For my friends and me, Nirvana’s unglamorous, D.I.Y. It was exciting to see something so unexpected take off like that. The album would eventually go diamond, selling more than ten million copies in the U.S. 1 spot (displacing Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous”). 144 on the Billboard album chart, took over the No. In January of 1992, “Nevermind,” which had débuted modestly, at No. Nobody-not Nirvana’s label, its management, or the band itself-was prepared for the velocity of its ascent. The author at age sixteen, sporting a T-shirt inspired by Cobain in the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video. There was more space for Cobain to sing and croon, not just shout-though he did that, too. But the new album was prettier and more dynamic, powered by Grohl’s end-of-days drumming and Novoselic’s friendly, loping bass lines. 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.

Nirvana nevermind cover change