Billboard’s Greatest Pop Star of 1992: Nirvana (2024)

(In 2018, the Billboard staff released a list project of its choices for the Greatest Pop Star of every year, going back to 1981. Read our entry below on why Nirvana was our Greatest Pop Star of 1992 — with our ’92 Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars at the bottom — and find the rest of our picks for every year up to present day here.)

The baby chasing that dollar in the swimming pool. The punk rock cheerleaders hyping up a crowd of head-banging, thrashing teens. That angelic head of blonde hair and those piercing blue eyes matched with a voice that could shred a phone book with one primal scream. In 1991, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana were pop: Not the pop you were used to, with neat hooks, programmed beats and dance moves, but rather jagged, jumbled pop that exploded on the radio and MTV seemingly overnight, re-ordering the universe in its own image.

Bryan Adams, Paula Abdul, Color Me Badd and Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch topped the Billboard Hot 100 during the summer of 1991, just before Nirvana’s breakthrough hit, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” began its rise into the top 10. In the post-hair metal, mid-gangsta rap era when the charts were as confused as Generation X, a raggedy trio of saviors roared in from Seattle dressed in flannel, ripped jeans, a hairshirt of angst and the noisiest pop tunes to ever conquer the mainstream.

Before it blew a hole through the blindingly bright pop and R&B ruling the Hot 100, Nirvana’s then-new label home, Geffen/DGC, had very modest expectations for the band’s second album, Nevermind. How modest? DGC shipped fewer than 50,000 copies of the explosive 13-track collection that, within six months of its Sept. 24, 1991, release date, would be talked about as a modern classic on par with the most revered work of The Beatles and The Clash.

Whether they wanted to, singer Kurt Cobain, bassist Krist Novoselic and whirling dervish drummer Dave Grohl achieved the rarest of things with Nevermind: a singular work that turned the entire music (and fashion) business on its head in the (relative) blink of an eye. In under a year, it paved the way for a Marc Jacobs grunge-way show, a wave of copycat loud-quiet-loud bands, and the anointing of a new rock god whose image was suddenly everywhere.

Grohl’s bashing beats and Cobain’s mumble-to-a-scream vocals on “Teen Spirit” produced an anthem for dispossessed youth looking for teenage kicks, helping Nirvana infiltrate and upend mainstream culture in a way the first wave of punks never have dreamed of. Magazine covers, chart success and breathless MTV coverage followed wherever the trio roamed, an omnipresence that began in late 1991 and carried all the way through 1992.

And to think it started with a song that had no reason to succeed as a lead single. “Teen Spirit,” released in September of ‘91, is all kinds of wrong. It’s long (5 minutes), the chorus makes zero sense (“I feel stupid and contagious/ Here we are now, entertain us/ A mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido”) and its loud-quiet-loud dynamic range and lyrical inscrutability (which would become the band’s signature) flouted just about every rule of pop/rock radio at the time.

But 25 years after punk broke, Nirvana broke it again. “Teen Spirit” charted an unlikely rise to No. 6 on the Hot 100 by January 1992, while Nevermind toppled the biggest colossus in pop on the Billboard 200: Jackson, whose Dangerous ended its run at the top as the calendar flipped into the new year and Nevermind hit No. 1 on Jan. 11, 1992. (It would remain on the Billboard 200 for nearly two years.) It was a near-literal changing of the guards, but also a generational re-shuffling, as pop platitudes were moshed over by a ragged trio with a lot on their minds and a bracing, semi-nihilistic sound that would dominate rock (and pop) radio for the next four years.

The album’s slow-rocket ride was largely a result of the heavy rotation of the equally iconic “Teen Spirit” on MTV. With Nevermind moving a now-unthinkable 300,000 physical copies a week at its peak, the song Geffen thought would be the group’s breakthrough, the morose “Come As You Are,” dropped in March, reaching No. 32 on the Hot 100 as the second of three singles to chart from the album. (Follow-ups “Lithium” and “In Bloom” followed them to MTV dominance.)

Despite his obvious love for the Beatles and massive hooks, Cobain was a reluctant musical savant and tortured poet, whose chronic drug issues and painful shyness belied an uncanny ability to twist his morose lyrics and melodies into somehow hummable songs. He also clearly got the responsibilities of the gig he seemed ambivalent about — receiving tabloid attention as half of grunge’s first power couple after marrying indie rock’s reigning queen of chaos, Hole’s Courtney Love, in February, wearing a “Corporate Magazines Still Suck” homemade t-shirt for the band’s first Rolling Stone cover in May, and getting into a feud with Guns N’ Roses leader Axl Rose at the 1992 MTV VMAs that September. (The group also won two awards for “Spirit,” and rocked the house with a riotous “Lithium” performance.)

The force of Nirvana’s peerlessly unlikely success story was massive enough to quickly open the doors for bands like Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains to become household names, to make Seattle one of the country’s cultural epicenters (as seen in that year’s Cameron Crowe-directed, grunge-heavy rom-com Singles), and to briefly turn MTV and even top 40 radio into alt-rock’s province. Hits are one thing, but the band’s ability to drag the definition of pop so far left of center is a generational change that’s truly rare, and a thing to cherish.

Honorable Mention: Boyz II Men (“End of the Road,” “Uhh Ahh,”), Whitney Houston (The Bodyguard, “I Will Always Love You”) Guns N’ Roses (“November Rain,” “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “Live and Let Die”)

Rookie of the Year: TLC

As unlikely as Nirvana’s success was, certainly nobody saw the debut album from quirky Atlanta trio TLC blowing up either, thanks to the indelible Hot 100 top 10 smashes “Baby-Baby-Baby,” “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg” and “What About Your Friends.” In addition to their vivacious mix of pop, R&B and hip-hop, T-Boz, Left Eye and Chilli brought inimitable attitude to their debut, Ooooooohhh… On the TLC Tip. Eventually rising to No. 14 on the Billboard 200 on its way to global sales of six million, the album set the template for the group’s signature mix of emotional and topical songs about empowerment and resilience, with their playful attitude and a safe sex message in the video for “Beg.”

Comeback of the Year: Eric Clapton

A mostly forgotten soundtrack to a cops-undercover-as-druggies drama starring Jason Patric and Jennifer Jason Leigh, rock god Eric Clapton’s work on the OST to the film Rush thrust the guitar legend into his brightest spotlight in decades for the most devastating reasons, thanks to his surprise hit “Tears in Heaven.” Written with lyricist Will Jennings (“My Heart Will Go On”), Clapton’s highest-charting Hot 100 single (No. 2 that March) is also his most tragic, a reaction to the death of his four year-old son Conor, who fell from a 53rd-floor window a year earlier. The song was also recorded for a 1992 MTV Unplugged album, which won two Grammy Awards, topped the Billboard 200 and became Clapton’s best-selling effort to date, at more than 26 million sold worldwide.

(Read on to our Greatest Pop Star of 1993 here, or head back to the full list here.)