For example, a band like Joy Division. Two masterpiece albums in the form of Unknown Pleasures and Closer, and the untimely death of Ian Curtis cut it all short. They were even heading into the direction that New Order eventually went in, and it would have been interesting to see what Ian Curtis would have done if they fully made the leap into electronic music while he was still alive.
This person didn’t understand the question lol. I wouldn’t call 20 years “short.”
Nirvana.
I dunno man. I love Nirvana and they broke through just as I became a teenager.
But I think they would have become lame eventually. The greatest thing about Nirvana was their resistance to the mainstream, they youthful energy and great melodies. I don’t think it would’ve been pretty when Kurt turned 40.
It’s depressing how difficult it is to imagine an alternative universe where Kurt could have made it to 40 and still been Kurt.
Maybe somewhere out there was a 90s with better solutions to mental health problems then “just do heroin until you can’t stand it any more then kill yourself” and we’d have a few thousand more artists running around.
But would it have been enough? I feel like he’d hate the world we built.
Corporations psychopathically wrung every penny they could from his life, art and obvious misery. They didn’t show the slightest remorse for their part in his tragic, lonely death, instead just revealing in the feed frenzy it caused and the millions it put into their bank accounts.
But even after watching them feed artists into the woodchipper over and over again, we still didn’t burn it down. We didn’t even get angry. We just let the neoliberalism wash over us, settling into it like a lukewarm bath.
He couldnt stand racism, homophobia, fundamentalism and toxic masculinity. He was angry, hurt and disillusioned so he wrote poetry and music and put it into the world.
Now the angry, hurt, dissilussioned kids just make far-right memes because a social media exec decided letting them get groomed was worth it for 14c worth of ad impressions.
I just don’t see how he could have made it here, watching everything he hated packaged up in plastic and sold to the world, unable to even hide away with his little family because for a few years he was the hot new product.
New Radicals made only one album, and it’s probably in my top 10 albums of all time.
System of a down. I mean they’re not gone but they’ve only produced music for like 6-7 years and nothing since.
I think they’re pretty much gone, they’ve said they can barely work together due to creative differences. They released 2 singles out of the blue 3 years ago in support of Armenia and I thought there was a chance of a reunion, but I highly doubt it
Sublime.
Fuck, that was so tragic. Would it have changed his life if he had lived a couple more months? Would he have cleaned up and gotten his shit together? We’ll never know. The news really cast a pall over that year, especially for those who already knew of Sublime. It just felt so unfair, man. We had finally come to accept Kurt’s death, were still mourning Shannon’s passing, and now Brad, who never got to reap the fruits of his labor, was gone. He left us a gift, and I mean one hell of a gift because it’s a freaking beautiful album, but it’s hard to not wonder “what if?”
Like Kurt and Shannon, he was just so wonderfully talented and beloved, the world suddenly felt very cold and slightly less bright in his absence. Just so unfair. Pour one out for Brad, he is still sorely missed.
Well said. I also think people would dig more of their catalog/non mainstream recordings. Brad’s voice was magic imo.
Pure gold, without a doubt. I’ve seem them with Rome and while I do like his style, it’s just not the same. I was supposed to see them right before Brad’s passing.
