Soundtrack To Your Angst

anonymous_joe wrote: »

Creep's not at all a bad song. It's in fact one of their best songs. It's very 'obvious' but that's hardly their fault. Radiohead have a mixed relationship with it (see 'My Iron Lung') but then, that's all part of the same process - you create an iconic song, and people will define you by it. People are still happily trotting out the whole 'Radiohead are depressing' line on the basis of Creep and a handful of other songs from their early catalogue.

Smells Like Teen Spirit is even more ubiquitous and overplayed. I still love it. It's also the sound of selling out, commercialism and betraying your roots, but fúck it, it's a great song. ^^

Oh, me not liking Creep has nothing to do with its popularity, or the fact that its overplayed, or that people define a band that offer SO much more by it, it's simply the fact that I really don't think it's a good song.

I'd also say it's more of a depressed student anthem than an angsty teenage song.

As for SLTS, I don't think it really sounds like selling out or anything, just a good song.

An Fhile wrote: »

i) A good suggestion, but I don't like the way you just dismissed my opinion outright.

ii) Opinion > fact. It's certainly one of their most over-played songs, but I wouldn't consider it too far below the standards of "Karma Police", "Street Spirit", etc.

iii) I am aware of how to spell "epitome", but thanks for going to the effort to point out my error. I was under the impression that everyone is entitled to a mistake now and then...

While I appreciate that some people are ever so sensitive about criticisms of music and tend to find any negative opinion without an explicit "This is just my opinion" clause offensive, I'm afraid I don't heed that. Yes, everything about music is opinion, I don't understand why people just don't take that to be an implicit aspect of any musical conversation.

btw, Karma Police and Street Spirit are all right, but nowhere near Radiohead's best songs.

Nirvana were always one of the more accessible bands from that whole scene in the first place though. I don't think the band actually anticipated Nevermind selling so much, I mean they fecked off to Europe to support Sonic Youth on their tour* right after it was released. Hardly something a band who wrote songs deliberately intended to be accessible and expecting to sell a lot of albums would do.

*On a side note, have you seen 1991: The Year Punk Broke, the SY video diary of that tour? If not you should try and get your hands on it, really great stuff, and there's footage of SY and Nirvana playing in Dublin and Cork too.