Geffen Records hoped Nevermind by Nirvana might sell around 250,000 copies, matching what Sonic Youth's Goo had done for the label. American shops received 46,251 copies, the album debuted at No. 144 on the Billboard 200, and on 11 January 1992 it replaced Michael Jackson's Dangerous at No. 1, on the same day Nirvana played Saturday Night Live.
It was made in May 1991 on a $65,000 budget at Sound City in Van Nuys, with Butch Vig at the desk and Andy Wallace brought in to mix. Kurt Cobain later said the gloss embarrassed him, calling it "closer to a Mötley Crüe record than it is a punk-rock record." The RIAA certified it 13x Platinum in December 2024, and it has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.
Album Facts: Nevermind by Nirvana
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Artist | Nirvana |
| Album | Nevermind |
| Release Date | 24 September 1991 |
| Label | DGC |
| Producer(s) | Butch Vig and Nirvana |
| Studio(s) | Sound City, Van Nuys; Smart Studios, Madison ("Polly" only) |
| Genre / Subgenre | Grunge, alternative rock |
| Track Count | 12, plus hidden track "Endless, Nameless" |
| Total Runtime | 42:36 (49:07 with hidden track) |
| Billboard 200 Peak | No. 1 |
| UK Albums Chart Peak | No. 5 (No. 7 on its original run in 1992) |
| Other Notable Chart Peaks | No. 1 in Canada (RPM), France and Sweden; No. 2 in Australia |
| Certifications | RIAA 13x Platinum; Diamond in Canada; BPI 9x Platinum |
| Estimated Sales | More than 30 million worldwide |
| Key Singles | Smells Like Teen Spirit, Come as You Are, Lithium, In Bloom |
Cultural Context
Geffen's most optimistic forecast had Nevermind going gold, 500,000 copies, by September 1992. The record it would eventually dethrone, Dangerous, had arrived at the end of November 1991, debuted at No. 1 and sold more than four million copies by January 1992.
Nevermind is credited with taking grunge and alternative rock to a mainstream audience and accelerating the decline of hair metal. In the month it reached No. 1, Billboard declared that "Nirvana is that rare band that has everything: critical acclaim, industry respect, pop radio appeal, and a rock-solid college/alternative base."
Nirvana's Story Up to This Point
Nirvana's debut, Bleach, came out on Sub Pop in June 1989. Its recording cost was listed on the sleeve as $606.17, and it became a favourite of college radio with initial sales of 40,000, but Cobain was upset with the label's promotion and distribution. In an interview with John Robb he said the band's songs were "getting poppier and poppier as I get happier and happier."
In April 1990 the band went to Butch Vig's Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin, at Sub Pop head Bruce Pavitt's suggestion, to record a second album tentatively titled Sheep. They cut eight songs between 2 and 6 April, including early versions of "In Bloom", "Lithium", "Polly", "Breed" (then called "Imodium") and "Stay Away" (then "Pay to Play"). Cobain strained his voice and the session ended. Drummer Chad Channing left after the tour that followed.
The Smart tape became Nirvana's demo, and it travelled fast. Vig told Sound On Sound that the recordings "got bootlegged real fast!" In September 1990 Buzz Osborne of the Melvins introduced the band to Dave Grohl, whose Washington DC band Scream had broken up. Nirvana signed to Geffen's DGC imprint on the recommendation of Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, taking a $287,000 advance.
Pre-production and Demos
Cobain had been listening to the Melvins, R.E.M., the Smithereens and Pixies, and his writing was becoming more melodic. He described his target for the new songs as "the Knack and the Bay City Rollers getting molested by Black Flag and Black Sabbath." Grohl said the band's quiet-loud dynamics grew out of a four-month stretch of jamming before the sessions.
DGC suggested producers including Scott Litt, David Briggs, Don Dixon and Bob Mould. Novoselic said the band were nervous about a major-label record and that DGC's candidates wanted percentage points, so they held out for Vig. Before the sessions the band sent Vig a rehearsal cassette. Vig told Consequence, as reported by MusicRadar, that on it Cobain announced a new drummer who was "the best drummer in the world", before they "kicked into Teen Spirit". It had been recorded on boomboxes and was a wall of fuzzy distortion, but Vig could hear the chord progression and the "hello, hello" part.
To raise petrol money for the drive to Los Angeles, Nirvana played Seattle's OK Hotel on 17 April 1991 and performed "Smells Like Teen Spirit" live for the first time. On the way south, Cobain and Grohl stopped in San Francisco and, with Melvins drummer Dale Crover and Debbi Shane, recorded songs on a four-track as a two-day band called the Retards. "Drain You" gained its drum part and its instrumental break there.
"Contrary to popular belief, they were not slackers. They wanted to make a kickass record. Dave Grohl told me they practised every day for six months before they went into record 'Nevermind'."
Butch Vig, to Ultimate Guitar, reported by NME, 2016
Recording Nevermind at Sound City
Nirvana spent a few days in California rehearsing and arranging before tape rolled. Once it did, they worked eight to ten hours a day. The only recording kept from the Smart session was "Polly", Chad Channing's cymbals and all. Vig described the room to Sound On Sound in plain terms.
"That's pretty much a no-frills studio. It has a big, live tracking room, there's an old Neve board, a 24-track analogue Studer tape machine, a good collection of tube mics, some nice LA2A compressors, but not a lot of outboard gear."
Butch Vig, Sound On Sound, 1997
Grohl was set up in the middle of the room, with bass and guitars isolated. On the kick drum Vig used an AKG D12 and a FET 47, and built a "drum tunnel" of old drum shells extending about six feet from the bass drum to cut down cymbal bleed. Most of Cobain's vocals were cut in the small Studio B through a Neumann U67 and an LA2A.
- Guitar amps: a Mesa Boogie, a Fender Bassman and a Vox AC30, with a Marshall on a few things.
- Bass: Novoselic through an Ampeg SVT, miked with a FET 47.
- "Breed": Cobain's Rat distortion pedal was DI'd straight to the desk and blended with an amp.
- "Come as You Are": the watery guitar is an Electro-Harmonix Small Clone, then double-tracked.
- "Lithium": a Big Muff fuzz through a Fender Bassman.
Novoselic and Grohl finished their parts in days. Cobain took longer over guitar overdubs, vocals and lyrics, sometimes finishing words minutes before he sang them, and he was wary of studio trickery. Vig had a way round it.
"And I kept saying the Beatles double-tracked all their vocals. Listen to John Lennon. Listen to Paul McCartney, all the vocals are double-tracked. And he sat there silent for about five seconds, and then he went 'Okay.'"
Butch Vig, to Consequence, reported by MusicRadar, 2022
Neither Vig nor the band liked Vig's own mixes. DGC offered names including Scott Litt and Ed Stasium; Cobain was wary of famous producers and picked Andy Wallace, who had engineered and mixed Slayer's Reign in Blood for Rick Rubin. Wallace used kick and snare samples to trigger reverb rather than replace the drums, and the band loved the results until after release. Steve Albini, who recorded In Utero, later said Vig's original mix "sounded maybe 200 times more ass-kicking" than the finished album.
Howie Weinberg mastered Nevermind at the Mastering Lab in Hollywood on the afternoon of 2 August 1991. When nobody else turned up on time he started alone, and he had almost finished by the time Nirvana, Wallace and Gary Gersh, who had signed the band to Geffen, arrived.
Personnel and Credits
| Role | Player | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Core band | ||
| Guitars, vocals | Kurt Cobain | Also the sound effects on "Drain You" |
| Bass | Krist Novoselic | Credited as Chris Novoselic; intro vocal on "Territorial Pissings" |
| Drums, backing vocals | Dave Grohl | Credited as David Grohl; harmonies on "In Bloom", "Drain You", "On a Plain" |
| Guest and session musicians | ||
| Cello | Kirk Canning | "Something in the Way" |
| Cymbals | Chad Channing | Uncredited on "Polly", from the 1990 Smart session |
| Production and engineering | ||
| Producer, engineer | Butch Vig | Shared credit with Nirvana |
| Mixing | Andy Wallace | Assisted by Craig Doubet |
| Assistant engineer | Jeff Sheehan | |
| Mastering | Howie Weinberg | Mastering Lab, Hollywood |
| Artwork | ||
| Art direction, design | Robert Fisher | |
| Cover photo | Kirk Weddle | |
| Photography | Michael Lavine | |
| Cover concept, "Monkey Photo" | Kurt Cobain | Credited as Kurdt Kobain |
| Creative director | Robin Sloane | DGC/Geffen |
The engineering credit is shared between Vig and the band, which Sound On Sound noted "was hardly the truth of the matter." Vig explained that he had grown up in the punk scene and didn't mind sharing credit: "The bands' input may be marginal, but I still like to collaborate."
Kirk Canning was a friend the band had met through L7. He added his cello on the final day of the sessions and, like Novoselic, struggled to tune to Cobain's guitar.
The Songs on Nevermind
| # | Title | Writer(s) | Length | Single? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Smells Like Teen Spirit | Cobain, Grohl, Novoselic | 5:01 | Yes | Basic track in three takes; second take used |
| 2 | In Bloom | Cobain | 4:14 | Yes | First cut at Smart Studios in 1990 |
| 3 | Come as You Are | Cobain | 3:39 | Yes | On the rehearsal tape sent to Vig |
| 4 | Breed | Cobain | 3:03 | No | Originally "Imodium"; first vocal take kept |
| 5 | Lithium | Cobain | 4:17 | Yes | The album's only click-track recording |
| 6 | Polly | Cobain | 2:57 | No | Kept from the April 1990 Smart session |
| 7 | Territorial Pissings | Cobain, Chet Powers | 2:22 | No | Novoselic sings the intro |
| 8 | Drain You | Cobain | 3:43 | No | Most guitar overdubs on the album |
| 9 | Lounge Act | Cobain | 2:36 | No | About Tobi Vail, according to Novoselic |
| 10 | Stay Away | Cobain | 3:32 | No | Formerly "Pay to Play" |
| 11 | On a Plain | Cobain | 3:16 | No | Lyrics finished at Sound City; one-take lead vocal |
| 12 | Something in the Way | Cobain | 3:52 | No | Recorded on the control-room couch |
| 13 | Endless, Nameless (hidden) | Cobain | 6:43 | No | Missing from the first pressings |
All music on the original release was credited to Nirvana.
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Cobain called the riff "clichéd", likening it to Boston and "Louie Louie", and Novoselic dismissed it as "ridiculous". Cobain made them play it for an hour and a half until Novoselic slowed it down, and Grohl built a beat that drew on disco acts such as the Gap Band. That is why it is the only song on Nevermind credited to all three. The title came from Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill, who wrote "Kurt smells like Teen Spirit" on his wall after spotting the deodorant in a grocery store. Cobain took it as a revolutionary slogan. Vig shortened the chorus, and Cobain sang only three vocal takes. "I was lucky to ever get Kurt to do four takes," Vig said.
Come as You Are
Cobain recorded his guitar solo in two takes and kept the first of three vocal takes. During a harmony overdub he accidentally sang "No, I don't have a gun" on the fourth "memoria" after the solo, and decided to leave it in. Vig then sampled a "memoria" from the middle of the song and placed it twice near the end.
Lithium and Endless, Nameless
"Lithium" kept speeding up. After one failed take a frustrated Cobain launched into "Endless, Nameless" instead, recorded live with no overdubs and with his vocal going into a Shure SM57 set up for talking. "The rage and frustration in [Cobain's] voice was fuckin' scary to hear," Vig recalled. Cobain smashed his guitar at the end, which stopped work for the day because it was the only left-handed guitar they had. "Lithium" was fixed when Grohl took Vig's advice to play to a metronome, making it the only track on the album cut to a click.
Drain You
Vig said in the 2005 Classic Albums documentary that "Drain You" had more guitar overdubs than anything else on the record: one clean track and five distorted ones. The noises in the instrumental break come partly from a squeaky mouse and a rubber duck Cobain brought to the studio, with delay added by Wallace. The opening line, "One baby to another said 'I'm lucky to have met you'", quotes something Tobi Vail once told Cobain, according to Charles R. Cross.
Something in the Way
Full-band attempts failed, so Cobain sat on a couch in the control room of Studio A to show Vig how it should go. Vig liked it so much that he turned off the air-conditioning, unplugged the phone and recorded him there. The guitar was a 12-string Stella with five nylon strings that Cobain had never tuned. Bass, drums and harmonies were added later in Studio B, with Grohl playing more quietly than he was used to.
On a Plain
The words were finished at Sound City shortly before the vocal take, which explains the line "What the hell am I trying to say?" Cobain's lead vocal was done in one take. Vig mixed the song to end with four a cappella passes of Grohl's harmonies; Cobain cut it to one. He told Flipside the song "came out way too clean."
B-sides, Outtakes and Lost Songs
Nirvana's first studio session with Grohl was a private one at Music Source in Seattle with engineer Craig Montgomery, and it produced "Even in His Youth" and "Aneurysm", the B-sides of the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" single. Other songs from the 1990 Smart session went elsewhere. "Dive" became the B-side of "Sliver", and the Velvet Underground cover "Here She Comes Now" appeared on Heaven & Hell: A Tribute to the Velvet Underground.
- Smells Like Teen Spirit: "Even in His Youth" and "Aneurysm"; UK formats added "Drain You".
- Come as You Are: "Endless, Nameless", credited by name for the first time, plus a live "Drain You" from the Paramount.
- Lithium: "Curmudgeon", a live "Been a Son", and on the UK CD a BBC recording of the Wipers' "D-7".
- In Bloom: live "Polly" and "Sliver" from Del Mar, 28 December 1991.
"Curmudgeon" deserves hunting down. Reviewing the 2011 reissue for Rolling Stone, Jody Rosen singled it out for "the howlingest metal-dude vocal Kurt Cobain ever recorded."
Album Artwork and Packaging
The cover shows a naked baby boy swimming in clear blue water, arms out, with a dollar bill dangling from a fishhook in front of him. NIRVANA sits in black capitals in the bottom left corner above a rule, with NEVERMIND in wavy black lettering beneath it. Cobain got the idea from a TV programme about water births. Geffen art director Robert Fisher found footage of underwater births, but it was too graphic, and the stock photo of a swimming baby they chose cost $7,500 a year. So Fisher sent Kirk Weddle to a pool.
"I placed a camera with a motor drive, in an underwater housing, mounted on a tripod at the bottom of a pool... The dollar bill and the fishhook were stripped in in post."
Kirk Weddle, quoted by Flashbak, 2019
The baby was four-month-old Spencer Elden, whose father Rick was a friend of Weddle's. Rick recalled Weddle offering him "200 bucks" to "throw your kid in the drink" and telling him to meet at the Rose Bowl. Geffen worried about the visible penis and prepared an alternative cover. It backed down when Cobain said the only compromise he would accept was a sticker reading: "If you're offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile."
The back cover is a photo of a rubber monkey in front of a Cobain collage of raw beef from a supermarket advert, images from Dante's Inferno and pictures of diseased vaginas from his collection of medical photos. The sleeve has no full lyrics, only fragments Cobain arranged into a poem ending with "oh well, whatever, nevermind". The title echoed the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks, one of his favourite albums, and replaced Sheep, his joke at the expense of the people he expected to buy it.
Release and Reception
Released on 24 September 1991, Nevermind debuted at No. 144. Geffen sent about half of the first US pressing to the Northwest, where it sold out and was unavailable for days, and the label put production of its other albums on hold to meet demand. By the start of November it had entered the Top 40 at No. 35, and Geffen president Ed Rosenblatt told the New York Times it was "just one of those 'Get out of the way and duck' records." It reached No. 1 on 11 January 1992 and returned for a second week at the top in February. In the UK it peaked at No. 7 in February 1992.
Reviews were initially sparse, but Kerrang! gave it 5/5, NME 9/10 and Entertainment Weekly an A-minus. Rolling Stone was more measured, giving three stars out of five.
"If Nirvana isn't onto anything altogether new, Nevermind does possess the songs, character and confident spirit to be much more than a reformulation of college radio's high-octane hits."
Ira Robbins, Rolling Stone, 1991
The Boston Globe's Steve Morse dismissed most of it as "generic punk-pop". The year-end polls were emphatic. Nevermind won the Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll by a large majority, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" topped the single and video categories, and NME named it the best album of 1991. It earned three Grammy nominations across the 34th and 35th ceremonies, including Best Alternative Music Album.
Singles and Music Videos
| Single | Released | US Hot 100 | UK | Video director |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smells Like Teen Spirit | 10 September 1991 (US) | 6 | 7 | Samuel Bayer |
| Come as You Are | 18 February 1992 (US) | 32 | 9 | Kevin Kerslake |
| Lithium | 13 July 1992 | 64 | 11 | Kevin Kerslake |
| In Bloom | 30 November 1992 | No US commercial release | 28 | Kevin Kerslake |
"Teen Spirit" was meant to build a base among alternative fans, with "Come as You Are" lined up as the crossover single. It went the other way. The video, Samuel Bayer's first, had an estimated budget of $30,000 to $50,000 and was shot on Stage 6 of GMT Studios in Culver City, a pep rally that ends with the extras wrecking the set. Cobain disliked Bayer's edit and oversaw a re-cut that added the close-up of his face. It premiered on MTV's 120 Minutes on 29 September and went into the Buzz Bin in October. The single peaked at No. 6 in the same week Nevermind reached No. 1.
Cobain hesitated over "Come as You Are" because its riff resembled Killing Joke's "Eighties", but manager Danny Goldberg backed it as the more commercial song. Kevin Kerslake shot its video from 16 to 20 January 1992, mostly in an Air National Guard hangar at Van Nuys Airport. His "Lithium" video was cut from footage of the Paramount show and 1991: The Year Punk Broke, and his "In Bloom" won Best Alternative Video at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards. The "Lithium" sleeve carried a sonogram of the unborn Frances Bean Cobain and printed the album's full lyrics.
Touring and Live
Nirvana began a short American tour days before release. Three Pacific Northwest shows with Mudhoney had been booked with Mudhoney headlining. By the time they came round Nirvana were top of the bill, and the Seattle show, with Bikini Kill also playing, moved from the Moore Theatre to the larger Paramount. It was the only Nirvana show shot entirely on 16mm film.
In Europe that November the shows were dangerously oversold. On 8 November 1991 they gave "Teen Spirit" its international TV debut on The Word. On Top of the Pops they refused to mime to the backing track, with Cobain singing an octave lower in what he later called a Morrissey impression and changing the lyrics to "Load up on drugs, kill your friends".
Saturday Night Live followed on 11 January 1992. Grohl broke a stick on his snare during "Teen Spirit", the band smashed their gear after "Territorial Pissings", and in the goodnights they kissed on camera. Soundgarden's Matt Cameron remembered how the chart news landed.
"It came on MTV News that Nevermind had knocked out Michael Jackson, and we just like looked at each other in amazement. I mean, our friends, these guys that we know, knocked off the King of Pop."
Matt Cameron, to VH1, quoted by Ultimate Classic Rock, 2022
Citing exhaustion, Nirvana did not tour America again for Nevermind. At the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards Cobain wanted to play "Rape Me"; MTV wanted "Teen Spirit", and the compromise was "Lithium", opened with a teasing burst of "Rape Me". Four complete shows from this era later surfaced officially:
- Paradiso, Amsterdam, 25 November 1991
- Del Mar Fairgrounds, California, 28 December 1991
- The Palace, Melbourne, for Triple J, 1 February 1992
- Nakano Sunplaza, Tokyo, 19 February 1992
Controversy and Lawsuits
Killing Joke's members claimed the "Come as You Are" riff copied "Eighties". Guitarist Geordie Walker said in 1994 that they had "two separate musicologists' reports saying it was", but reports conflict on whether a suit was ever filed. A third song, the Damned's "Life Goes On", predates both and has a similar riff.
In August 2021 Spencer Elden sued Weddle, Cobain's estate, Grohl and Novoselic, claiming the cover violated federal child pornography laws. The case was dismissed in 2022 on the statute of limitations, revived by the Ninth Circuit in December 2023, and dismissed again in autumn 2025, when the judge found the image was more like a family photo of a nude bathing baby than anything sexually explicit. Elden appealed again.
Covers, Parodies and Screen Life
"Weird Al" Yankovic parodied "Teen Spirit" as "Smells Like Nirvana" and the cover on Off the Deep End, swapping the baby for himself and the dollar for a doughnut. Cobain gave permission, asking only whether it was about food. Tori Amos covered "Teen Spirit" on her 1992 Crucify EP, which Grohl called "fine" and "pretty hilarious". In 2012 Japanese acts including One Ok Rock and Man with a Mission covered the whole album for Nevermind Tribute.
- The Muppets (2011): a barbershop "Teen Spirit".
- Pan (2015): Hugh Jackman's Blackbeard leads a "Teen Spirit" singalong.
- Captain Marvel (2019): "Come as You Are".
- Black Widow (2021): a cover by Malia J over the opening credits.
- The Batman: "Something in the Way" featured in the first trailer, then entered the Hot 100 at No. 46 in March 2022.
Reissues, Remasters and Anniversaries
Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab issued Nevermind on vinyl and 24-karat gold CD in 1996, and in 2009 Original Recordings Group pressed 180g vinyl cut by Bernie Grundman from the original analogue tapes. The 20th anniversary in September 2011 brought a two-CD Deluxe Edition and a four-CD, one-DVD Super Deluxe Edition with B-sides, Smart session recordings, boombox rehearsals, BBC sessions, Vig's original mix and Live at the Paramount, remastered by Bob Ludwig. It re-entered the UK chart at No. 5, and IFPI reported nearly 800,000 sales of the anniversary formats by 2012.
The 30th anniversary editions arrived on 12 November 2021, remastered from the original half-inch analogue tapes at 192kHz/24-bit, with 94 audio and video tracks, 70 of them previously unreleased. The super deluxe sets carried the four live shows listed above, an eight-LP version with a new 7-inch of "Endless, Nameless", and a five-CD version with a Blu-ray of the Amsterdam concert.
The Legacy of Nevermind
Rolling Stone ranked Nevermind No. 17 in its 500 Greatest Albums in 2003 and 2012, then No. 6 in 2020 and 2023. In 2019 it topped the magazine's 100 Best Albums of the '90s. A 2001 VH1 poll of more than 500 journalists, executives and artists placed it second in rock history behind Revolver, and it was added to the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry. Gary Gersh, who signed the band to Geffen, put it simply: "There is a pre-Nirvana and post-Nirvana record business."
The record also shaped its successor. According to Steve Albini, Nirvana referred to Vig's original mix while making In Utero with him. Rolling Stone's Jody Rosen argued in 2011 that the "loud-quiet-loud dynamics even power hits by Kelly Clarkson, Taylor Swift and Katy Perry."
Things You Might Not Know About Nevermind
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| The other title | Sacagawea was briefly considered, to signal the band's ambition for wider impact than Bleach. |
| Kiss on the beef | Cobain said that if you look closely at the back-cover collage, "there is a picture of Kiss in the back standing on a slab of beef." |
| Kurt's angry phone call | Weinberg admits he may not have written down the instruction to add "Endless, Nameless", so roughly the first 20,000 copies lacked it, and Cobain called demanding a fix. |
| Teen Spirit deodorant | Cobain said he did not know Teen Spirit was a deodorant until months after the single came out. |
| A baby's platinum disc | Geffen sent one-year-old Spencer Elden a platinum album and a teddy bear. |
| Weird Al's hidden track | Off the Deep End parodied "Endless, Nameless" with a hidden track called "Bite Me". |
| Most overrated | A 2005 BBC public poll voted Nevermind the "Most Overrated Album in the World". |
| A Christmas campaign | A 2011 online campaign against The X Factor pushed "Teen Spirit" to No. 11 in the UK, selling 30,000 copies. |
| The band in the pool | On 28 October 1991 Weddle photographed the whole band underwater for a promotional poster. |
Listen to the Riffology Podcast
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