Like “Bleach,” it featured songs that alternated between bludgeoning, distorted guitars and sweet, catchy melodies. “Nevermind” cost much more, and there was a lot more oversight. Nirvana’s first album, “Bleach,” had been produced for just six hundred dollars, and it more or less sounded like it: muffled, dingy, like early-draft Beatles songs swallowed in noise. The cover of “Nevermind,” which featured a naked baby swimming toward a dollar bill, seemed a sly and hilarious allusion to signing with Geffen. Perhaps there was a strange excitement to smuggling something unusual into the mainstream. The label had signed Sonic Youth, respected pioneers of New York’s avant-garde rock scene, and a band whose trajectory and choices Cobain admired. A few years earlier, Geffen had begun wagering that “alternative rock”-a category that began appearing on the Billboard charts around that time-could be a profitable niche. The band, which now consisted of Cobain, the bassist Krist Novoselic, and the drummer Dave Grohl, had signed with a major label, Geffen Records. When Nirvana released its second album, “Nevermind,” in the fall of 1991, everything changed-for me, and for the pop-music ecosystem. There was a romance to pledging allegiance to these lost causes and underground voices.

1991 nirvana nevermind cover