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Nirvana · S3 E7
Number One
January 11, 1992. Nevermind reaches number one. Kurt Cobain, who was sleeping under a bridge in Aberdeen four years ago, has the biggest album in America. He does not know how to feel about this. The band that wanted to be as big as the Pixies is now bigger than anyone except Michael Jackson, and the Pixies have just broken up
January 11, 1992. A kid from Aberdeen, Washington, who was sleeping on friends' couches and under bridges four years ago wakes up to find out that his band's album has just knocked Michael Jackson off the number one spot on the Billboard 200.
"Black or White," Michael Jackson, official music video (1991). This is what the number one album in America looked like the week before Nevermind took over. A $4 million video budget, morphing special effects, a global premiere watched by 500 million people. On January 11, 1992, a three-piece band from Aberdeen with a $50,000 music video knocked all of it off the top of the charts.
The Climb
Nevermind enters the Billboard 200 at number 144 in October 1991. Then MTV puts the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video in heavy rotation, and the numbers start climbing so fast that DGC cannot press copies quickly enough. By Thanksgiving, the album is selling over 100,000 copies a week. By Christmas, it is moving 300,000 copies a week and still accelerating.
Sources
Michael Azerrad, "Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana," Doubleday, 1993
“We thought we'd sell about as many records as Sonic Youth. That was the dream. Selling as many as Sonic Youth.”
— Kurt Cobain, on his expectations for Nevermind, from Michael Azerrad, "Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana," Doubleday, 1993
TAP TO REVEAL: What else happened the exact same week Nevermind hit number one?
Black or White, Michael Jackson (1991)
"Black or White" debuted with a global simulcast premiere on Fox, BET, and MTV on November 14, 1991, drawing an estimated 500 million viewers. The video features Slash on guitar, Macaulay Culkin, and a morphing-faces sequence that was the most expensive special effect ever used in a music video at the time. The seven-minute video cost a reported $4 million to produce. Listen for how polished the production is: every beat programmed, every vocal layered to perfection, every element controlled down to the millisecond. This is what dominated American pop culture in late 1991. When Nevermind knocked Dangerous off the top two months later, it was not just a chart position change. A $135,000 album produced in a rundown studio by three guys from the Pacific Northwest had beaten the most expensive, most marketed record in the world. The rules had changed overnight.
Nevermind: The Numbers
The Weight of Number One
Kurt does not celebrate. The kid who wanted to be as big as the Pixies is suddenly bigger than everyone except the artist he just displaced. Friends from the Olympia punk scene stop calling, old bandmates accuse him of selling out, and the people closest to him can see something shifting behind his eyes. The success he never planned for is arriving faster than he can process it.
Sources
Charles R. Cross, "Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain," Hyperion, 2001
Dumb, Nirvana
While the world celebrates Nevermind hitting number one, Kurt is already writing songs about feeling empty. "Dumb" is what that disconnect sounds like: a gentle, cello-backed melody about going numb, about smiling while feeling nothing. He recorded it for In Utero in 1993, but the song had been in his notebook since the Nevermind era. It captures the loneliness of getting exactly what you thought you wanted and finding it hollow.
Dumb, Nirvana
Kurt sings about happiness as a kind of stupidity, contentment as numbness. The cello underneath gives the song a warmth that the lyrics keep pushing away. It is one of the most quietly devastating things he ever wrote.
Which album did Nevermind knock off the #1 spot on the Billboard 200?
The bands that owned the Sunset Strip six months ago are watching their album sales collapse overnight. Warrant, Poison, Mötley Crüe, and an entire generation of hair metal acts wake up to discover that the industry has moved on without them. Next: the night Nirvana killed hair metal.
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