A new editorial asks if there has been a band as significant or important as Nirvana in the last fourteen years.

As the writer explains:

It's been over 14 years since Nirvana appeared on MTV's Unplugged, but I'll be damned if I've come across a band over the past decade that has created as much sway and heat as this 3 piece outfit from Olympia did back in the early '90s.

I repeat my challenge: Please name me a band over the past 10 years who has come close to Nirvana in sheer impact (and, I'm not talking about some indie band that hardly anyone listens to or some ring–tone fueled, Top–40 creation who no one will remember in 6 months. I'm talking IMPACT here, people. Combining art AND commerce. Both big AND authentic. Dig?).

It's a very good question. The band literally defined the 90s, stealing the musical landscape from image–obsessed glam rock and sugary pop music and bringing the underground into the mainstream. Most popular bands that followed, from Jane's Addiction to Green Day to the Offspring to Fall Out Boy owe Nirvana a debt for opening the door for "indie" artists.

Some argue that Nirvana's impact has been aggrandised over the years due to frontman Kurt Cobain's suicide, but much of the impact that Nirvana had occurred long before that fateful day. Even influential bands like Fugazi never really reached the apex of mainstream success and critical acclaim that Nirvana shared in its heyday. Speaking of Fugazi, Guy Picciotto once said of Nevermind:

It was like our record could have been a hobo pissing in the forest for the amount of impact it had. […] It felt like we were playing ukuleles all of a sudden because of the disparity of the impact of what they did"