Let’s remember when ‘Bleach,’ the debut album from Nirvana, was released, on this day in 1989 (June 15)
The origin story for the greatest band to come out of my hometown of Aberdeen, WA, celebrates an important milestone today. It’s the thirtieth anniversary of the album that started it all.
According to Wikipedia:
Bleach is the debut studio album by the American rock band Nirvana, released on June 15, 1989 by Sub Pop. The main recording sessions took place at Reciprocal Recording in Seattle, Washington between December 1988 and January 1989.
Bleach failed to chart upon its original release, but was well received by critics. The album was re-released internationally by Geffen Records in 1992 following the success of Nirvana’s second album, Nevermind (1991). The re-release debuted at number 89 on the Billboard 200, and peaked at number 33 on the UK Albums Chartand 34 on the Australian albums chart. In 2009, Sub Pop released a 20th anniversary edition of Bleach featuring a live recording of a Nirvana show in Portland, Oregon from 1990 as extra material. Since its release in 1989, Bleach has sold more than 1,900,000 copies in the United States alone.[2] It is Sub Pop’s best-selling album to date.[3] In April 2019, Bleach was ranked №13 on Rolling Stone’s “50 Greatest Grunge Albums” list.[4]
…and…
According to [Kurt] Cobain, the music on Bleach conformed with the grunge genre Sub Pop heavily endorsed. “There was this pressure from Sub Pop and the grunge scene to play ‘rock music’”, Cobain said, and noted that he “[stripped] it down and [made] it sound like Aerosmith.” Cobain also felt he had to fit the expectations of the grunge sound to build a fanbase, and hence suppressed his arty and pop songwriting traits while crafting the record.[12] Krist Novoselic said in a 2001 interview with Rolling Stone that the band had played a tape in their tour van that had an album by The Smithereens on one side and one by the extreme metal band Celtic Frost on the other, and noted that the combination probably played an influence as well.[13] The songs were described as “deliberately bleak, claustrophobic, and lyrically sparse, with none of the manic derangement or sense of release of the live performance”. Cobain said that the song structures were “one–dimensional”, and said that he sought to present a more “polished and urbane side of happy”.[14]
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