Nirvana - Admission/Application Essay Example

Nirvana as a band is credited with bringing the Grunge music movement to the forefront of the industry. Before they burst onto the music scene with their raw, realistic, sometimes painful to listen to music, the scene was dominated by hip-hop artists whose presence seemingly did not leave much room for a new movement in the industry. Little did anyone know that the small band out of Seattle was slowly emerging as the voice of a generation. Performing at concerts such as “Live and Loud” in the United States (Toffler, Van “Nirvana Live and Loud: The Movement that Grunge Built , By Van Toffler”) and “Sub Pop” in Europe, Nirvana was well on its way to launching its history making career.

The American underground music scene was not going to be hidden any longer. Nirvana was one of the pioneers of the Sub-Pop culture that, simply stated, made it “cool to be an outsider” (Goldberg, Eric “Experiencing Nirvana: An Interview with Bruce Pavitt”). . Grunge was the new hip music and everyone wanted in on the bandwagon. Grunge was now on being discussed as the new face of music, a genre that was little understood and quite hard to listen to. When Nirvana released their first album “Nevermind” in 1990, they sparked the Grunge trend that officially marked the entrance of a new music genre: Grunge is defined as ," a combination of heavy metal and alternative rock, officially marked the end of the hair metal stage that plagued the late 80's” (Easterhouse, Jim “Cultural Impact of Nirvana's 'Nevermind' Still Resonates Today”).

Nirvana joined the indie record label Sub-Pop and the rest is history. Thomas Griffin explains that because of the release of the landmark Nirvana album “Smells Like Teen Spirit”; “ Young adults and teens alike flocked to the frenzied sound of Generation X as it consumed popular radio broadcasts. Intense record label and media promotion caused many of these underground bands to become extremely trendy, over and against what many of them had originally intended (Griffin, Thomas “Nirvana and the Grunge Movement”).

This was all the evidence needed to prove that Nirvana had arrived and would be setting the trend for the indie record producers, artists, and listeners alike. Their music would now feed on teen angst and find itself getting extensive airplay over mainstream radio. As an indie grunge band Nirvana had accomplished something nobody expected, they merged the indie with the mainstream with great success. Nirvana became the poster child for the Grunge movement. Their song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was the anthem of a generation.

Written by Cobain himself, the song depicts the real emotions that teenagers across the planet were experiencing collectively at the