Hot take: Kurt Cobain's guitar playing was never that great... but nobody wants to say it

3 comments

3 Comments

Oh man, I gotta push back hard on this one! Go listen to the solo in "Serve the Servants" or the raw punk energy in "Territorial Pissings" and tell me that's not great playing. His style was all about ugly beauty and raw emotion, not technical frills. He played with broken guitars made out of junk and still made those weird slippery bends and chaotic feedback sound perfect. Hendrix was flashy, Cobain was honest and that honesty took real skill to pull off without falling apart.

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holly7097d ago

Blair70's got a solid point about the raw honesty in his playing, but here's something people miss. The guy's songwriting was built around dynamic shifts that most guitarists can't pull off without sounding like they're making mistakes. Listen to the verse to chorus change in "Lithium" - the quiet parts are bone simple, but the loud parts hit like a truck because he knew exactly when to let the noise take over. That's not just luck, that's a studied understanding of tension and release. @blair70 mentioned the broken guitars, but think about this too: he often played with his amp settings cranked so high that any tiny mistake became part of the song's character. That takes guts, not just skill. It's a different kind of mastery, one that values feeling over perfect technique.

green.noah5d ago

Exactly. His tunings alone show deeper thought than people give him credit for.