I am in my early 20s, so I'm sorry to say I did not see Nevermind's initial drop and Nirvana's impact in their moment. I only approached their music when I was about 12, and at that point their place in popular US culture where I lived was so imprinted that their music might as well have been like The Beatles or Beethoven, where it just felt like I had known it all my life or its influence and importance was so immediately obvious. Now, the only album or artist in my lifetime that I can say I've seen that's had a similar level of being the biggest album in the world, with singles that were immensely popular, songwriting that was deep and connected with critics and laymen alike, is To Pimp a Butterfly. Regardless of however you personally feel about it, it has been accepted into the canon of "greatest albums made," and I think it achieved that status by 2020, five years after its release. This is the basis for my question; how long after the release of Nevermind was it truly accepted as one of the best albums of all time, not just "a really good, really popular album," or whatever. TPAB's acceptance into the canon of popular music can be chalked up to several things, including the political context around its release and lack of albums of symbols in the 2010s. However, it definitely took at least a few years for me to start seeing people claim that it was one of the greatest albums ever. I suppose I'm asking for a bit more context as to the development of Nirvana's legacy and acceptance into rockist canon. How long after Nevermind's release could you say "yeah it's one of the greatest albums ever" and it was a respected opinion?
This is a pretty interesting list, and from what I'm gathering from the replies, a big part of Nevermind and Nirvana's legacy are that they actually changed the music landscape almost single-handedly, which not every canonized album since has. Even London Calling is pretty notable and popular to this day. However, the tide has definitely turned against U2 and The Joshua Tree, which is the next most recent album on that list, followed by It Takes a Nation of Millions... and Appetite for Destruction, the latter time has not been kind to, and the former has held its own as a classic but you wouldn't be able to fool someone into thinking it's from any later than 1990. Nevermind, in contrast, was the breakthrough, beginning of, and legitimization of entire subcultures and ways of approaching music.
Time has been very kind to Appetite to Destruction. What are you talking about? It's one of the most popular albums and best-selling (30 million copies/highest-selling debut) and most importantly for relevance, it's one of highest streamed rock albums ever. Pretty much all rock fans even if you don't like GnR acclaim that album.
You're not wrong, but I assume OP is saying that GNR's influence isn't felt very much today. Where if you listen to rock music being made by people in their twenties today, it sounds very adjacent to Nirvana or My Bloody Valentine. As a 35 year old, I honestly don't see a lot of the influence GNR had on rock music just in general. I'd love to be corrected on that too. To me, they've always felt like the last classic rock band.
This is all pretty correct, down to GnR being one of the last classic rock bands (my mild disagreement is that I think The Black Crowes are classic rock and they started releasing music slightly later) but canon is about "best/greatest" albums not "most influential"
You can have influenced 0 people and still have a greatest album if the music is just damn good.