Today (September 24th) marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Nirvana's Nevermind. The band's second full-length album was its first for a major label, Geffen Records, and within months of its release it became perhaps the most important rock album of its era.
It propelled alternative music into the mainstream, created a cultural anthem in the song "Smells Like Teen Spirit," ushered in a new wave of rock bands, and helped to anoint the band's reluctant frontman, Kurt Cobain, as the spokesperson for an entire generation until his suicide in 1994.
Almost four months after its release, Nevermind hit Number One on the Billboard 200 albums chart, turning the "grunge" genre into a phenomenon. Just 46,000 copies of Nevermind were shipped to record stores when it came out. The record debuted at Number 144 and hit Number One on January 11th, 1992.