Nirvana

Nirvana formed in Aberdeen, Washington — a Pacific Northwest logging town — when Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic began making music influenced by the D.C. hardcore scene (Pixies, Sonic Youth, Black Flag) and the indie labels that had been releasing underground rock through the 1980s. Their early records on Sub Pop (Bleach, 1989) established them in the underground before drummer Dave Grohl joined and sharpened the rhythmic attack.

“Smells Like Teen Spirit” (1991) — the opening track of Nevermind — was the detonation point: a song built from the quiet-loud dynamic Pixies had pioneered, with a riff that turned out to be as memorable as anything Chuck Berry had written, released into a pop landscape that had no framework for what it was. The album shifted 30 million copies and displaced Michael Jackson’s Dangerous from the Number One position.

What followed was the brief, bright arc of grunge’s mainstream moment and Cobain’s own destruction under the weight of his unwanted celebrity. He died in April 1994, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Seattle, aged 27. Grohl went on to form Foo Fighters. For this graph Nirvana is the hinge between the underground that sustained alternative rock through the 1980s and its explosion into mainstream pop.