Kurt Cobain always knew REM deserved to be massive

Kurt Cobain was one of the few artists who were incapable of playing the media game when Nirvana hit it big. 

He was more than happy to give interviews and talk about his work, but the idea of being a corporate shill and talking about how every band was the greatest in the world was never going to appeal to him. He was more interested in speaking his mind whenever he had the spotlight, and if the rest of the world disagreed, at least he could turn a few of his fans onto some good music when he had the chance.

Because you have to remember that Cobain wasn’t necessarily thrilled about becoming a rock and roll star when he first started. There were plenty of times where he was happy to run towards the top of the charts like an Olympic sprinter, but once he conquered the world, it’s not like he was in good company in his mind. Nevermind had already been watered down to a certain extent, and if he was sharing the same stages with Guns N’ Roses, that was the definition of selling out.

The whole reason Cobain wanted to be big was to be the antithesis of bands like Guns N’ Roses, and yet there were other bands from Seattle that were making more classic rock-style songs. And despite Pearl Jam having the same goals in mind that Cobain did, that didn’t stop him from outright detesting everything that they were making when he heard Mike McCready bust out a Hendrix-style solo.

It’s one thing to want to be successful, but Cobain wanted to underplay the rock and roll frontman cliches. He wasn’t going to be a sex symbol like David Lee Roth or Robert Plant, and when looking at some of the bands that he chose to prop up, a lot of them were his attempt to get weirder music through the door. No one in their right mind would have been shouting the praises of Butthole Surfers before Cobain, and his choice to bring in Meat Puppets for their Unplugged show threw a lot of people for a loop.

Before Cobain even started bringing alternative music to the masses, though, REM was already beginning to break down doors in the early 1980s. You wouldn’t think that one of the best albums of 1983 would be a college rock masterpiece, but the band were always there at the top of the charts with ‘Radio Free Europe’, even if they looked incredibly out of place next to Michael Jackson and Madonna.

So with a lot more experience under their belt, Cobain felt that the Georgia rockers were among the only bands he had any respect for on the charts, saying at the time, “Everyone once in a while I’ll look at the Billboard charts and just go, ‘crap, crap, crap’ like I always have, except for REM. They totally deserve to be on the top 40, but I can’t really think of any other bands that are on top 40 right now that I like.”