One of the most powerful things about music is that it is the soundtrack of our lives. Fellow music fanatic Sharon Hepworth started a music challenge on Twitter for the month of July. Each day, fans around the world will select a song from their life and describe what it means to us. These are my songs. #SoundtrackToYourLife
Day 11
Neil Young may be the Godfather of Grunge. The Pixies and The Melvins may have inspired Kurt Cobain. But it’s Nirvana that defined the grunge era. That was certainly the case for me and the guys in Duchesne Hall at Boston College in the fall of 1991. The entire Nevermind album was on non-stop play in my college residence hall my freshmen year. It didn’t matter what kind of music you listened to before. We had guys who were into Ministry, the Chili Peppers, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Iron Maiden and the Aladdin soundtrack. But everyone was fixated on Nevermind and the quiet-loud-quiet genius of “Lithium”.
“Lithium” has an explosive quality to it—going from soft and dormant to loud and ignited. This was a dynamic that I started to really appreciate with the Pixies. A couple of years after the Doolittle album, I saw the quiet-loud-quiet construct truly mastered on “Lithium”. Cobain oscillates between singing and screaming in a manner where it flows seamlessly. This stands in direct contrast to Black Francis’ approach which feels more ragged and disruptive. The quiet segments are pretty much all Cobain, but the loud parts put Cobain, Novoselic and Grohl on a maddening collision course. What’s not to like for a college student?
“I'm so happy because today. I've found my friends. They're in my head.”