Thanks to The Batman, Nirvana’s popularity is resurging all over the world.
Nirvana are currently the 138th most streamed artist on Spotify. Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic’s 1991 album, Nevermind, has jumped from #70 to #33 in ARIA’s Top 50 Albums chart this week. Nevermind is also sitting at #1 in US charts tabulator Billboard’s Top Rock Albums chart.
The band’s prevailing popularity can be partly attributed to filmmaker Matt Reeves, the director and co-writer of the new, Robert Pattinson-starring DC Films production, The Batman. ‘Something in the Way’, the final track on Nevermind, appears twice in the film.
An orchestral remix of ‘Something in the Way’ featured in the film’s official trailer. In December, Reeves told Gizmodo that ‘Something in the Way’ influenced him when writing the script for The Batman. “[Pattinson has] that Kurt Cobain thing, where he looks like a rock star, but you also feel like he could be a recluse,” Reeves said.
Reeves didn’t want the Bruce Wayne of The Batman to be a playboy. “There’s another version who had gone through a great tragedy and become a recluse,” said Reeves. “So I started making this connection to Gus Van Sant’s Last Days, and the idea of this fictionalised version of Kurt Cobain being in this kind of decaying manor.”
Paul Dano, who plays The Batman‘s primary villain, the Riddler, told NME that ‘Something in the Way’ had a significant influence on how he approached the character. “In the script Matt had actually mentioned ‘Something In The Way’ by Nirvana,” Dano said. “So that right there, that song, those words, that refrain, became hugely important to me. Nirvana became a part of that [character].”
