The song is forgettable noise, but you can only assume that was entirely the point. It just seemed to pair up so well. When hunting for a new drummer, Cobain and Novoselic cited both bands in an ad they placed in Seattle rock mag The Rocket. One that doesn’t crop up, however, is the Meat Puppets’ II, a slice of mystic country from sunbaked Arizona punk brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood. “Endless, Nameless,” Nevermind (1991). Watch Queue Queue. one of the band members fired back. For the first year of the series, the Sub Pop Singles Club released music by underground luminaries like Sonic Youth, Fugazi, and the Flaming Lips, bands that have remain touchstones in alternative rock ever since. “Stay Away,” Nevermind (1991) /”Pay to Play,” DGC Rarities: Vol.1 (1994). Albini's production here is stunning in its simplicity: Grohl's drums, captured with that famous bone-dry clarity, thwack through the speakers, and the frontman's voice explodes with a natural reverb on the first note of each verse's second line. That’s a lot for one song to handle, and Cobain’s anger feels ineffectively scattershot. "Mrs. Butterworth," With the Lights Out (2004)Cobain rants about poverty ("Maybe someday I can get rid of that piss-stained mattress I've been sleeping on"), an overall low quality of life ("My life is shit, shit," "I'm gonna die; who wants to say? RELATED: 10 Huge TV Shows That Defined The 1990s This version features Pat Smear on the second guitar, who … As Courtney Love’s management put it when she sued to prevent Novoselic and Grohl from releasing it, the song was a “potential ‘hit’ of extraordinary artistic and commercial value.” And it did top Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Tracks chart when it finally saw daylight. The band remains a gateway for new listeners, a bridge between generations and extremes. Kudos to Cobain for trying to showcase the band's quirky, avant-garde side at this early stage. Nirvana (90s US grunge band) Nirvana (60s band from the UK) Nirvana 2002 (Swedish death metal band) Nirvana (French band from Martigues, activ during the 70s.) The credits curiously only listed Love's name, though Novoselic confirmed to The Stranger in 1998 that "Old Age" was a Cobain composition. There’s something to this skeletal song that again reminds me of those first fraught months of parenthood — sleep cycles ruptured by screams, bodies turned into feeding mechanisms for newborns. For most of my own “teen spirit” years, this was my dark-horse favorite on Nevermind, and it remains visceral and thorny after all this time. "Return of the Rat," Eight Songs for Greg Sage and the Wipers (1992)Nirvana did the Wipers an enormous solid by covering the Portland punk band's "Return of the Rat" for a tribute album. "Paper Cuts," Bleach (1989)Melvins drummer Dale Crover powers the breakneck attack of this metallic deep cut, one of three that began life as a 10-song pre-Bleach demo. "To put [that song] on Bleach was a risk," he said. "Endless, Nameless," Nevermind (1991)Ah, hidden tracks: now an adorable relic, then a genuine bolt of lightning through your headphones. "Pennyroyal Tea" addresses his fragile state plainly: "I'm on warm milk and laxatives / cherry-flavored antacids," he sings over a stark acoustic strum, building to a cathartic chorus that references an herbal abortifacient. But the arrangement is more intricate than one might expect, with Dave Crover's nuanced, cymbal-heavy drums leading the riffs through sections of 4/4 and 7/8. The Academy Bumps Best International Feature Shortlist Up to 15. The track peaks with a furious instrumental climax and a blaring guitar solo that resembles a short-circuiting dial-up modem. The ardor Nirvana showed for the cheeky late-’80s Scottish indie-pop band the Vaselines was profound: It was strong enough for them to reunite to open for Nirvana in Edinburgh, enough to have Sub Pop reissue their entire catalog, enough for Nirvana to cover three of their songs, and enough for Nirvana to serve as boosters for Vaselines front man Eugene Kelly’s next band, Eugenius. And the song's ubiquity hounded Cobain for the rest of his career, signifying his conflicted relationship with fame. Courtney Love revamped it for Hole's MTV Unplugged set — hardly a worthy preview of the actual Nirvana version, which finally surfaced on the band's best-of set in 2002. Yes, classic ’70s rock hangs over Nirvana but just as vital were Greg Sage and the Wipers. "If You Must," With the Lights Out (2004)Cobain accidentally channels Bob Dylan on this dissonant waltz from their January 1988 demo. As the tour for 1993's In Utero wore on, you could tell that Kurt Cobain had fallen out of … "Verse Chorus Verse," With the Lights Out (2004)The semi-ironic title "Verse Chorus Verse" clearly meant a lot to Cobain — he used it as a placeholder title on different occasions. And the arrangement is a master-class of the quiet-loud dynamic without ever feeling clichéd: Grohl's subdued drumming in the verses pays off with his bruising attack on the chorus, and Cobain's clean-to-fuzz pay-off could be the most satisfying moment of their career. "Heartbreaker," With the Lights Out (2004)During Nirvana's first concert, a March 1987 house party, someone yelled out for this early Led Zeppelin anthem. It’s impossible to listen and not think that it’s Cobain encountering the self that “died alone / A long long time ago.”. "Opinion," With the Lights Out (2004)Our frontman sneers and snarls over a hotly mic'ed acoustic guitar strum, railing against the media's lazy writing ("It's a year's subscription of bad puns") and seemingly constant negativity ("They have an affect on our heartbeat's tock"). "Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through the Strip," In Utero (1993)This improvisational demo, a blend of mumbled nonsense and atonal rumblings, was recorded during a January 1993 session in Brazil and slapped onto some CD editions of In Utero as a bonus track. All Nirvana ALBUM songs ranked. All grunge bands have had their fair share of heavy material but right now I'm going to focus on the vicious sound of Nirvana by listing what I consider to be their top 10 heaviest songs. "She likes to think, she likes to drink / She seems too weak, she takes all the rent / She likes the time, she owns the time / She borrows time to self-invent," Cobain observes over lurching bass and drums, building to a volatile guitar solo. With this emphasis on physical dominance at a cost of emotional repression, any young boy or man who is in touch with his emotions can find himself faced with gruff correctives. Cobain deploys short-story-like details to convey the full emotional roller coaster of childhood: the innocence, moodiness, weird exaggerations, peculiar notion of time (“I fell asleep and watched TV”), inchoate anger, and violent urge to want to be alone. Played live just once before, they nailed it after two run-throughs, then Cobain was out the door, the lines “Never speak a word again / I will crawl away for good” eerily capping his career. While an outlier in Nirvana’s oeuvre, this song’s heavy riffs, downer vibe, and intensifying build reveal that even if the band had just remained yet another grunge act from the Pacific Northwest, they would have stood apart from the rest of the Sub Pop roster. If only he'd written an actual song to accompany the weirdness. 4. Sonic Youth must have been intrigued by the TMI lyrics — they recorded a cover version in 1998. But most songs from this era emphasize a few ludicrous guitar effects, Cobain’s knack for turning primal screams and mumbled mewls into something resembling hooks, and Dave Grohl’s ability to muscle just about any drumbeat out of the fucking park. “Love Buzz,” single (1988) and Bleach (1989). Cobain always admired these Texas weirdos (and front man Gibby Haynes was one of the last people to see Cobain alive when both were in rehab at Exodus Recovery Center in L.A.), so maybe it was a subliminal lift? In their Live at Reading performance, captured in August 1992, Cobain mumbles eerily over a heavy riff that could easily serve as a spy movie theme. Originally known as “Perky New Wave Number,” the crunchy, squiggly “Very Ape” is as close as Nirvana ever got, while also dishing out slapdash broadsides at masculinity and ignorance. "Negative Creep," Bleach (1989)"It’s just general bitching," Novoselic once said of this detuned, palm-muted track. Pre-Socratic philosopher Zeno of Elea not only gives his name to Greg Sage’s label but is also a reference in this Wipers song. Watch Queue Queue 90. Framing that lack-of-narrative narrative are some of his most beautiful harmonic moments, from the lush pre-chorus vocals to the unusual chord voicings on the chorus. And to put a jangly R.E.M. Unfortunately, she couldn’t make it.” A lot of people would have been perplexed by the song selection, but Cobain would have loved it. Either way, it's pretty disturbing. And Jimmy Kimmel reconnects with an old, incredibly stoned friend. But there was a lot of pressure within that social scene, the underground-like the kind of thing you get in high school. 36. Somehow this backwards approach resulted in Nirvana's most poignant song. Thirty years later, we can still feel the band’s aftershocks, even though Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and a rotating cast of drummers (that fortuitously landed on the mighty Dave Grohl) only lasted seven years and made three studio albums before Cobain decided it was better to burn out than to fade away. "Serve the Servants" is much more than a pissed-off rant, filled with veiled references to the media's attacks on Courtney Love and direct nods to his tense relationship with his father. The band’s latent humor didn’t always break through Cobain’s overcast skies, so it’s still a treat to hear him take on that twitchy Devo vocal effect and shout things like “Poppycock!”, 37, 36, 35. 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