How Nirvana wrote feminist songs from a male perspective
Rock and roll has always had a problem with misogyny. While there are more than a few artists who write love songs to talk about a truly intimate interaction between two people, the knuckle-dragging variety of artists usually call it a day once they have a song that’s about nothing more than viewing the opposite sex as objects rather than people. And since hair metal marked the golden age of that kind of blatant sexualisation of women, leave it to Nirvana to come in and actually make a decent stance for feminist issues.
Granted, it’s hard to talk about Nirvana’s approach to this topic on principle. Since all of these are issues that affect the opposite sex, it’s hard to justify Cobain’s stance at times without him coming off as the white knight in shining armour doing his best attempt to save the dignity of an entire gender.
But looking through how Nirvana tackles feminism, it’s not about being the saviour for women. It’s about putting men in the shoes of the opposite sex and seeing what happens when they are put into some of the most deplorable scenarios anyone would have to go through. Just look no further than their most famous feminist tune, ‘Polly’.
While this is the closest thing to a “ballad” Nirvana made on their breakthrough album Nevermind, it feels like a ballad in the same way that those extremely dark Western country songs used to be. Writing from the point of view of a sexual predator who tied up Polly in his van, there’s already an eerie energy coming off the song before we even get to the chorus.
Once we hear the payoff when Polly catches the narrator off his guard and gets away, it’s not even that much of a celebratory moment. It just feels like the nature of reality, and while this woman should be commended for defending herself and fighting her way out of the clutches of a monster, it’s far more true to life that people just gloss over it as if nothing happened.
‘Polly’ was something of a one-off song on Nevermind, but looking through their B-sides, a tune like ‘Sappy’ looks at the domestic side of feminist horror. Everyone latches onto the ‘think you’re happy’ line without thinking too hard, but when it gets to the final line of being in a laundry room, it veers more towards psychological horror. This woman has grown to be subservient to her husband, and compared to the domestic bliss on the surface, Cobain sounds like he’s crying out in pain, seeing her throw her life away.
Then again, no artist gets to be that way without doing their homework. Outside of marrying female grunge icon Courtney Love, the work of bands like Bikini Kill shouldn’t be ignored in this conversation. Cobain had copped the phrase ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ from something Kathleen Hanna sprayed on his wall in graffiti, but if this article does nothing else, it should give people incentive to track down albums like Yeah Yeah Yeah and Pussywhipped. Those records are far from obscure these days, but in terms of influence, a song like ‘Rebel Girl’ should stand right alongside Nirvana’s greatest hits.
While most of the feminist rhetoric flew over people’s heads listening to the records, Cobain wasn’t afraid to put his money where his mouth was. He would often play various charity events for women’s rights and had absolutely zero tolerance for any misogyny happening at his shows, going so far as to say that he hates anyone who practices such activities in the liner notes of the B-side album Incesticide.
Rock and roll lore has implied for years that Cobain didn’t always put a lot of thought into his lyrics, but listening back to a tune like ‘Territorial Pissings’, a line like “Never met a wise man/if so, it’s a woman” isn’t thrown in there by accident. Cobain knew that the cock-rock bands of old weren’t what he was looking for, but if he hadn’t taken cues from the riot grrl movement, maybe we wouldn’t have acts like Bad Cop Bad Cop or legends like Green Day writing tunes like ‘Extraordinary Girl’ today.
Males have dominated the genre for years, but for Cobain, people like Patti Smith and Kathleen Hanna deserved as much credit as Robert Plant or Paul Westerberg in his record collection.
