Hüsker Dü / YMMV

Alternative Character Interpretation: The narrator of Zen Arcade claims in the 2nd song that his parents are abusive, but we later learn that they've both economically supported him when he fled home and are still trying to communicate with him. Are they really as abusive as we've been lead to believe or is it filtered through his viewpoint?
Awesome Music:
- Pretty much the entirety of Zen Arcade and New Day Rising, and a good number of individual songs as well.
- Flip Your Wig, Candy Apple Grey, and Warehouse: Songs and Stories; while some fans objected to their more polished production, they're still great albums. Even their early releases before they Grew the Beard still have a lot of good songs on them.
Chorus-Only Song: "New Day Rising" and "If I Told You". Justified, since they are also Single Stanza Songs.
Epic Riff: Also lots of them. "Newest Industry", "Chartered Trips", "Somewhere", "Plans I Make", "Reoccurring Dreams", "Pink Turns to Blue" (which even has an Epic Riff in its guitar solo that sounds more than a bit like it may have influenced Metallica’s "Enter Sandman"), "Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill", "Powerline", "It’s Not Funny Anymore", "Divide and Conquer", "Ice Cold Ice"... They’re not all limited to guitar, either; no fan of hardcore is likely to mistake the opening of “Something I Learned Today” (drums) for any other song, while 'Standing by the Sea" has one on bass.
First Installment Wins: Sort of. Zen Arcade isn't actually their first full-length album, but it's their first studio album to break twenty minutes and it's their first release of any sort to break past the thirty-minute mark (unless you count Everything Falls Apart and More, a compilation of early material released in 1993). It remains probably their best-loved album and is considered their most representative and defining release.
Fridge Brilliance:
- "The Tooth Fairy and the Princess" is intended to represent the fact that the earlier parts of the album were a nightmare in the mind of its main character, and the song itself is dreamlike and, indeed, nightmarish (for some listeners, at least). The song features Mould repeatedly whispering "wake up", and the fading in and out of the guitars may feel particularly familiar for anyone who's ever had hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations (hypnagogia: the state immediately before falling asleep; hypnopompia: the state immediately after waking from a dream).
- As mentioned on the main page, "Too Far Down" and "Hardly Getting Over It" are both about depression, but they cover different aspects of the illness. Chronologically, they immediately follow each other on Candy Apple Grey, but are separated by an album side; "Too Far Down" represents hopelessness, an earlier symptom of depression, while "Hardly Getting Over It" represents numbness, an aspect that generally only manifests itself after a lengthy episode. The album side division could thus be considered to stand in for the gap that separates the initial despair and the later numbness the illness causes many of its sufferers.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: "Makes No Sense at All" made it to #2 on the UK Indie chart and Flip Your Wig actually topped the UK Indie album charts. They never had a remotely comparable chart performance in any other country.
Growing the Beard: It is generally agreed that Zen Arcade is where they came into their own musically and conceptually. Some fans may cite Metal Circus as the point where this happened instead, though it's almost always considered a lesser work than Zen Arcade. (These could also be considered examples of Even Better Sequel, since the band's early material is still pretty well regarded.)
- "In A Free Land" might have very well been the first sign of things to come: at 102 bpm it's still a barrage on the ears, but both the vocals and the guitar undertones are a great deal more melodic than previous outings.
Harsher in Hindsight: The Bob Mould song "Friend, You've Got to Fall", after Grant Hart's death.
- Many of their songs take on an even harsher double meaning after learning that Mould and Hart were both in the closet for the '80s.
Mainstream Obscurity: They're well known enough that Grant Hart's death was covered in mainstream sources like The A.V. Club and the New York Times, but comparatively few people have heard their music.
Nightmare Fuel:
- "The Tooth Fairy and the Princess", which may also fall under Creepy Awesome and Nothing Is Scarier. It somehow manages to be beautiful at the same time.
- Some of the band's more dissonant material may also qualify - "The Wit and the Wisdom" and some of the heavier songs on Zen Arcade, maybe.
Signature Song: "Makes No Sense At All" for being very accessible.
Sweet Dreams Fuel: "Don't Know Yet", the instrumental closer to Flip Your Wig.
Tear Jerker: Songs such as "Pink Turns to Blue", "Keep Hanging On", "Don't Know Yet", "Too Far Down", "Hardly Getting Over It", and "No Promise Have I Made" certainly qualify for this trope. In particular, if they made a Surprisingly Gentle Song, chances are it will also be a Tear Jerker.
- Really the entirety of Zen Arcade qualifies, being a Concept Album about a teenager fleeing an abusive and turbulent home life only to discover that the outside world is even more cruel and terrible. At the end of the album, his new girlfriend overdoses and dies on heroin, causing him to break down and for it to be revealed he imagined the entire album and he's actually still living in his abusive household.
Vindicated by History: They never managed to break out of the underground while they were still together, though they would come to be widely regarded as one of the most influential rock bands of their era after their demise. Grant Hart's death received coverage in mainstream sources across the Internet and in print media up to and including the New York Times.
The Woobie: The protagonist of Zen Arcade. He's kind of a jerk, but he's not mean enough to be a Jerkass Woobie.

YMMV / Hüsker Dü

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