September Sixth: Candles, Grief, and Grunge Collide

On September sixth in nineteen sixty-six, the legendary jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane gave one of the final performances of his life, though the date most music historians circle in red on this day actually belongs to a much louder, much scrappier corner of the musical universe. On this date in nineteen ninety-seven, the world watched Elton John's reworked tribute to Princess Diana, Candle in the Wind nineteen ninety-seven, become an instant global phenomenon following her funeral, which had taken place that very day at Westminster Abbey with Elton performing the song live before millions. The single, a rewrite of his nineteen seventy-three tribute originally written for Marilyn Monroe, would go on to become the best-selling physical single in the history of recorded music, moving something like thirty three million copies worldwide and forever intertwining a pop song with a moment of raw, global grief. But let's have some fun and dig into another thread from this date, because September sixth has a wonderfully chaotic rock and roll pedigree too. It was on this day in nineteen ninety-one that Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit was released as a single in the United States, though it had already begun creeping onto radio and MTV in the weeks prior. The song, with its famously simple four chord structure and Kurt Cobain's snarling, half mumbled lyrics, would go on to detonate like a cultural bomb, dragging grunge out of the Pacific Northwest basements and into the mainstream, dethroning Michael Jackson from the top of the charts, and essentially closing the curtain on the big hair excess of eighties rock almost overnight. Producer Butch Vig has talked about how even he didn't fully grasp what they had captured in the studio, and Cobain himself later expressed a strange, prickly discomfort with just how enormous the song became, joking that he was tired of playing it before the ink was even dry on its success. So on this single square on the calendar, you've got two wildly different flavors of musical history colliding. On one hand, a delicate piano ballad turned into the biggest selling single of all time, born out of tragedy and monarchy and mourning. On the other, a distorted, sneering anthem of teenage alienation that kicked open the door for an entire generation of flannel wearing outsiders. Candle in the Wind soothed a grieving world with nostalgia and orchestral strings, while Smells Like Teen Spirit set fire to the old guard with feedback and fury. If you want a little musical whiplash, just imagine a jukebox that plays those two back to back. It's proof that music history rarely moves in one straight line. Sometimes it tiptoes in on a piano ballad, and sometimes it kicks the door down with a Fender Jaguar and a scream. Some great Deals https://amzn.to/49SJ3Qs For more check out http://www.quietplease.ai