not sure if this notion of "genius" helps people appreciate music or if it just worsens the idolising/othering aspect of it. If we are going to use the word, though, can we not attempt to reserve it for the uncontroversial candidates, like Art Tatum, for example.