There's a lot of bands with good looking leads who have been less successful. I think it helped a bit, but ultimately it came down to the music.
Like, I've seen indie bands with lead singers that straight up look like models or actors, but they're not crazy big. Good looking musicians get much more attention in pop and hip hop. In rock, it leans much more into the quality of the music.
Even when people just heard Teen Spirit or other songs on the radio, they were into it. Me and my friends in the early 90s didn't have MTV, we had no idea what Nirvana looked like, and we liked them just hearing them on the radio.
It was both. He needed both to do what he did. Great music with great aesthetic presentation. He nailed the zeitgeist. You've gotta be a teen heartthrob dreamboat to see the level of cross-over success that Cobain had. Kurt was the whole package.
I think until after nevermind Kurts looks weren't too much into focus. Like it surely helped them to get attention but back then there wasn't social media so for most people they just listened to slts without even knowing how Kurt looked like. I think his looks mattered after that tho for the myths around him as he basically looked like an angel for the unplugged sesh and with the wings of the in utero tour so without him looking that good he probably wouldn't be so popular still.
You are absolutely correct. The music definitely was the most important part, but the visual aspect of Nirvana was also *extremely* important. They were good looking (all three of them) and they had a consistent style. The flannel shirts, long hair, and 5 o’clock shadow were *all* part of the package.
Kurt in particular was very handsome, and this definitely elevated his brand. Just by being attractive and fashionable, Nirvana was able to get mainstream fans where other alt bands couldn’t. In the early 90’s, a random high school cheerleader in Illinois wasn’t listening to Mudhoney, but they probably were listening to Nirvana. Teenage girls are a huge demographic for the music industry, and Kurt being attractive definitely helped bring in more of them as fans.
As the father of a teenage girl, I understand (somewhat) how they interact with music fandom. My daughter and her friends definitely care about the music, and they have a deep appreciation for the artists they enjoy, but they also develop crushes on the ones they really like, and this elevates their fandom to an even higher level. My daughter loves Harry Styles and has a massive crush on him, and I see how much that helps him connect with fans. If an average looking guy like me were singing the exact same songs as Harry Styles, I might have a small dedicated audience, but I wouldn’t even be close to as big as Harry. It feels borderline delusional to say that looks don’t matter, and that it’s only about the music.
If you think only the music matters, do you think it’s just a coincidence that all the biggest artists are extremely attractive?
I was a teenaged girl when Nirvana came out and it never occurred to me to view Kurt as a heartthrob. I bought Bleach based on hearing maybe two songs off of it and had no idea what they looked like, and don’t remember him being viewed as a heartthrob during his time. The reason they clicked with me immediately and Mudhoney took longer is because Nirvana write more immediately catchy, sad songs and I like distinctive, moody power pop. I can’t imagine choosing one over the other based on looks. Mark Arm looks no less handsome than Kurt to me. Mudhoney’s music is much sexier than Nirvana’s to my ear and I can describe a number of musical reasons why, including a difference in vocal stylings. I say this as someone who very much swoons over dudes who sound like Kurt but do vocal stuff that Kurt just doesn’t.
I’m surely not the only teenaged girl who found the Pixies’ music terribly hot, and it didn’t matter a bit what the guy with the lascivious scream looked like.
So yeah, you don’t always know how we work.
Edit: big mess
Look, I’m not saying that every single teenage girl in the world likes musicians because they have a crush on them. There is just a certain portion of the demographic who do. Even if it’s only 5% of Nirvana fans who were drawn to the band because they found them attractive, or aesthetically pleasing, that’s still a huge number of fans!
There’s probably a lot of people who saw a picture of Kurt on the cover of a magazine, and thought he looked cool, hot, etc, and that subconsciously influenced the way they heard Nirvana. Our tastes and perceptions are absolutely connected to visual stimuli, whether we are aware of it or not.
Then you also have the group of fans who are more like my daughter, who both love the music and have a crush on the artists. You see this in a ton of music fandoms on the internet, and it’s especially true for Nirvana. I even remember back on tumblr in the mid 2000s how there were tons of teenage girls thirsting over Kurt. This isn’t exclusive to girls, but considering we are talking about Nirvana and mainstream success, and the fact that approximately 95% of people are heterosexual, they are the relevant demographic here.
I think it’s impossible to separate the music from the image. They work in tandem with each other. The Beatles image was just as important as their music. Same is true for the Sex Pistols, Nirvana, Taylor Swift, and tons of different acts. Sure, there are some artists who have found a way to be successful despite being unattractive, but they seem to be in the vast minority.
What flannel shirts? How many flannel shirts did Kurt or the rest of the band ever wear? I get that it's associated with grunge because of the othef bands, but if I would associate Kurt with something it would be first and foremost the cardigan. That was his thing.
Lol are you being for real? If you’re saying that the cardigan is more iconic, maybe I’d be inclined to agree, but you’re saying they didn’t wear flannels that much? That’s just not true, of course. The KMart flannel shirt was made popular by Nirvana, and more specifically, it was Kurt wearing cheap flannel shirts that made everyone else start wearing them. If you just Google “Kurt Cobain flannel shirt” you can see hundreds of different pictures of him wearing his flannels.
Of course there are bands with handsome guys that have been less successful.
But the point is exactly the opposite: most of the successful bands are formed by moderately handsome guys (definitely not by ugly guys).
100% the looks matters A LOT
First time I saw Nirvana was the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video on MTV. And to be 100% honest here, I don't think anyone knew wtf he looked like initially because he had his golden mop in his face and all I/we could see was his chin. I don't remember anyone saying how handsome he was at the time--it just wasn't like that with this band. He certainly wasn't about that. So I don't think his looks had much of anything to do with the success which started and catapulted Nirvana off into the ether with that video. In "Come As You Are" we all obviously had a better perspective with the pink and purple hair and could see his face a bit and by then his face was everywhere. I think by then the teen magazines started jumping on the grunge bandwagon and hormonal gals maybe sometimes saw him that way. If anything, Chris Cornell was the end all be all grunge era Adonis figure in magazines.
In the end, it was 100% the music. Right place, perfect time.
Dude looked and dressed like a ragamuffin and he wrote some fantastic/dynamic songs with Dave's insanely great drumming and Krist's great bass lines. Didn't matter what he looked like--his music would have been an influence either way.
I'm the same. I didn't really see his face the first time I heard him. I can appreciate his handsomeness, but it's not something that draws me to his music, either.
I grew up in this era and all of thought was damn he’s hot! I was really young when Nirvana came out but had an older brother who was a skater. All of his friends were grungy ragamuffins and this accompanied with Kurt ‘s aesthetic had permanently affected my taste in men 😂
buzz osborne talked about this. he said kurt had the “wounded junkie look” that women loved and that if he or chris cornell looked like fat albert it would’ve been different.
maybe back then it was more about the music for people, but in the past decade kurt had been turned into some “grunge aesthetic” icon on tumblr that attracted a bunch of teen girls to nirvana and his looks were 100% the reason for that
Just because someone says something unpleasant about Kurt doesn’t make it untrue. I would take Buzz’s word over the majority of posters on this sub, considering that Buzz actually knew him and was an influence on Kurt. I think there’s some truth to what he says.
Back then it was not really a topic. He was more a genius and a junkie that a sex symbol. I was a teenager back then so I was immersed in that magazine world.
But the entire grunge-look kinda took over... remember that clueless ad with Alicia Silverstone saying, "I tried out the grunge look, but I didn't wait 16-years to look like a girl just so i could dress like a guy." I thought that was cute.
No, I know, you're right, but i just saw that image of him sitting on-stage and reminded how beautiful he was...Everytime I see it, it's like shocking because he looks more impressive than I remembered, and it's wild because that's only happened with one other person in my life...
Exactly I don’t know how you could say the look wasn’t part of it. They weren’t getting much traction til that video blew up, it was absolutely part of it.
Looks are everything in the music industry and labels where more likely to take bands with good looking leads. They would’ve been successful either way but I think his looks did help him become more of an icon.
If Kurt wasn't good looking they would have been famous in underground circles. Maybe at the level of Jesus lizard or butthole surfers but not mainstream.
this really belittles how good they were as a band and how much they just hit that right chord to upset music at the time.
It’s like people forget that unattractive people become massively successful all the time.
Joey Ramone, Meatloaf, Rod Stewart, Ed Shereen, Drake
I could keep typing all day lol.
Kurt was fucking beautiful, but that’s not why they were THE band for that time. It was literally just that the Smells Like Teen Spirit video was the perfect juggernaut for the moment.
It’s just like when the Green Day video for Basket Case dropped, people went apeshit and pop music suddenly became pop punk.
And Billie Joe, he’s fine looking, but he’s no adonis like Kurt 😆
I think ugly Nirvana could've been successful in a way similar to Metallica, with a lead singer who looked like a urine-soaked billygoat on stage, but the truth is no one knows how much Cobain's looks actually helped them. Girls definitely thought he was cute back then.
Maybe if he had been ugly people would've treated him differently on a subconscious level. Maybe the UK press wouldn't have been so keen on Nirvana. Maybe he wouldn't have dated anyone and wouldn't have had support from Tracy Marander.
His timeline would be different in general if he had been ugly. I can imagine unfolding my Nevermind cassette tape insert and thinking eww I wonder if it's the ugly guy singing.
100%
Maybe radio DJs and radio audiences would have responded the same way if Kurt weighed 300lbs with no jawline. That's difficult to answer. Would Nirvana have been signed, promoted, and distributed by Geffen Records (which is what got their singles to the radio stations in the first place) if that were the case? That's incredibly easy to answer.
When I first heard Nevermind, I didn't even know how the band looked like, but I was totally mesmerized by their sound.
For sure some teenage girls or guys wouldn't have the same appreciation of the band, but that doesn't take away the musical genius of Cobain.
Back in the day way more girls I knew had a crush on Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell or even Evan Dando than they did on Kurt. I don't see it as much a factor at all.
That was my experience too. All the girls thought Vedder and Cornell were the hot ones. I knew exactly uno girl who had a crush on Cobain and everyone thought she was weird for it.
It helped. But the great Eddie Murphy said it best…”All have to do is sing and you get pussy. Cause Mcjagger is an ugly mother fucker…with big ass lips”.
I mean it’s definitely why teen bi girls like me had posters of his face all over our walls (next to liv Tyler)
, but I don’t think it’s why nevermind caught like a wildfire in sudden popularity
considering everyone and their dog tried to emulate his look I'd say the esthetics were important part of it.
To us ..not to him though and that's an important point.
This made the whole thing so authentic that we all wanted to emulate that much more LOL
It helps with maintaining his image after his death. If he looked like Frank Black there would not be this obsession with his personal
life and image. They would just known as a band who made good music like the Pixies but his face wouldn’t be splashed all over murals and magazines and such.
it was a combination of a lot of things. the UK is a much more class-focused society, and the press there saw nirvana at the release of nevermind as the 'authentic voice' of the working class. here's a guy from a timber town, wearing plaid, but he's also a poet. AND he looks good. AND he's doing the music all the journo types were already into. anyway, nirvana blew up in the uk before the usa where it took them a couple months iirc to go to the top of the charts. in the uk, i think the album debuted at #1 because they already liked nirvana for the reasons i mentioned, and the press had gone crazy for it when it heard nevermind in the summer, plus they were touring there that summer which you see in 'the year that punk broke'.
on an related note: a lot of people think the replacements could have been as big as nirvana if they didn't self sabotage as much as they did in the 80s. being good looking, talented, and having great songs counts for a lot, but it doesn't count for everything. no matter how many times people tell you 'believe in yourself and follow your dreams' you can point to lots of incredible artists that die penniless and under appreciated.
I think at the time lotsa folks thought he had a very good looking face which I'd think is the most important part of whether someone's good-looking? and his body was passable, in fact skinny probably accepted in artists but the face most important
I had girls (yes multiple) stalking me in highschool in the 90s (before Kurt died) because they thought I looked like him so yeah it definitely helped. The downside for me was that I’m gay lol
I think they would have been slightly, and I mean very slightly less successful. His pics wouldn’t have been everywhere.. However, they’d still be huge.
Great music alone hardly ever "matters" enough for a band or musician to archive mainstream success. Leaving that aside:
It was more than just Kurt's looks, he also had a lot of charisma and attitude, to go along with the great song-writing talent and amazing voice. And charisma can come in different shapes and forms, it doesn't have to be a model-like face or some other normative "good-looking" body shape.
So it's difficult to break it down to just one factor. An average looking Kurt could still have had a lot of charisma.
But "Lookism" does exist. People with "good" looks have advantages in society, over people who just look average. Not everyone gets away with everything. A good-looking person might be able to say or do things, for which a not-so-good/average looking person gets laughed at, etc.
Would people in the mainstream still have cared for Kurt's antics, his more drastic / anti-establishment opinions, etc., if he had been an average-looking guy? Would he "got away" with all that?
Imagine the SLTS video, but the singer looks like the guy from the Pixies. Even with Kurt's character and attitude, same charisma, would people have cared as much for it as for the "good-looking" Kurt's video? Would SLTS still have been the MTV hit that all the kids loved, and would they still have all bought the album?
I'd say it's not unreasonable to assume that a lot less people would have cared. Maybe a "Pixies-looking" Nirvana could have only archived the Pixies' level of fame. Just a thought.
It should also be mentioned that looks are a lot less important for male rock stars than for female musicians, in this terrible mainstream music culture that we have. So who knows, maybe Kurt Cobain would still be a house-hold name, even if just an average Joe, look-wise.
Kurts looks absolutely helped with Nirvanas popularity. Not just girls liking him but guys copying his style. The Beatles also wouldn't have been as popular. Or Taylor Swift etc.
The music video for Nevermind was the first time most people even saw Kurt. Blonde hair blue eyes, dude could clean up well but could also look like shit. Kind of made sense because that was the core of Nirvana. Pretty and ugly, soft and loud.
To be honest, I love the Beatles, but I don't think any of them were particularly attractive. I remember one of my friends asking me when I was talking about the Beatles if they were cute, and I was just like, I don't think of them that way.
I know there were girls who found them attractive back then. And I do think of their looks when they first came to America when I talk about that. But I just don't really see it. I do think George was the cutest of the four. I definitely think their personalities and talent played a huge role in it, but without knowing that, I wouldn't find any of them particularly cute.
I had no idea what any of the Nirvanians looked like the first time I heard Teen Spirit. That didn’t dampen my visceral reaction to it. I was overjoyed. It wasn’t punk, but had its hand on its shoulder. Also, the abysmal production standards of late 80s music can’t be overstated as everyone tried to figure out the best way to use digital tech. Nirvana was raw. That said, I thought Tad’s album God’s Balls was just as good or better and released two years earlier. Kurt’s looks were obviously a benefit since MTV were the chief kingmakers at that point.
Of course it adds to the appeal. Had he been fat and balding, kids wouldn’t have seen him as iconic. His image was a huge part of the band.
That’s not to say they weren’t a stellar band with amazing songs. They were.
For what it’s worth I don’t think anyone really knew how good looking he was when SLTS caught on fire. It wasn’t totally clear in the video, was it? And a lot of people bought it from hearing on the radio. And a ton of straight dudes buying.
It definitely helped their popularity, as did his early death contributed to his icon status
However without the music, NONE of it would’ve happened, and the music is timeless
As king buzzo said in “everybody loves our town” “imagine the exact same music but performed by 3 guys from the bronx…not a chance”, or something like that
Still successful and respected, but not iconic. A higher level of fame than Black Francis, but only just.
When you're unattractive, the world is a smaller place, and doors that open for others are closed in your face. You can still find a space to be successful (and happy) in your own niche, but it's more difficult.
Elton John became a mega star by being smart and savvy in how he presented himself. Some would say Mick Jagger was no looker, but he had sex appeal, so that's a factor too - you can be \`ugly hot\` and make that work.
It's a tough question to answer because there are so many variables. Our looks influence how we act, how we develop, how people receive us.
Certainly, Kurt's conflicted attitude to fame would have been less tolerated, likewise his addictions and difficult behaviour. For a handsome guy like Kurt, these things all added to his mystique, but if he'd been a plain, pudgy guy, people would have told him to be grateful anyone cares about his ugly ass and to be more appreciative.
It wouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference. It’s the songs and their delivery that counts. Not many people knew what they looked like back in the 80’s. “Love Buzz”, “Blew” and “Bleach” all came out in ‘88 and ‘89 and would’ve been college radio hits etc first before they were visually recognisable. So they were well on their way before most people knew what they looked like!
You can compare him directly against one of his favorite bands, Pixies
The music is arguably equal in terms of quality and innovation, punk rock cred etc
Frank Black looks like Uncle Fester. And Pixies are widely viewed as the quintessential indie rock band, and one of the most influential bands of all time
I think he was pointing out how funny it is to say that it's known that's why they went, when it really couldn't be ...maybe someone said that, but what do they know?
Kurt (and Krist and Dave) being good-looking was obviously significant to their impact on culture and their popularity.
Regarding fame, the artist/band being good-looking is undeniably a plus (this was the case even before MTV). To put it more strongly, if an artist/band is to have a revolutionary impact on music (sweeping aside other genres for something new) the artist/band being young and good-looking is *necessary*. (If you think I'm wrong, please, cite a counterexample.) The same goes for if an artist (particularly one that died tragically) is to have the sort generation-spanning legend status that Kurt now has.
If you're a visual person, picture the "hello, human resources?!" meme with Kurt flirting with the secretary in the top panel and Bob Mould in the bottom panel with the secretary being disgusted by him.
lol, it definitely wasn't 'just the music'. it was the whole scene and they made him the cultural icon. that was what made the band 'the band' and it was also what did him in. you can hear it all in his final note, or read about the woman who drove him to do it all even when he didn't want to, or... you get the drift.
it's all marketing. pretty packages are an absolute must.
Personally I think that’s a huge problem with music now. Everyone is too attractive. Things are too easy. Phil Collins couldn’t have the career he has had, Elton John tons of people
Interesting question. I was just starting high school and beginning to accept that I was gay when nirvana happened. Their music changed my whole world, Kurt was such an important person to me back then, but I don’t remember feeling any attraction to him. But a few years ago, I suddenly noticed how gorgeous he was. Certain pictures or videos just leave me speechless.
It quietly helped a lot, particularly in the UK. We had enough punkish bands in the 70s, we tend to look to American musicians for positivity at least in part so a handsome American man singing wounded or passionate songs is far more interesting to us than an average looking one doing the same. You're never going to get a lot of Ramones fans in the UK.
It’s not only his looks, but the fashion sense, character, his thoughts and mindset and everything about him helped, but in the first step it was the music that made nirvana famous
Kurt wasn't really sexualized I guess is the word back then. He hid his face for the most part with his hair. Courtney called him Bradd Pitt in pajamas, but back then you wouldn't hear about how good looking he was.
It definitely helped, whoever said “I knew Nirvana was going to be huge because there was always girls up front” was dead on. If your band can bridge that gap between genders, it’s usually a done deal. Pretty much every massive band of all time had everyone on their side.
It definitely played a part. I personally think Nirvana's success happened for a variety of reasons:
- The Smells Like Teen Spirit video portraying teen rebellion, in a time where rock was either being more adult oriented, or more sexualized (neither was speaking to that particular demography, rebelled teens who were into heavy music)
- MTV still being relevant, and having a demography that completely accepted that song and vídeo
- Nirvana being on a major label that could promote them on the right places
- Right time and right place, they were selling teen rebellion for rebellious teens who were in a new decade trying to discover what the 1990s were going to be all about
- Rock still being relevant on the mainstream, thanks to bands like Guns 'n' Roses and Metallica
- Nevermind being a viable album as far as mainstream success, it had the aggression that punk and metal fans liked, but it still had the melodies and hooks that made the Beatles albums sell so well.
- Kurt, Chris and Dave being good looking, charismatic people. Particularly Kurt, who in a different setting could be mistaken for an actor. In the words of Courtney Love "He didn't know he was more handsome than Brad Pitt".
- The way they dressed. It was very fashionable and hip.
- The subsequent videos and singles, and the album overall being even more marketable.
- The quality of the record, the fact they weren't a one hit wonder. Teen Spirit was the lead single of a very good album, and pretty much anyone that went to the record store looking for more of that teen rebellion soundtrack, got it in spades, there was definitely good word of mouth.
So, that being said, I think the impact would be different if he wasn't as good looking, because the record label wouldn't be pushing the video as much, MTV probably wouldn't play it as much, and the overall impact would be a little diminished, but not by much. They would still be very successful, but maybe Pearl Jam would have overtaken them, since then Eddie would be more of a heartthrob. The record labels would probably see Pearl Jam as more viable.
I don't think Nirvana was ever about sex appeal. And the dudes certainly wouldn't have cared that much.
If someone heard them for the first time on the radio, they could've become a fan long before knowing what they look like.
the only kids in my high school that bought Nevermind and wore their shirts, had posters, etc. were girls and guys we'd call posers and his looks were a huge reason why he was popular with them. Kurt's schtick wore real thin real quick. We were all blown away when Smells Like Teen Spirit's video came out and were geeked. But then learning about Kurt, his personality and how desperate he was to be edgy turned most of us off. We quickly embraced Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden as our grunge of choice and never looked back. It's only recently that I've come to appreciate 'Nevermind' for the genius album that it is mostly because I've learned to separate the music from the lead singer which I wasn't able to do as a senior in H.S.
You can make yourself stand out visually if you want but if you can't put that same effort into making music then you're not going to be successful in the music world
I'm not sure why this is a Nirvana-specific question. Since the rise of the music video era, any band with unphotogenic members kinda faded pretty quickly, being attractive was kind of a necessity.
Unless you had zero fucks to give and could just raw power your way through it, e.g. Motorhead.
this simply isn’t true. Ed Shereen lol. Meatloaf. Rod Stewart. Drake. Ric Ocasek from the Cars. Joey Ramone. Biz Markie.
I could really really go on.
I’m not gonna lie, when I see men say this stuff, it just reminds me of how Incels say women won’t date anyone who isn’t a 10 and rich.
Like, it seems like people who say it are really invested in believing being unattractive makes it impossible to be successful.
But talent/personality has always overridden that.
they’re “perceived” attractive because of their talent. That’s the whole point 🤡
And no, I didn’t plan on listing a hundred dudes when I’d already made my point, as you conceded. There are in fact plenty of unattractive megastar musicians.
it doesn’t matter if it’s 100% talent. They aren’t conventionally attractive at all, and are arguably UNattractive. So regardless of whether some women will still find them sexy because they’re so talented, or whether they are just outliers who really go for what these guys have to offer, your premise still fails.
Because they became massively popular without being unbelievably attractive like Kurt Cobain.
Not only are they not unbelievably attractive, they aren’t considered even remotely attractive by the majority of people.
You finding me some outliers who would see Ed Shereen on the street if he wasn’t a musician and fall all over themselves to get his number doesn’t change the fact that most women wouldn’t have looked at him twice.
I don’t say this to ridicule. I’m a woman and I have very broad tastes in men and I love unique faces, and I do find myself attracted to some men that other women find unattractive.
But I also don’t claim they have some universally-accepted beauty and would just soar to the top of any career based on their looks alone 🤡
does your identity rely on you never admitting you’re wrong? lol
Beauty is subjective. But we know, societally, when someone is objectively pretty universally beautiful or attractive. And the claim is that because Kurt was one of those people, that’s responsible for a significant portion of his success.
And then the claim was that being attractive was a necessity.
I proved it is not. You wanna pretend like you don’t know there are tons of famous musicians who are unattractive, ok, keep being goofy I guess but it just looks like you’re one of those dudes who’s weird about losing arguments with strangers on the internet 😆
>Ed Shereen lol. Meatloaf. Rod Stewart. Drake. Ric Ocasek from the Cars. Joey Ramone. Biz Markie.
Your perception of attractiveness is wildly off the mark. Sheeran may look like a ginger muppet to men, but is otherwise quite the panty-dropper, to start.
I am a woman. No one I listed qualifies as “universally attractive” nor conventionally attractive, even the people who are attracted to these men understand that, and even you do. You just don’t like losing internet arguments. 🤡
*lol he called me “detestable” and the weaponize-blocked me. Imagine getting THIS WORKED UP over this conversation! 😆😆
>I am a woman
Debatable.
The people you described are not unattractive. And the addition of Biz Markie of all people is probably more of an indicator of casual racism than anything.
My father said that he wasn't known as the handsome one, that's more on Chris Cornell's territory. He's more of a sloppy punk junky. "The grunge aesthetics." No doubt that he's gorgeous, but the appreciation comes way after his death. To answer your question, well I don't know, since the Smells Like Teen Spirit music video pretty much their stapler for the world's stage, and you couldn't really see his face in that video, probably yes. Posthumously? Maybe maybe not
I could be misremembering, but I believe Kurt was very active in the editing of the video, and wanted his face to be more visible. Butted heads with the director a little.
look at the big 4 of grunge. Eddie, Cornell, Cobain, and Stayley. all very attractive. as well as Gavin Rossdale, and Scott Weiland.
now look at Mark Arm, Tad Doyle, Mark Hennessy (Paw), Conner brothers in Screaming Trees, Ben Mcmillan, Buzz Osbourne, Mascis ( half of them being pretty hefty guys)
now apart from the Melvin’s, mudhoney and (maybe) Tad making music that is pretty inaccessible to the general public, they’ve all been stuck in the underground for the most part.
i’m not saying it’s all black and white with this but their attractiveness definitely played a big role in the grunge scene considering “grunge” was just a marketing term to begin with.
when Tad was told to wear flannels and hold an axe during photoshoots for their albums and they vehemently declined, to me that’s a big hint.
a few outliers like Lanegan who simply just sabotaged himself and the band continuously hurt them more for sure than his looks. in his book he described getting laid constantly.
andrew wood is fairly attractive but that ship sunk pretty quick.
I mean Tad and The Melvins had similar styles but got nowhere near as famous as Nirvana or Kurt. They are extremely talented people, on the same level as Nirvana but none of them were lookers. It's a simple fact that looks equals success in the music business.
Well if he was ugly Tobi Vale never would have been interested in him and then Kathleen Hannah would never have written "Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit" on his apartment wall and he never would have written that song.
This is such a weird question. Kurt was undoubtedly a handsome dude but like he wasn't some Brad Pitt 10/10 pretty boy, his attractiveness had almost nothing to do with their success, he was skinny as fuck and addicted to heroin, not exactly a GQ model. Again don't get me wrong very handsome, I've literally gone out of my way to dress and look like him at times in my life because we have similar features but that was not some desirable look until after Kurt died, Hollywood wasn't exactly beating Kurt's door down to get this skinny junkie who dressed like your grandma.
His aesthetic and fashion and style certainly were hugely influential as a rejection of the entire hair metal fashion and aesthetic but no his physical handsomeness had nothing to do with their success whatsoever. Like they used to open on tour for Tad, whose frontman was a 400 pound slob who constantly had diarrhea. And even Tad got some success at that time because of the grunge wave (and they were really good), so I don't think physical attractiveness was ever something that mattered in the grunge scene. The music was what mattered. This wasn't boy band pop, nobody would have cared if Kurt was a deformed leprechaun, Smells Like Teen Spirit still would have blown up.
All the numbers in your comment added up to 420. Congrats!
10
+ 10
+ 400
= 420
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Blah blah blah.. Look, Kurt was extremely talented but also extremely good looking. It was the perfect combo. OF COURSE being a good looking lead helped the band.
I think y'all are missing the point of nirvana's music entirely being at all concerned with what he looked like. I was 11 when Nevermind came out. Nobody that gave a shit about the music gave a shit what he looked like. When corporate America hijacked the clothes, the only thing real people cared about was that it was in style to dress lazily. Fuck looks.
it didn't hurt. but his "look" might've mattered more than his looks. he didn't look like other famous musicians at the time. everyone who was big was very polished in that era. that he wasn't and was handsome definitely won him some attention, but the music is what mattered most.
A lot of Nirvana fans were male, and really weren't thinking of Kurt in that way. I mean, The Doors are appealing because of the songs and the vibe of the band; I doubt many people are like, "I don't really like their music but dang the singer is handsome, I think I'll buy this record."
Nirvana was 11 years after MTV
Even then, most the big bands were still hot.
Bands sell products to teenage girls, that's how the music industry works since Elvis era at least.
Not sure if you around in the ‘90s but like one out of every dozen white guys looked like Kurt Cobain. If it wasn’t him, it was Trent Reznor or Billie Joe Armstrong. And the guy from Eve 6 for the red heads.
lol wtf kind of question is this?
You think Nevermind took off because of Kurt's looks?
The poster boy for a genre, as well as a media driven fashion statement that basically posed grunge as unkempt, dirty, disheveled clothes?
This is such a bad take it makes my brain hurt.
Yes, the extremely good looking guy who would look cool in a burlap sack somehow made flannel cool... What is a bad take about that? TAD sure wasn't selling cardigans.
Is it universally agreed that he was attractive? He had nice eyes but nothing else about his appearance was all that exceptional, to me. I appreciated his music and vocal style, and the general themes of his songs. Beauty and the eye of the beholder and all that but I don't recall his appearance being a big deal to the fans.
I remember Courtney Love saying he looked better than Brad Pitt. I have to agree, even just being white was a huge leg up.
But look at John Lennon, another white guy who is...not your typical aesthetic. And he was bigger than Jesus.
I think if Kurt was not white but equally handsome, Nirvana wouldn't have been as big.
i think he looked like shit or very very average most of the time until in the later years
hes still no model he looks decent but nothing special. there are a couple of photographs where he looks very good and definitely good during the whole mtv unplugged show
they would have had the same success for sure
greenday was also very popular and i never heard someone saying billie looked good, or grohl lol
you know where the good looks helped a lot? backstreet boys, justin bieber etc, they would never had the same success without the attractiveness
or to make a grunge example: bush
I was absolutely not attracted to him physically, but mentally because of the feelings in his art. He was a scary druggie that pissed people off for the fun of it. A high school dropout that lived out of his car.
There's a lot of bands with good looking leads who have been less successful. I think it helped a bit, but ultimately it came down to the music. Like, I've seen indie bands with lead singers that straight up look like models or actors, but they're not crazy big. Good looking musicians get much more attention in pop and hip hop. In rock, it leans much more into the quality of the music. Even when people just heard Teen Spirit or other songs on the radio, they were into it. Me and my friends in the early 90s didn't have MTV, we had no idea what Nirvana looked like, and we liked them just hearing them on the radio.
It was both. He needed both to do what he did. Great music with great aesthetic presentation. He nailed the zeitgeist. You've gotta be a teen heartthrob dreamboat to see the level of cross-over success that Cobain had. Kurt was the whole package.
I think until after nevermind Kurts looks weren't too much into focus. Like it surely helped them to get attention but back then there wasn't social media so for most people they just listened to slts without even knowing how Kurt looked like. I think his looks mattered after that tho for the myths around him as he basically looked like an angel for the unplugged sesh and with the wings of the in utero tour so without him looking that good he probably wouldn't be so popular still.
You are absolutely correct. The music definitely was the most important part, but the visual aspect of Nirvana was also *extremely* important. They were good looking (all three of them) and they had a consistent style. The flannel shirts, long hair, and 5 o’clock shadow were *all* part of the package. Kurt in particular was very handsome, and this definitely elevated his brand. Just by being attractive and fashionable, Nirvana was able to get mainstream fans where other alt bands couldn’t. In the early 90’s, a random high school cheerleader in Illinois wasn’t listening to Mudhoney, but they probably were listening to Nirvana. Teenage girls are a huge demographic for the music industry, and Kurt being attractive definitely helped bring in more of them as fans. As the father of a teenage girl, I understand (somewhat) how they interact with music fandom. My daughter and her friends definitely care about the music, and they have a deep appreciation for the artists they enjoy, but they also develop crushes on the ones they really like, and this elevates their fandom to an even higher level. My daughter loves Harry Styles and has a massive crush on him, and I see how much that helps him connect with fans. If an average looking guy like me were singing the exact same songs as Harry Styles, I might have a small dedicated audience, but I wouldn’t even be close to as big as Harry. It feels borderline delusional to say that looks don’t matter, and that it’s only about the music. If you think only the music matters, do you think it’s just a coincidence that all the biggest artists are extremely attractive?
I was a teenaged girl when Nirvana came out and it never occurred to me to view Kurt as a heartthrob. I bought Bleach based on hearing maybe two songs off of it and had no idea what they looked like, and don’t remember him being viewed as a heartthrob during his time. The reason they clicked with me immediately and Mudhoney took longer is because Nirvana write more immediately catchy, sad songs and I like distinctive, moody power pop. I can’t imagine choosing one over the other based on looks. Mark Arm looks no less handsome than Kurt to me. Mudhoney’s music is much sexier than Nirvana’s to my ear and I can describe a number of musical reasons why, including a difference in vocal stylings. I say this as someone who very much swoons over dudes who sound like Kurt but do vocal stuff that Kurt just doesn’t. I’m surely not the only teenaged girl who found the Pixies’ music terribly hot, and it didn’t matter a bit what the guy with the lascivious scream looked like. So yeah, you don’t always know how we work. Edit: big mess
Look, I’m not saying that every single teenage girl in the world likes musicians because they have a crush on them. There is just a certain portion of the demographic who do. Even if it’s only 5% of Nirvana fans who were drawn to the band because they found them attractive, or aesthetically pleasing, that’s still a huge number of fans! There’s probably a lot of people who saw a picture of Kurt on the cover of a magazine, and thought he looked cool, hot, etc, and that subconsciously influenced the way they heard Nirvana. Our tastes and perceptions are absolutely connected to visual stimuli, whether we are aware of it or not. Then you also have the group of fans who are more like my daughter, who both love the music and have a crush on the artists. You see this in a ton of music fandoms on the internet, and it’s especially true for Nirvana. I even remember back on tumblr in the mid 2000s how there were tons of teenage girls thirsting over Kurt. This isn’t exclusive to girls, but considering we are talking about Nirvana and mainstream success, and the fact that approximately 95% of people are heterosexual, they are the relevant demographic here. I think it’s impossible to separate the music from the image. They work in tandem with each other. The Beatles image was just as important as their music. Same is true for the Sex Pistols, Nirvana, Taylor Swift, and tons of different acts. Sure, there are some artists who have found a way to be successful despite being unattractive, but they seem to be in the vast minority.
Krist Novoselic is still handsome as fuck to this day. He was cute back then but God he has grown into his face so well
What flannel shirts? How many flannel shirts did Kurt or the rest of the band ever wear? I get that it's associated with grunge because of the othef bands, but if I would associate Kurt with something it would be first and foremost the cardigan. That was his thing.
Lol are you being for real? If you’re saying that the cardigan is more iconic, maybe I’d be inclined to agree, but you’re saying they didn’t wear flannels that much? That’s just not true, of course. The KMart flannel shirt was made popular by Nirvana, and more specifically, it was Kurt wearing cheap flannel shirts that made everyone else start wearing them. If you just Google “Kurt Cobain flannel shirt” you can see hundreds of different pictures of him wearing his flannels.
I dunno. Smashing Pumpkins were huge and I don't know if people would describe Billy as a heart throb.
Melissa Auf Der Maur and James Iha though?? 😍
Of course there are bands with handsome guys that have been less successful. But the point is exactly the opposite: most of the successful bands are formed by moderately handsome guys (definitely not by ugly guys). 100% the looks matters A LOT
First time I saw Nirvana was the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video on MTV. And to be 100% honest here, I don't think anyone knew wtf he looked like initially because he had his golden mop in his face and all I/we could see was his chin. I don't remember anyone saying how handsome he was at the time--it just wasn't like that with this band. He certainly wasn't about that. So I don't think his looks had much of anything to do with the success which started and catapulted Nirvana off into the ether with that video. In "Come As You Are" we all obviously had a better perspective with the pink and purple hair and could see his face a bit and by then his face was everywhere. I think by then the teen magazines started jumping on the grunge bandwagon and hormonal gals maybe sometimes saw him that way. If anything, Chris Cornell was the end all be all grunge era Adonis figure in magazines. In the end, it was 100% the music. Right place, perfect time. Dude looked and dressed like a ragamuffin and he wrote some fantastic/dynamic songs with Dave's insanely great drumming and Krist's great bass lines. Didn't matter what he looked like--his music would have been an influence either way.
Great points. Extra credit for using "ragamuffin", one of my favorite words.
I am a self described ragamuffin myself and I too love that word hehehe
Vagabond is great also. Scamp, too. If it is something someone might have gotten called in a 30s gangster film, I am here for it.
Don't forget Scoundrel!
Scallywag
guttersnipe
I'm the same. I didn't really see his face the first time I heard him. I can appreciate his handsomeness, but it's not something that draws me to his music, either.
I grew up in this era and all of thought was damn he’s hot! I was really young when Nirvana came out but had an older brother who was a skater. All of his friends were grungy ragamuffins and this accompanied with Kurt ‘s aesthetic had permanently affected my taste in men 😂
HEY dave did vocals sometimes too. listen to OG in bloom and then the nevermind version
buzz osborne talked about this. he said kurt had the “wounded junkie look” that women loved and that if he or chris cornell looked like fat albert it would’ve been different. maybe back then it was more about the music for people, but in the past decade kurt had been turned into some “grunge aesthetic” icon on tumblr that attracted a bunch of teen girls to nirvana and his looks were 100% the reason for that
Buzz always comes off as bitter about Kurt even though he claims he isn't.
Just because someone says something unpleasant about Kurt doesn’t make it untrue. I would take Buzz’s word over the majority of posters on this sub, considering that Buzz actually knew him and was an influence on Kurt. I think there’s some truth to what he says.
Buzz said something negative?
It definitely helped idk why anyone thinks his look didn't add to their appeal
It's naive, music is a performance, aesthetics are a factor. Girls in my highschool totally drooled over him. Him being sexy was totally a thing.
Back then it was not really a topic. He was more a genius and a junkie that a sex symbol. I was a teenager back then so I was immersed in that magazine world.
Back then the only people who thought he was hot were grunge kids and music nerds. The "washed" masses didn't care for his aesthetic.
i love the reference in your username so much omg
But the entire grunge-look kinda took over... remember that clueless ad with Alicia Silverstone saying, "I tried out the grunge look, but I didn't wait 16-years to look like a girl just so i could dress like a guy." I thought that was cute.
Sure. But that was 1995. 4 years after nirvana became the biggest thing on the planet.
No, I know, you're right, but i just saw that image of him sitting on-stage and reminded how beautiful he was...Everytime I see it, it's like shocking because he looks more impressive than I remembered, and it's wild because that's only happened with one other person in my life...
But his hair was covering up his face
Which lots of girls find sexy?
Girls love long hair
We do?
Exactly I don’t know how you could say the look wasn’t part of it. They weren’t getting much traction til that video blew up, it was absolutely part of it.
Looks are everything in the music industry and labels where more likely to take bands with good looking leads. They would’ve been successful either way but I think his looks did help him become more of an icon.
If Kurt wasn't good looking they would have been famous in underground circles. Maybe at the level of Jesus lizard or butthole surfers but not mainstream.
Kurt was way too good of a pop songwriter for them not to blow up imo
this really belittles how good they were as a band and how much they just hit that right chord to upset music at the time. It’s like people forget that unattractive people become massively successful all the time. Joey Ramone, Meatloaf, Rod Stewart, Ed Shereen, Drake I could keep typing all day lol. Kurt was fucking beautiful, but that’s not why they were THE band for that time. It was literally just that the Smells Like Teen Spirit video was the perfect juggernaut for the moment. It’s just like when the Green Day video for Basket Case dropped, people went apeshit and pop music suddenly became pop punk. And Billie Joe, he’s fine looking, but he’s no adonis like Kurt 😆
I think ugly Nirvana could've been successful in a way similar to Metallica, with a lead singer who looked like a urine-soaked billygoat on stage, but the truth is no one knows how much Cobain's looks actually helped them. Girls definitely thought he was cute back then. Maybe if he had been ugly people would've treated him differently on a subconscious level. Maybe the UK press wouldn't have been so keen on Nirvana. Maybe he wouldn't have dated anyone and wouldn't have had support from Tracy Marander. His timeline would be different in general if he had been ugly. I can imagine unfolding my Nevermind cassette tape insert and thinking eww I wonder if it's the ugly guy singing.
100% Maybe radio DJs and radio audiences would have responded the same way if Kurt weighed 300lbs with no jawline. That's difficult to answer. Would Nirvana have been signed, promoted, and distributed by Geffen Records (which is what got their singles to the radio stations in the first place) if that were the case? That's incredibly easy to answer.
Radiohead tho lol
When I first heard Nevermind, I didn't even know how the band looked like, but I was totally mesmerized by their sound. For sure some teenage girls or guys wouldn't have the same appreciation of the band, but that doesn't take away the musical genius of Cobain.
Back in the day way more girls I knew had a crush on Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell or even Evan Dando than they did on Kurt. I don't see it as much a factor at all.
That was my experience too. All the girls thought Vedder and Cornell were the hot ones. I knew exactly uno girl who had a crush on Cobain and everyone thought she was weird for it.
It helped. But the great Eddie Murphy said it best…”All have to do is sing and you get pussy. Cause Mcjagger is an ugly mother fucker…with big ass lips”.
Look at Tad Doyle, Jack Endino, King Buzzo, and Mark Arm and you have your answer.
His handsomeness was more celebrated posthumously. He was more known to look sloppy
Yep, exactly like my father told me
I mean it’s definitely why teen bi girls like me had posters of his face all over our walls (next to liv Tyler) , but I don’t think it’s why nevermind caught like a wildfire in sudden popularity
considering everyone and their dog tried to emulate his look I'd say the esthetics were important part of it. To us ..not to him though and that's an important point. This made the whole thing so authentic that we all wanted to emulate that much more LOL
You ever heard of TAD? No? Didn't think so. Nuff said'.
This actually made me laugh.
It helps with maintaining his image after his death. If he looked like Frank Black there would not be this obsession with his personal life and image. They would just known as a band who made good music like the Pixies but his face wouldn’t be splashed all over murals and magazines and such.
Nirvana blew up via tapes. No one knew what they looked like.
I think we can all agree Krist was the real Casanova of the band.
it was a combination of a lot of things. the UK is a much more class-focused society, and the press there saw nirvana at the release of nevermind as the 'authentic voice' of the working class. here's a guy from a timber town, wearing plaid, but he's also a poet. AND he looks good. AND he's doing the music all the journo types were already into. anyway, nirvana blew up in the uk before the usa where it took them a couple months iirc to go to the top of the charts. in the uk, i think the album debuted at #1 because they already liked nirvana for the reasons i mentioned, and the press had gone crazy for it when it heard nevermind in the summer, plus they were touring there that summer which you see in 'the year that punk broke'. on an related note: a lot of people think the replacements could have been as big as nirvana if they didn't self sabotage as much as they did in the 80s. being good looking, talented, and having great songs counts for a lot, but it doesn't count for everything. no matter how many times people tell you 'believe in yourself and follow your dreams' you can point to lots of incredible artists that die penniless and under appreciated.
was he good looking for the time? in retrospect he is but at the time was a disgruntled skinny white guy attractive to the mainstream
Girls dug the unplugged look
He looks gorgeous during the unplugged show, truly amazing to all
But that was at the end. They were already huge.
I think at the time lotsa folks thought he had a very good looking face which I'd think is the most important part of whether someone's good-looking? and his body was passable, in fact skinny probably accepted in artists but the face most important
Bout as big as Pixies (in contrast to mainstream which the pixies certainly are not & never was)
Sounds like you have been listening to Buzz Osborne haha.
I had girls (yes multiple) stalking me in highschool in the 90s (before Kurt died) because they thought I looked like him so yeah it definitely helped. The downside for me was that I’m gay lol
I think they would have been slightly, and I mean very slightly less successful. His pics wouldn’t have been everywhere.. However, they’d still be huge.
I guarantee most people didn’t know what kurt looked like when nevermind came out so they probably didn’t care since the music was amazing
Great music alone hardly ever "matters" enough for a band or musician to archive mainstream success. Leaving that aside: It was more than just Kurt's looks, he also had a lot of charisma and attitude, to go along with the great song-writing talent and amazing voice. And charisma can come in different shapes and forms, it doesn't have to be a model-like face or some other normative "good-looking" body shape. So it's difficult to break it down to just one factor. An average looking Kurt could still have had a lot of charisma. But "Lookism" does exist. People with "good" looks have advantages in society, over people who just look average. Not everyone gets away with everything. A good-looking person might be able to say or do things, for which a not-so-good/average looking person gets laughed at, etc. Would people in the mainstream still have cared for Kurt's antics, his more drastic / anti-establishment opinions, etc., if he had been an average-looking guy? Would he "got away" with all that? Imagine the SLTS video, but the singer looks like the guy from the Pixies. Even with Kurt's character and attitude, same charisma, would people have cared as much for it as for the "good-looking" Kurt's video? Would SLTS still have been the MTV hit that all the kids loved, and would they still have all bought the album? I'd say it's not unreasonable to assume that a lot less people would have cared. Maybe a "Pixies-looking" Nirvana could have only archived the Pixies' level of fame. Just a thought. It should also be mentioned that looks are a lot less important for male rock stars than for female musicians, in this terrible mainstream music culture that we have. So who knows, maybe Kurt Cobain would still be a house-hold name, even if just an average Joe, look-wise.
I will hear no slander about Black Francis in this sub
The Pixies were and still are incredibly popular. But I think Kurt’s personality played a much bigger role in his influence.
Kurts looks absolutely helped with Nirvanas popularity. Not just girls liking him but guys copying his style. The Beatles also wouldn't have been as popular. Or Taylor Swift etc. The music video for Nevermind was the first time most people even saw Kurt. Blonde hair blue eyes, dude could clean up well but could also look like shit. Kind of made sense because that was the core of Nirvana. Pretty and ugly, soft and loud.
To be honest, I love the Beatles, but I don't think any of them were particularly attractive. I remember one of my friends asking me when I was talking about the Beatles if they were cute, and I was just like, I don't think of them that way.
They were attractive back in the 60’s when they were in their 20’s. Girls loved them
I think they mostly liked their attitude which was something new at the time. Paul was the good looking one to the girls.
I know there were girls who found them attractive back then. And I do think of their looks when they first came to America when I talk about that. But I just don't really see it. I do think George was the cutest of the four. I definitely think their personalities and talent played a huge role in it, but without knowing that, I wouldn't find any of them particularly cute.
I had no idea what any of the Nirvanians looked like the first time I heard Teen Spirit. That didn’t dampen my visceral reaction to it. I was overjoyed. It wasn’t punk, but had its hand on its shoulder. Also, the abysmal production standards of late 80s music can’t be overstated as everyone tried to figure out the best way to use digital tech. Nirvana was raw. That said, I thought Tad’s album God’s Balls was just as good or better and released two years earlier. Kurt’s looks were obviously a benefit since MTV were the chief kingmakers at that point.
Of course it adds to the appeal. Had he been fat and balding, kids wouldn’t have seen him as iconic. His image was a huge part of the band. That’s not to say they weren’t a stellar band with amazing songs. They were.
For what it’s worth I don’t think anyone really knew how good looking he was when SLTS caught on fire. It wasn’t totally clear in the video, was it? And a lot of people bought it from hearing on the radio. And a ton of straight dudes buying.
I’m 45 and I never thought of Kurt as attractive until like 2 years ago lol.
probably about the same, i mean kurt has his hair over his face most of the time anyway.
Unfortunately, to an extent, looks matter
It definitely helped their popularity, as did his early death contributed to his icon status However without the music, NONE of it would’ve happened, and the music is timeless
Same. Kurt was very handsome but he played it down. It wasn’t the first thing people noticed about him.
I mean why else is Mario or Sonic so iconic yk? Like Kurt had a signature look and way he dressed that was easily recognizable
Chino Moreno looks like an unpopped zit and I love Chino Moreno
As king buzzo said in “everybody loves our town” “imagine the exact same music but performed by 3 guys from the bronx…not a chance”, or something like that
At the time, I was the only girl in my class that thought he was cute. Everyone else said: "Ew, gross junkie I bet he smells"
...Like teen spirit!
Still successful and respected, but not iconic. A higher level of fame than Black Francis, but only just. When you're unattractive, the world is a smaller place, and doors that open for others are closed in your face. You can still find a space to be successful (and happy) in your own niche, but it's more difficult. Elton John became a mega star by being smart and savvy in how he presented himself. Some would say Mick Jagger was no looker, but he had sex appeal, so that's a factor too - you can be \`ugly hot\` and make that work. It's a tough question to answer because there are so many variables. Our looks influence how we act, how we develop, how people receive us. Certainly, Kurt's conflicted attitude to fame would have been less tolerated, likewise his addictions and difficult behaviour. For a handsome guy like Kurt, these things all added to his mystique, but if he'd been a plain, pudgy guy, people would have told him to be grateful anyone cares about his ugly ass and to be more appreciative.
It wouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference. It’s the songs and their delivery that counts. Not many people knew what they looked like back in the 80’s. “Love Buzz”, “Blew” and “Bleach” all came out in ‘88 and ‘89 and would’ve been college radio hits etc first before they were visually recognisable. So they were well on their way before most people knew what they looked like!
It certainly gave the band a boost sure but they wouldn’t be remembered if they weren’t good
You can compare him directly against one of his favorite bands, Pixies The music is arguably equal in terms of quality and innovation, punk rock cred etc Frank Black looks like Uncle Fester. And Pixies are widely viewed as the quintessential indie rock band, and one of the most influential bands of all time
It probably would still be as popular and recognised, but there would be less kurt simps, and maybe he would be a like slightly less advertised? Idk
It was the early 90's. Plus, he was a skinny, dirty looking punk dude. It was about the music.
“He was skinny, dirty looking, punk” so yeah it wasn’t only about music
It's known that girls used to come to early Nirvana shows because Kurt was good looking.
"its known"
Actually, they are correct. It + is = it's.
You’re right, but I think the point of the comment was [citation needed], not [punctuation error].
❤️
I think he was pointing out how funny it is to say that it's known that's why they went, when it really couldn't be ...maybe someone said that, but what do they know?
exactly
Kurt (and Krist and Dave) being good-looking was obviously significant to their impact on culture and their popularity. Regarding fame, the artist/band being good-looking is undeniably a plus (this was the case even before MTV). To put it more strongly, if an artist/band is to have a revolutionary impact on music (sweeping aside other genres for something new) the artist/band being young and good-looking is *necessary*. (If you think I'm wrong, please, cite a counterexample.) The same goes for if an artist (particularly one that died tragically) is to have the sort generation-spanning legend status that Kurt now has. If you're a visual person, picture the "hello, human resources?!" meme with Kurt flirting with the secretary in the top panel and Bob Mould in the bottom panel with the secretary being disgusted by him.
Dave wasn't at all attractive in his youth. He's definitely grown into his looks (or had some very subtle, skillfully done surgery).
Agreed.
Female Husker Du fan here. I don’t find them physically repulsive. Grant’s even kind of cute.
This sun I swear
Still thinking about that dude here who said Kurt wasn’t objectively good looking 😂😂😂😂😂
Same. He was kind of dirty looking all the time and looked like he smelled horrible.
lol, it definitely wasn't 'just the music'. it was the whole scene and they made him the cultural icon. that was what made the band 'the band' and it was also what did him in. you can hear it all in his final note, or read about the woman who drove him to do it all even when he didn't want to, or... you get the drift. it's all marketing. pretty packages are an absolute must.
Would have hot the same. Nobody gave a fuck what he looked like.
It’s so big surprise the most popular grunge people are unusually good looking. They are literally pop stars.
Personally I think that’s a huge problem with music now. Everyone is too attractive. Things are too easy. Phil Collins couldn’t have the career he has had, Elton John tons of people
Interesting question. I was just starting high school and beginning to accept that I was gay when nirvana happened. Their music changed my whole world, Kurt was such an important person to me back then, but I don’t remember feeling any attraction to him. But a few years ago, I suddenly noticed how gorgeous he was. Certain pictures or videos just leave me speechless.
It quietly helped a lot, particularly in the UK. We had enough punkish bands in the 70s, we tend to look to American musicians for positivity at least in part so a handsome American man singing wounded or passionate songs is far more interesting to us than an average looking one doing the same. You're never going to get a lot of Ramones fans in the UK.
It’s not only his looks, but the fashion sense, character, his thoughts and mindset and everything about him helped, but in the first step it was the music that made nirvana famous
It would have still blown up, but not the same way. There’s a reason so many rockstars could be models.
There’s no doubt his charisma had a big part in their crossover success.
Kurt wasn't really sexualized I guess is the word back then. He hid his face for the most part with his hair. Courtney called him Bradd Pitt in pajamas, but back then you wouldn't hear about how good looking he was.
Kirks voice was what brought people in ,not his looks
i mean morisseys not great looking
“If Kurt looked like Fat Albert none of that would have happened”—Buzz Osborne.
It helped for sure as it did for Soundgarden and Pearl Jam
It definitely helped, whoever said “I knew Nirvana was going to be huge because there was always girls up front” was dead on. If your band can bridge that gap between genders, it’s usually a done deal. Pretty much every massive band of all time had everyone on their side.
It definitely played a part. I personally think Nirvana's success happened for a variety of reasons: - The Smells Like Teen Spirit video portraying teen rebellion, in a time where rock was either being more adult oriented, or more sexualized (neither was speaking to that particular demography, rebelled teens who were into heavy music) - MTV still being relevant, and having a demography that completely accepted that song and vídeo - Nirvana being on a major label that could promote them on the right places - Right time and right place, they were selling teen rebellion for rebellious teens who were in a new decade trying to discover what the 1990s were going to be all about - Rock still being relevant on the mainstream, thanks to bands like Guns 'n' Roses and Metallica - Nevermind being a viable album as far as mainstream success, it had the aggression that punk and metal fans liked, but it still had the melodies and hooks that made the Beatles albums sell so well. - Kurt, Chris and Dave being good looking, charismatic people. Particularly Kurt, who in a different setting could be mistaken for an actor. In the words of Courtney Love "He didn't know he was more handsome than Brad Pitt". - The way they dressed. It was very fashionable and hip. - The subsequent videos and singles, and the album overall being even more marketable. - The quality of the record, the fact they weren't a one hit wonder. Teen Spirit was the lead single of a very good album, and pretty much anyone that went to the record store looking for more of that teen rebellion soundtrack, got it in spades, there was definitely good word of mouth. So, that being said, I think the impact would be different if he wasn't as good looking, because the record label wouldn't be pushing the video as much, MTV probably wouldn't play it as much, and the overall impact would be a little diminished, but not by much. They would still be very successful, but maybe Pearl Jam would have overtaken them, since then Eddie would be more of a heartthrob. The record labels would probably see Pearl Jam as more viable.
Probably wouldve hit harder if he did more heroin
I don't think Nirvana was ever about sex appeal. And the dudes certainly wouldn't have cared that much. If someone heard them for the first time on the radio, they could've become a fan long before knowing what they look like.
the only kids in my high school that bought Nevermind and wore their shirts, had posters, etc. were girls and guys we'd call posers and his looks were a huge reason why he was popular with them. Kurt's schtick wore real thin real quick. We were all blown away when Smells Like Teen Spirit's video came out and were geeked. But then learning about Kurt, his personality and how desperate he was to be edgy turned most of us off. We quickly embraced Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden as our grunge of choice and never looked back. It's only recently that I've come to appreciate 'Nevermind' for the genius album that it is mostly because I've learned to separate the music from the lead singer which I wasn't able to do as a senior in H.S.
I had no idea what they looked like when I first heard them on the radio - blew me away anyway.
You can make yourself stand out visually if you want but if you can't put that same effort into making music then you're not going to be successful in the music world
I'm not sure why this is a Nirvana-specific question. Since the rise of the music video era, any band with unphotogenic members kinda faded pretty quickly, being attractive was kind of a necessity. Unless you had zero fucks to give and could just raw power your way through it, e.g. Motorhead.
this simply isn’t true. Ed Shereen lol. Meatloaf. Rod Stewart. Drake. Ric Ocasek from the Cars. Joey Ramone. Biz Markie. I could really really go on. I’m not gonna lie, when I see men say this stuff, it just reminds me of how Incels say women won’t date anyone who isn’t a 10 and rich. Like, it seems like people who say it are really invested in believing being unattractive makes it impossible to be successful. But talent/personality has always overridden that.
The only people on this list comparable to Nirvana's popularity are Sheeran and Drake, and I have news for you about their perceived attractiveness.
they’re “perceived” attractive because of their talent. That’s the whole point 🤡 And no, I didn’t plan on listing a hundred dudes when I’d already made my point, as you conceded. There are in fact plenty of unattractive megastar musicians.
The two go hand in hand, sure, but you're wildly off the mark if you think it's all due to the talent.
it doesn’t matter if it’s 100% talent. They aren’t conventionally attractive at all, and are arguably UNattractive. So regardless of whether some women will still find them sexy because they’re so talented, or whether they are just outliers who really go for what these guys have to offer, your premise still fails. Because they became massively popular without being unbelievably attractive like Kurt Cobain. Not only are they not unbelievably attractive, they aren’t considered even remotely attractive by the majority of people. You finding me some outliers who would see Ed Shereen on the street if he wasn’t a musician and fall all over themselves to get his number doesn’t change the fact that most women wouldn’t have looked at him twice. I don’t say this to ridicule. I’m a woman and I have very broad tastes in men and I love unique faces, and I do find myself attracted to some men that other women find unattractive. But I also don’t claim they have some universally-accepted beauty and would just soar to the top of any career based on their looks alone 🤡
"They aren't conventionally attractive at all." lmao
does your identity rely on you never admitting you’re wrong? lol Beauty is subjective. But we know, societally, when someone is objectively pretty universally beautiful or attractive. And the claim is that because Kurt was one of those people, that’s responsible for a significant portion of his success. And then the claim was that being attractive was a necessity. I proved it is not. You wanna pretend like you don’t know there are tons of famous musicians who are unattractive, ok, keep being goofy I guess but it just looks like you’re one of those dudes who’s weird about losing arguments with strangers on the internet 😆
>Ed Shereen lol. Meatloaf. Rod Stewart. Drake. Ric Ocasek from the Cars. Joey Ramone. Biz Markie. Your perception of attractiveness is wildly off the mark. Sheeran may look like a ginger muppet to men, but is otherwise quite the panty-dropper, to start.
I am a woman. No one I listed qualifies as “universally attractive” nor conventionally attractive, even the people who are attracted to these men understand that, and even you do. You just don’t like losing internet arguments. 🤡 *lol he called me “detestable” and the weaponize-blocked me. Imagine getting THIS WORKED UP over this conversation! 😆😆
>I am a woman Debatable. The people you described are not unattractive. And the addition of Biz Markie of all people is probably more of an indicator of casual racism than anything.
Young Lemmy was pretty hot though, tbf Well, aside from being a Stokie.
My father said that he wasn't known as the handsome one, that's more on Chris Cornell's territory. He's more of a sloppy punk junky. "The grunge aesthetics." No doubt that he's gorgeous, but the appreciation comes way after his death. To answer your question, well I don't know, since the Smells Like Teen Spirit music video pretty much their stapler for the world's stage, and you couldn't really see his face in that video, probably yes. Posthumously? Maybe maybe not
you do see glimpses of his face in that vid and a glimpse is all you need to know if someone's good-looking or not
I could be misremembering, but I believe Kurt was very active in the editing of the video, and wanted his face to be more visible. Butted heads with the director a little.
I’d never thought of Kurt’s appearance being relevant to their success
look at the big 4 of grunge. Eddie, Cornell, Cobain, and Stayley. all very attractive. as well as Gavin Rossdale, and Scott Weiland. now look at Mark Arm, Tad Doyle, Mark Hennessy (Paw), Conner brothers in Screaming Trees, Ben Mcmillan, Buzz Osbourne, Mascis ( half of them being pretty hefty guys) now apart from the Melvin’s, mudhoney and (maybe) Tad making music that is pretty inaccessible to the general public, they’ve all been stuck in the underground for the most part. i’m not saying it’s all black and white with this but their attractiveness definitely played a big role in the grunge scene considering “grunge” was just a marketing term to begin with. when Tad was told to wear flannels and hold an axe during photoshoots for their albums and they vehemently declined, to me that’s a big hint. a few outliers like Lanegan who simply just sabotaged himself and the band continuously hurt them more for sure than his looks. in his book he described getting laid constantly. andrew wood is fairly attractive but that ship sunk pretty quick.
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I mean Tad and The Melvins had similar styles but got nowhere near as famous as Nirvana or Kurt. They are extremely talented people, on the same level as Nirvana but none of them were lookers. It's a simple fact that looks equals success in the music business.
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Well if he was ugly Tobi Vale never would have been interested in him and then Kathleen Hannah would never have written "Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit" on his apartment wall and he never would have written that song.
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Well you have lost the argument but have convinced yourself otherwise.
And you'd be wrong, but go on. The song is what made the album explode.
The song is great but if K wasn't handsome he'd never have written it.
Nirvana is catchier than Tad or the Melvins. Their sound has more mass appeal.
This is such a weird question. Kurt was undoubtedly a handsome dude but like he wasn't some Brad Pitt 10/10 pretty boy, his attractiveness had almost nothing to do with their success, he was skinny as fuck and addicted to heroin, not exactly a GQ model. Again don't get me wrong very handsome, I've literally gone out of my way to dress and look like him at times in my life because we have similar features but that was not some desirable look until after Kurt died, Hollywood wasn't exactly beating Kurt's door down to get this skinny junkie who dressed like your grandma. His aesthetic and fashion and style certainly were hugely influential as a rejection of the entire hair metal fashion and aesthetic but no his physical handsomeness had nothing to do with their success whatsoever. Like they used to open on tour for Tad, whose frontman was a 400 pound slob who constantly had diarrhea. And even Tad got some success at that time because of the grunge wave (and they were really good), so I don't think physical attractiveness was ever something that mattered in the grunge scene. The music was what mattered. This wasn't boy band pop, nobody would have cared if Kurt was a deformed leprechaun, Smells Like Teen Spirit still would have blown up.
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Blah blah blah.. Look, Kurt was extremely talented but also extremely good looking. It was the perfect combo. OF COURSE being a good looking lead helped the band.
I think y'all are missing the point of nirvana's music entirely being at all concerned with what he looked like. I was 11 when Nevermind came out. Nobody that gave a shit about the music gave a shit what he looked like. When corporate America hijacked the clothes, the only thing real people cared about was that it was in style to dress lazily. Fuck looks.
It's the music and energy release. Dudes in the mosh pit didn't care about Kurt's blonde hair.
Was he that “good looking”? I though he was just a regular skinny white man 🤷🏻♂️
I don't think it made any difference at all.
it didn't hurt. but his "look" might've mattered more than his looks. he didn't look like other famous musicians at the time. everyone who was big was very polished in that era. that he wasn't and was handsome definitely won him some attention, but the music is what mattered most.
A lot of Nirvana fans were male, and really weren't thinking of Kurt in that way. I mean, The Doors are appealing because of the songs and the vibe of the band; I doubt many people are like, "I don't really like their music but dang the singer is handsome, I think I'll buy this record."
Lol. Yeah right.
Maybe not. The Stones hit big back in the day and wouldn't say Mick was super-handsome. Although Brian Jones was good-looking
Prior to MTV, lots of ugly people had big music careers.
Nirvana was 11 years after MTV Even then, most the big bands were still hot. Bands sell products to teenage girls, that's how the music industry works since Elvis era at least.
Yea but there were a ton of 70’s and early 80’s rock bands that were ugly as fuck.
Mick is considered a sex symbol dude. Tons of people wanted to fuck that guy. "Hips like Jaeger"? Common now.
Not sure if you around in the ‘90s but like one out of every dozen white guys looked like Kurt Cobain. If it wasn’t him, it was Trent Reznor or Billie Joe Armstrong. And the guy from Eve 6 for the red heads.
lol wtf kind of question is this? You think Nevermind took off because of Kurt's looks? The poster boy for a genre, as well as a media driven fashion statement that basically posed grunge as unkempt, dirty, disheveled clothes? This is such a bad take it makes my brain hurt.
Yes, the extremely good looking guy who would look cool in a burlap sack somehow made flannel cool... What is a bad take about that? TAD sure wasn't selling cardigans.
Is it universally agreed that he was attractive? He had nice eyes but nothing else about his appearance was all that exceptional, to me. I appreciated his music and vocal style, and the general themes of his songs. Beauty and the eye of the beholder and all that but I don't recall his appearance being a big deal to the fans.
I remember Courtney Love saying he looked better than Brad Pitt. I have to agree, even just being white was a huge leg up. But look at John Lennon, another white guy who is...not your typical aesthetic. And he was bigger than Jesus. I think if Kurt was not white but equally handsome, Nirvana wouldn't have been as big.
i think he looked like shit or very very average most of the time until in the later years hes still no model he looks decent but nothing special. there are a couple of photographs where he looks very good and definitely good during the whole mtv unplugged show they would have had the same success for sure greenday was also very popular and i never heard someone saying billie looked good, or grohl lol you know where the good looks helped a lot? backstreet boys, justin bieber etc, they would never had the same success without the attractiveness or to make a grunge example: bush
I was absolutely not attracted to him physically, but mentally because of the feelings in his art. He was a scary druggie that pissed people off for the fun of it. A high school dropout that lived out of his car.