American alternative rock group whose breakthrough album, Nevermind (1991), announced a new musical style ( grunge) and gave voice to the post-baby boom young adults known as Generation X. The members were Kurt Cobain (b. February 20, 1967, Aberdeen, Washington, U.S.—d. April 5, 1994, Seattle), Krist Novoselic (b. May 16, 1965, Compton, California), and Dave Grohl (b. January 14, 1969, Warren, Ohio, U.S.).

From Aberdeen, near Seattle, Nirvana was part of the postpunk underground scene that centred on K Records of Olympia, Washington, before they recorded their first single, "Love Buzz," and album, Bleach, for Sub Pop, an independent record company in Seattle. They refined this mix of 1960s-style pop and 1970s heavy metal–hard rock on their first album for a major label, Geffen; Nevermind, featuring the anthemic hit "Smells Like Teen Spirit," was the first full expression of punk concerns to achieve mass market success in the United States.

Nirvana used extreme changes of tempo and volume to express anger and alienation: a quiet, tuneful verse switched into a ferocious, distorted chorus. In the fashion of many 1970s punk groups, guitarist-singer-songwriter Cobain set powerful rock against sarcastic, allusive lyrics that explored hopelessness, surrender, and male abjection (“As a defense I'm neutered and spayed,” he sang in "On a Plain" ). Imbued with the punk ethic that to succeed was to fail, Nirvana abhorred the media onslaught that accompanied their rapid ascent. Success brought celebrity, and Cobain, typecast as a self-destructive rock star, courted controversy both with his advocacy of feminism and gay rights and with his embroilment in a sequence of drug- and gun-related escapades—a number of which involved his wife, Courtney Love (Love, Courtney), leader of the band Hole.