List of awards and nominations received by Nirvana

Nirvana awards and nominations
Cobain and Novoselic at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards
Totals[a]
Wins17
Nominations27
Note
  1. ^ Certain award groups do not simply award one winner. They recognize several different recipients, have runners-up, and have third place. Since this is a specific recognition and is different from losing an award, runner-up mentions are considered wins in this award tally. For simplification and to avoid errors, each award in this list has been presumed to have had a prior nomination.

Nirvana was an American rock band formed by singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington. The band went through a succession of drummers and eventually settled on Dave Grohl, who joined the band in 1990.[1] They have released three studio albums: Bleach (1989), Nevermind (1991), and In Utero (1993). The first album was released on the Sub Pop record label, while the remaining albums were released by DGC Records.[2]

The band received several awards and nominations in their debut year in 1992, including nominations for Favorite New Heavy Metal/Hard Rock Artist from the American Music Awards, Best Alternative Music Performance for Nevermind from the Grammy Awards, and Video of the Year and Viewer's Choice for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from the MTV Video Music Awards. They received the Best Alternative Video award for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Best New Artist from the MTV Video Music Awards in the same year. The song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was also nominated for Best Rock Song at the 1993 Grammy Awards, but it lost to "Layla" by Eric Clapton. Clapton's win over Nirvana would later be named one of the "10 biggest upsets" in Grammy history by Entertainment Weekly.[3] After receiving five nominations from the Grammy Awards without winning any of them, the band finally received the Best Alternative Music Performance award for MTV Unplugged In New York in 1996. Overall, Nirvana has received twelve awards from twenty-five nominations.

  1. ^ Harrington, Richard; Leiby, Richard (1994-04-09). "Nirvana Singer Found Dead". The Washington Post.
  2. ^ "Main Albums". allmusic. Retrieved 2008-10-11.
  3. ^ Endelman, Michael (2007). "Grammy's 10 Biggest Upsets". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on 2012-07-03. Retrieved 2008-10-11.