When listening to music, I find it important that it makes me feel something. That puts me in a certain mood or let me drift off to a different state of mind, a different life even and one of the bands that does it perfectly is Nirvana.

When I listen to the scratchy voice of Kurt Cobain and the badass, crunchy guitar sounds, it puts me in two type of moods. Firstly I imagine sitting in a studio in L.A. The beach is nearby, so close that I can almost hear the waves slowly collapsing over and over again. On my lap sits a guitar, in my mouth a cigarette maybe. Around me is my band and we are recording an album. We are the coolest people ever, because we seem careless. That is what Nirvana feels like: being careless. Not that you don’t have things to worry about, but that you choose not to, because you just don’t give a fuck about anything. So you live your life how you want to and that is what you will keep doing until the day you die.
Nirvana is badass, and that is what it makes me feel like. Like I don’t have to care anymore and it makes me not want to anymore. Not in a destructive and depressive way, but in a cool way. It makes me want to have a laugh with some friends, drink a beer and play guitar effortlessly, because I can.
At the same time, it makes me want to be alone. I have never skated in my whole life, but it makes me want to put my hood up, earphones in and shut the world off, to live in this ‘Nirvana world’ where I don’t have to be or do anything. Where I skate through the rain and I am oblivious to the world. It makes me feel like I was a teenager in the nineties, even though I was never alive then. As if I am sixteen and skating through rainy New York, feeling alone and misunderstood but find comfort in Cobains voice, because he too feels so misunderstood.
Every Nirvana song captures teen angst so well and makes you understand that teen angst isn’t just for teens, because even after being teenager you can still feel misunderstood and alone.

Nirvana gives you a feeling that you aren’t alone, that nothing matters and that you get to make the rules of the whole world, because why shouldn’t you? It makes you want to rebel against your whole society, because no one ever really does anything and that drives you mad. How can people be so ignorant and oblivious to the world? Nirvana makes you feel like you are the only one that truly understand how things work, but the beauty of the music is that while it wants you to care about the world, at the same time it makes you not care at all. It recognizes the hopeless state of wanting to do something but having no clue where to begin and therefore just being angry at the world and ignoring humanity in its whole.

The music makes me want to jump and cry and laugh and rebel all at the same time and I think that is why it it so timeless. We have all felt misunderstood and alone at times. We all wanted to have a badass band and record an album in L.A at some point and we all felt like creating a whole new world, because this one sucks too much. Nirvana’s music has created a new world and that is why we love to listen to it, because it is a way of escaping somewhere, where we are understood and heard. Nirvana makes teen angst valid and Cobains scratchy voice is one that tells you that everything will be okay, he too has been there.

Nirvana’s music is outstanding for a million reasons and what it makes me feel is just one of them, but I know that the moment I feel I am alone in this world and I want to rebel against everything, I will put on Nirvana, because only Nirvana will understand the desperate cry that comes from inside me.