Kurt Cobain’s favourite REM album
Nirvana, and to a larger extent Kurt Cobain himself, single-handedly invigorated an entire era of grunge and alternative rock throughout the early part of the 1990s. Although his life and career only lasted a tragic number of short years, the musical and wider cultural impact of Cobain has been nothing short of transcendental, awakening the sonic spirits of many wannabe rockers who have followed the stardust trail in his wake.
In that respect, it might be easy to think Cobain was a bolt out of the blue, but it was far from the case as his stretch of musical influences was as massive and wide-ranging as you might imagine for an artist with such a pioneering vision. Indeed, across his favourite albums of the 1980s, there was one pivotal record by a similarly innovative band that got the cogs in his brain turning and his sonic passion firmly inspired.
It could only be REM and the album that boosted them to the precipice of their breakthrough, Green. Released in 1988, it marked the Georgia outfit’s sixth studio effort that would then be followed by their acclaimed Out of Time some two years later. Green represented a force on the cusp of massive things, and it was clear that with all his intuition, Cobain knew he saw a good thing coming.
The album became one of Cobain’s most esteemed picks of the era due to the blazing ingenuity of the likes of ‘Orange Crush’ and ‘Stand’, the latter of which became a homegrown hit in their native America. REM’s experimentation and boldness to explore politicised lyrical depths were true moments of enlightenment for many wannabe rockers of the moment, including the young guitarist who was in the early stages of forming a band that would take over the world.
It’s really not a huge surprise that REM’s Green was such a striking influence on Cobain in the nascent period of his rock music tenure, as that kind of eclectic vision and freedom to sound what it wanted was exactly what the burgeoning punk was trying to harbour. In their earliest days, Nirvana went through a slew of names and members to gradually fine-tune their sound, releasing their first single, a cover of Shocking Blue’s ‘Love Buzz’, later in the same year as the seminal album from Cobain’s REM heroes.
To that end, and picking up on his praise for the 1980s rock stalwarts, REM frontman Michael Stipe formed a friendship with Cobain over time. Trying to guide his protégé amid his stratospheric rise to rock stardom, Stipe wanted to offer counsel to the Nirvana singer in the darkest depths of his mental health struggles.
Following Cobain’s untimely suicide in 1994, the REM songwriter penned the song ‘Let Me In’ from Monster in his memory, explaining in 2019 that: “[I was] really trying to pull him out of a very, very dark place. We all knew it, and we were doing everything we could to help – but it wasn’t enough. I wrote the lyrics in five minutes and recorded it in as much time. It was our – my – plea to Kurt. Too bad.”
Ultimately, despite the tragic implications that would arise from their friendship, it’s clear that Cobain and Stipe found sonic kindred spirits in one other, which each respectively played an influence on the sound that they would electrify the world with. They say don’t meet your heroes, but Kurt Cobain definitely wouldn’t have agreed.
