Nirvana in bloom lyrics6/5/2023 Even today, we see headlines talking about Sturgill’s version as being “happy,” or even “uplifting.” But at the core of “In Bloom,” is a level of judgement, however true it might be for some indolent fans. “Here we are now, entertain us,” was what accompanied the release of Sturgill’s “In Bloom” song and video Thursday (3-24) on social media-another indictment Nirvana thrust towards its fans in song, and was misunderstood by many. Sturgill gives the song a slight twist by adding the addendum, “But he don’t know what it means, knows not what it means…to love someone,” but despite the more bright feel of the music of Sturgill’s version, the message remains the same. But whether it is Nirvana’s version, or Sturgill Simpson’s version, “In Bloom” is an indictment of ones own fans, and is based in part on judgement and assumption. The premise of “In Bloom” is quietly brilliant, and the more the song and Nirvana became misunderstood (including how society assigned hero status to Cobain), the more brilliant it became. In fact this premise of misunderstanding is echoed throughout Nirvana’s Nevermind, including in the more well-recognized “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and is embodied in the title “ Nevermind,” which is the band acknowledging that their message was being lost, misinterpreted, or downright ignored as come-a-long grunge fans banged their heads to the beat mindlessly. “But he don’t know what it means, knows not what it means…” the song says. They were tired of people assigning their own desires to what the music was saying instead of trying to interpret what the band was really trying to convey. They were fed up that a portion, or even a majority of Nirvana’s “fans” were just there for the scene that had been created around the music, or the blood and guts and rawness of it all. Their ideology was being diluted by the sheer number of people it was reaching. What was Nirvana’s album Nevermind about? What was “Smells Like Teen Spirit” trying to say, and even more specifically “In Bloom,” which is the song Sturgill has selected to cover? “In Bloom” was Nirvana spilling its frustration on how the message they were trying to convey through their music was being lost on its audience. Without hearing a peep of it, that in itself seems poetic, or maybe even prophetic. And here Sturgill goes cutting a Nirvana song. This leads us all to Sturgill Simpson, whom many have compared to that biblical “Country Music Savior” or modern day Kurt Cobain that could come in and so completely reshape the current music paradigm, it would usher in an entirely new era of substantive entertainment that would be lasting for generations and save us all from the current scourge of simplistic pap. Or we assign the absolution for all previous burdens to a cult of personality figure from the past. And so as creatures of habit, we take burdens, many of which would be more fairly assigned to our own shoulders or the shoulders of many, and lump them onto this one person. There seems to be something intuitive to the human design to expect all of the ills of society to be resolved by one person, whether that’s a popular music artist, a Presidential candidate, or a Messiah busting through the clouds to usher in the rapture. Undoubtedly, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana were incredibly important to what happened to popular music in the early 90’s, but we’re always looking for just one, when many are usually to blame. 1991 wasn’t just the story of one man, one song, one band, or one album. Nevermind wasn’t even Nirvana’s first record, and it’s popularity was preceded, paralleled, and eventually bested by Pearl Jam’s Ten, and was bolstered by a crowd of other grunge artists who were also important to the revolution in popular music at that time. Just like Hank Williams, just like Townes Van Zandt, the tragic and poetic death of Kurt Cobain has inexorably skewed our perspective on his influence and importance in popular culture. But this theory has always involved a bit of revisionism and myopic perspective. It has been said often about country music, and about popular music in general, that we need a “Nirvana moment”-meaning a point in time when everything we know about music is turned upside down, and an era of more authentic and raw expressions is ushered into the popular culture.
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