Thom Yorke recalls the first time he heard Nirvana

Thom Yorke has revealed that he immediately understood something was changing the first time he heard "Nevermind" by Nirvana. The frontman of Radiohead, speaking to BBC 6 Music after receiving the Academy Fellowship Award at the Ivor Novello Awards, recalled the almost electrifying impact that the album released in 1991 by Kurt Cobain and co. had on him.
"I remember listening to 'Nevermind' for the first time and thinking: 'Ok, this is it'", Yorke explained, describing that moment as one of those rare shocks capable of redefining the musical landscape. For the British singer, the arrival of Nirvana marked a generational turning point, an event that suddenly changed the way rock music was perceived and what it could become.

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Yorke pointed out that experiences like that are increasingly rare in an industry that tends to look mostly at the past instead of investing in new artists. In his view, audiences should still be able to feel that sense of surprise and disruption that came with the Nirvana explosion in the early 1990s. "In the real world, people need to feel that every couple of years there's an artist who comes along and makes you go: 'Wow!'", he added. "It still happens now and again. That's what I'm talking about".

During the interview, the Radiohead frontman also criticised the way major investors and tech billionaires are buying up historic music catalogues and turning them into collector's assets, without offering any real support to new generations of musicians. According to Yorke, relatively modest investment would be enough to let emerging artists grow, experiment and even make mistakes: "The truth is you only learn through mistakes. Nowadays one mistake is enough to finish you off".

Speaking of the relationship between Radiohead and Nirvana, some time ago, in an interview with Daniel Sarkissian, Paul Kolderie, producer of "OK Computer", suggested that Yorke and co.'s supposed aversion to "Creep" has been widely overstated, drawing a comparison between Thom's attitude and Cobain's towards their own work. "Maybe he doesn't like it when people scream it at gigs, but they don't hate that song", he explained. "That song, thirty years on from its release, is still an important part of their catalogue, and it's one of the reasons they landed a huge publishing deal... They don't hate that song. They don't disown it. And they don't disown the money that came from it".
Sarkissian and Kolderie then compared Cobain's and Yorke's supposed aversion to their own songs, both cases downplayed by testimony from people who worked with them. The producer calls it "exactly the same thing" and claims Yorke was actually proud of his songwriting. "You have to be proud to have had that kind of impact", he states. "It's not easy to pull off. 'Creep' has more streams on Spotify than 'Stairway To Heaven'. Two hundred million more". More than the music itself, then, it was probably the weight of success that proved hard to swallow. And yet, that very element is what allowed them to keep making the music they loved.

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25/05/2026