10 Perfect Rock Albums That No One Saw Coming

As the '80s rock scene started to die down, most of us were in dire need of some sort of upgrade. The entire scene coming off of Sunset was getting staler by the minute, and there was no real scene that was coming out of California to eclipse it either. Maybe we were looking in the wrong location though. The real magic was taking place a few miles up North.

If you were to ask Kurt Cobain though, there's a good chance that even he didn't think that Nevermind would have changed the rock landscape overnight. While Nirvana was originally just a quirky art rock band coming out of the Seattle rock scene, Kurt's knack for songwriting and stringing together one hook after another made the entire rock scene shift on a dime, with fans becoming alternative almost overnight and donning their own slacker outfits, from flannel shirts to ripped jeans.

Then again, it's not like Nevermind doesn't warrant that kind of accolade. Going back through this record, every one of these songs has their own unique identity, taking cues from Beatles-esque melodies to the raw sounds of punk rock on tracks like Territorial Pissings. Kurt could definitely have done without the media circus that flocked around him after the album came out, but once you've made tracks that cut to the bone like this, there's no real going back. You're in the big leagues now, and the rock world was along for the ride, seeing where the next phase of grunge would take them.