Nirvana

Made for an unbelievable $606, the debut already held the blueprint of a band that would one day shake the world.

• Listen to how the whole band dresses a melody written alone on acoustic guitar in a distorted guitar tone (distortion), so that a pop chorus collides with a raw sound.
• The way bass and drums hold up the song by repeating simple rhythms without much flourish already shows the prototype of the later Nirvana sound.
• The vocal shifts from a low murmur to a throat-scraping delivery in the chorus, and this controlled dynamic runs through the entire debut.
• In the live version it is played far rougher and faster than in the studio, offering an early glimpse of the explosive stage energy the band would later unleash.

Atop a rhythm section made whole by Grohl's arrival, the band's humble Aberdeen-era sound became a national anthem overnight.

• The opening riff of thick two-note chords (power chords) forms the backbone of the whole song, held low in the verses and then bursting open in the chorus in a distorted guitar tone (distortion).
• The bass follows the guitar riff almost note for note, thickening the low end, while the drums push the song upward with a fill just before the chorus.
• Cobain's vocal begins languidly in the verse and erupts in a throat-scraping shout in the chorus, and that contrast creates the song's climax.
• The guitar solo midway is a simple construction that replays the vocal melody almost exactly on guitar, favoring melody over flashy technique.
• Heard alongside the gymnasium performance footage in the music video, it lets you compare the raw energy peculiar to live playing with the studio recording.

An album whose unexpected success placed the band at the heart of alternative rock, though its sleekly polished sound left Cobain uneasy.

• The chosen highlight, “Come as You Are,” opens with a clean guitar riff treated with a chorus effect, showing that the album had refined arrangements as well as noise.
• Butch Vig's production is marked by guitars overdubbed layer upon layer (recording again on top of tracks already laid down, stacking them up), building a thick, polished wall.
• Throughout the album, the drop between verse and chorus — the so-called quiet-then-suddenly-loud dynamic — recurs until it becomes the grammar of the whole record.
• Grohl's drums are captured far bigger and tighter than on earlier recordings, and the rhythm section is said to have shifted the album's center of gravity.

It is the song in which the dark, personal mood the band defended despite the label's demands for rework comes through most clearly.

• Listen to how the electric guitar arrives late over a low acoustic riff in a distorted tone (distortion), making the song grow steadily heavier.
• In the chorus Cobain's voice soars almost to a scream, in sharp contrast to the low, dry delivery of the verses.
• In the bridge (a passage that brings in a new mood between verse and chorus to vary the song), the guitar tone turns sharper still, creating the song's darkest moment.
• Watched together with the surreal imagery of the music video, the song's peculiar gloom comes through even more vividly.

Recorded with Steve Albini in defiance of polish, the album captures the raw sound the band sought to reclaim after success.

• The highlight, “Dumb,” has a rare arrangement in which a cello line lies beneath like an overtone, revealing the space Albini left open inside the raw sound.
• Albini chose to place microphones throughout the room to preserve its natural reverberation, leaving a raw texture with minimal overdubs across the whole album.
• The vocals are captured roughly, without studio tricks, so that Cobain's breathing and even the cracks in his voice can be heard as they are.
• Heard against the sleek, wall-like guitar sound of Nevermind, it becomes plain that this album deliberately chose an unpolished sound.

The unfamiliar covers chosen for the unplugged stage hint at what Cobain was carrying in his heart at the time.

• Because the unplugged stage stripped away electric instruments, the guitars are played only acoustically, and Cobain reworked the song at a slower, more subdued tempo than the original.
• Novoselic plays acoustic bass on this track, adding a texture unlike the band's signature rock sound.
• Pressed close to the microphone, the vocal is nearly whispered, gathering only a little force in the chorus; this restrained delivery sets it clearly apart from the studio recordings.
• Listen along with the hushed response of the audience, recorded live on the candlelit stage, and the heavy atmosphere this performance left behind becomes all the more palpable.

First written in 1990, the song remains the final track on the band's last studio album.

• A cello laid low beneath the opening casts a mournful air over the whole song, while the guitar, forgoing flashy technique, holds it up with a simple, repeating riff.
• Layering several voices in the chorus (choral harmony) creates a moment far gentler than the other songs on the album In Utero.
• The short refrain repeated in the song's final stretch closes on a gradually fading dynamic, leaving a lingering echo that seems to foreshadow the band's end.
• Heard side by side with the MTV Unplugged version, the song reveals the difference between the dense sound of the studio take and the subdued mood of the acoustic one.