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I'm not of an age where Nirvana meant anything to me when they were going. My teen angst years were the '70s.
But when I listen to their music now I am reminded of the music of John Lennon.
How?
Lennon basically didn't know what he was doing. He had trouble tuning a guitar. Yet he produced songs with classic melodies and complicated timings which give even trained orchestral musicians trouble. He didn't 'figure things out'....he heard it all in his head and 'learned' how to play it. Mozart worked the same way. It's as though they were a sort of channel for the music. And both Mozart and Lennon could be very repetitive, and sometimes even simplistic under what only sounded complicated. Several famous Lennon songs are actually variations of 3 Blind Mice, and some of Mozarts compositions are based around simple children's ditties too. But what they did with those simple tunes...instinctively...was magic.
I think that Kurt Kobain was the same. He had a knack for putting notes where other musicians wouldn't consider with those chord patterns. I think that he was a natural and instinctive songwriter in spite of the grunge attitude and image thing. And he had the same way of using simplicity, repetition and inventiveness as Lennon and Mozart and, like them, he didn't 'work' at it...it just happenned. That's why his stuff gets under the skin of so many people. It wasn't just MTV and marketing.
And, believe it or not...I hear a similar thing going on with Eminem. I loathe 'rap' and the whole hyped-up angry urban image thing, but that guy has a gift for melody and timing. He'd be a great 'conventional' musician and songwriter.
(Bet you all never thought you'd ever hear someone comparing Eminem and Kobain to Mozart. :) )
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