Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ Is Still on the Billboard Hot 200 Chart

More than 30 years after its release, Nirvana‘s Nevermind is still charting. The iconic 1991 grunge album just scored a big achievement by spending 700 weeks on the Billboard 200 Chart, according to NME.

This means that Nevermind has spent 13.4 years non-consecutively on the chart, where it currently sits at Number 120. NME notes that the album is the fourth studio LP to accomplish this — if you don’t count greatest hits compilations — in which case it would be the ninth album overall.

Other albums to achieve similar Billboard chart records are: Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon (990 weeks), Metallica’s Black Album (767 weeks), and Bruno Mars’ Doo-Wops & Hooligans (706 weeks).

Initially released in September 1991, Nevermind reached the Billboard 200 top spot in January 1992, knocking Michael Jackson’s Dangerous out of its number one ranking. To date, Nevermind has sold more than 30 million copies.

Dave Grohl Opens Up on ‘Nevermind’s Impact

Previously, in 2021, Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl spoke with NME about the album — in honor of its 30th anniversary — and offered some insight into how the band wrote their hit song “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

“I liked the riff that Kurt came up with because it’s percussive. Those muted, stabbing strums in-between the chords really leant to the pattern of the drum riff,” Grohl said. “To be honest, at that point, we were listening to a lot of Pixies – it was ‘Bossanova’ [era]. And we were just having fun, really. We were just coming up with new song after new song every day. Krist Novoselic, I believe, has boom box recordings of all of these – riff ideas that were never used, songs that were shaped into songs for ‘Nevermind’ (some of them).

“Of course, no one had any psychic foresight to imagine that the song would go on to do what it did,” Grohl added. “We just fuckin’ rocked it in a little rehearsal space that was like a barn. I didn’t know what the lyrics were; Kurt’s melody pattern changed every other time we played it and it wasn’t really until we got into the studio to record it that I realized the power of the song. And not just lyrically or musically, but the groove of the song – it was really powerful. I think everyone was more focused on songs like ‘In Bloom’ or ‘Lithium’ or ‘Breed’; nobody really paid too much attention to ‘Teen Spirit’ while we were recording it. We just thought it was another cool song for the record.”