Did Punk Matter?: Analyzing the Practices of a Youth Subculture During the 1980s
2001; American studies; Volume: 42; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2153-6856
Autores Tópico(s)Music History and Culture
ResumoIn 1991, an odd thing happened in the world of popular culture. A new single by the group Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Spirit, with its abrasive tones and acidic lyrics about mainstream youth culture (Here we are now, entertain us. ... I feel stupid and contagious), chased Michael Jackson off the charts. From September to December, 1991, 3.5 million Americans rushed out to buy Nirvana's follow-up album, Nevermind. Soon, Nirvana's lead singer, Kurt Cobain, graced the cover of Rolling Stone, decked out in a cheap t-shirt with Corporate Magazines Still Suck scrawled on it, sneering at his newly found mass audience. Something certainly seemed to be happening here.1 Though the mass media treated Cobain like any other rock star, and though he played out his role to a tee (even committing the requisite suicide), he never denied that his music and ideas came from something bigger than himself. Cobain talked quite a bit about the youth subculture in which his music was nurtured. When asked what he hoped for from his fame, he explained, Hopefully, [our fans] like our music and listen to something else that's in the same vein, that's a bit different from Van Halen. Hopefully they'll be exposed to the underground by reading interviews with us. Knowing that we do come from a punk-rock world, maybe they'll look into that and change their ways a bit. In essence, Cobain hoped that the youth counterculture and underground that he was a part of would come above ground, if only for a fleeting moment.2
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