Weezer Frontman Thinks Nirvana Would Have Hated Their Music, Here’s Why

For some listeners, Weezer and Nirvana are two sides of the same 1990s rock coin, but for others, the two bands couldn’t have been more different. Weezer’s frontman, Rivers Cuomo, is in the latter camp, which is why he’s convinced that the Nirvana frontman would’ve hated his music.

Of course, would is the operative word here. Kurt Cobain died in April 1994, one month before Weezer released their eponymous debut, the “Blue Album.” So, although Cuomo has no way of really knowing what Cobain might’ve thought about his music, he strongly believes he wouldn’t have liked it.

Why Weezer Thinks Nirvana Would Have Hated Them

If Nirvana was the band that moved the 1990s into grunge, Weezer was the band that directed listeners away from it. While the two bands weren’t polar opposites, Weezer’s 1994 debut marked a shift toward pop-punk that was similar but generally cleaner and brighter than grunge. Rivers Cuomo doesn’t think Kurt Cobain would’ve preferred the change.

Speaking about Courtney Love’s positive connection to Weezer in a 2024 interview with NME, Cuomo said, “Courtney is a real icon to our generation and feels like our big sister. You really want somebody like that to approve of what you’re doing, and Kurt didn’t live long enough to hear us. But I’m assuming he would not have approved of us.”

Cuomo shared similar sentiments ten years earlier in a Rolling Stone interview. The Weezer frontman explained that Cobain died before he ever got the chance to meet him. “I would love to have met him, but then again, I was afraid of it because I was quite certain that he would despise my music and everything we stood for.” When speaking to NME, Cuomo said, “It seemed like the music [Kurt] looked up to was rougher around the edges, more punk and less commercial.”

Rivers Cuomo Was Certainly a Kurt Cobain Fan

Even with the knowledge—no matter how true or false—that Kurt Cobain wouldn’t enjoy Rivers Cuomo’s more polished sound, that didn’t stop the Weezer frontman from labeling himself as Nirvana’s “biggest fan in the nineties.” As he told Rolling Stone, “I’m sure there are a zillion people who would make that claim, but I was just so passionately in love with the music that it made me feel sick. It made my heart hurt.”

Cuomo said he distinctly remembers the first time he ever heard Nirvana as a new employee at Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard in 1990. “The other far-hipper employees at Tower kind of educated me,” he explained. “I remember they played “Sliver” for me, and I was immediately in love.”

“It had the aggression that I needed from my upbringing as a metalhead, but paired with strong, major-key chord progressions and catchy, emotional melodies and lyrics that felt so nostalgic and sweet and painful. It just sounded like it was coming from the deepest part inside of me—a part which I hadn’t yet been able to come close to articulating in my own music.” He later said Nirvana’s 1991 release Nevermind inspired Weezer to release their first album.

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