I know it’s over and it never really began

Teenage obsessions are a strange and terrible thing. How, exactly, does an album – which is, after all, nothing more than a recording of some music – seem to embed itself so completely into our identity? How does it become something so crucially important that we can’t imagine our world without it?

With hindsight I feel rather embarrassed about the effect that Nevermind had on me. I was 14 when it came out. Back then, kids were divided into “Moshers” – those who liked rock –  and “Ravers” – those who liked dance music –  and I was, at best, a fledgling mosher flirting with bands like Guns ’n’ Roses to my great, great shame.

I’d been enjoying the Weird Al Yankovich parody ‘Smells like Nirvana’ on the radio without ever having heard the original song when It Happened.