Nevermind at 35: The Album That Accidentally Ended an Era and Started a Worse One

Nevermind sold thirty million copies. Cobain spent the remaining three years of his life watching that number become the prison.

The production is still the most discussed variable: Butch Vig made it cleaner than the band wanted, smoother than the lyrics deserved. Whether that was a commercial miscalculation or a commercial masterstroke depends on which outcome you are weighing. The music is undamaged. The career it created was not.