It might seem like an oxymoron, but Kurt Cobain’s success came from his outsider status. Forging grunge music around biological imagery, anti-establishment views, and themes of purity and impurity, Nirvana found acclaim through Cobain’s unrelenting artistic drive and their marketable form of metal.
As Nirvana found worldwide success and Cobain became a grunge icon and one of the most influential figures in alternative music, the frontman still retained his outsider beginnings. Accordingly, he took an interest in outsider music. Famously a fan of Daniel Johnston’s home-recorded cassettes, the void of musical ability in The Shaggs, and the aggressive garage sound of The Sonics, Cobain’s taste in music was both wide and niche.
Amidst the plethora of outsider artists Cobain declared his love for, the singer once recalled that one even had the ability to make him cry. During an interview with Melody Maker in 1992, amidst recommendations of The Shaggs, The Wipers, and Young Marble Giants, the frontman shared his love for a Japanese pop-punk girl band named Shonen Knife.
Shonen Knife was formed in the early 1980s in Osaka, making music that combined mundane, playful lyricism, cutesy aesthetics, and pop-punky guitars and drums. Cobain recalls that, after listening to them for a week, he just started crying. Despite his vast experience in outsider counterculture and underground music, he was shocked that a band from a completely different culture could have this effect on him.
He explained: “I just couldn’t believe that three people from a totally different culture could write songs as good as those. Because I’d never heard any other Japanese music or artist who ever came up with anything good. Everything about them is just so fucking endearing. I’m sure that I was twice as nervous to meet them as they were to meet us.”
Cobain was such a big fan of the trio that he asked them to support Nirvana on a European tour in 1991 and again on a tour across the US two years later. At the time Cobain offered them the support slot, Shonen Knife had no idea who Nirvana were. However, the band were yet to release Nevermind, which would catapult them into stardom.
In a Rolling Stone interview, lead singer-songwriter and guitarist Noako Yamano explained that, upon receiving the offer, she went down to the record store to buy one of their CDs. Despite thinking they might be “scary” due to their grunge aesthetics, the tour subverted Yamano’s expectations as she learned that the band members were all “nice” and “good”. She even recalls how Dave Grohl helped them set up their drum kit.
Though Shonen Knife were indifferent to Nirvana’s success, Cobain and Grohl were overjoyed to have them on the tour. Grohl told MTV that crowds were initially “baffled” by them but that they always won the audience over: “Every show people were almost in tears.”
Cobain was no exception, adding, “I was emotional the whole time. I cried every night.”
Shonen Knife are still going strong, having released their 24th album, Our Best Place, just last year. Nirvana boosted Shonen Knife into the international public eye, provided Western music fans with a whole new world of punk to delve into, and left Cobain with tears in his eyes each night.
