“Teenage angst”: Nirvana’s greatest opening line of all time
With the count of Dave Grohl’s drumsticks and the clash of mangled guitars and bass from Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic, Nirvana‘s In Utero opens with ‘Serve The Servants’.
Cobain delivers the unforgettable line in a hoarse gravel of a voice: “Teenage angst has paid off well; now I’m bored and old.” The line reverberates as the perfect counter to any and all expectations forced upon Nirvana in the midst of their ascent, a retaliation against the very song that made them MTV fixtures (‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, of course) and against the sentiment of fame fleeting just as soon as it’s begun.
Their second album, 1991’s Nevermind, made Nirvana household names and Cobain the voice of a generation. But the mantle on which the band was placed was not a welcome one; it became a burden.
Cobain often resented any autobiographical interpretations of his lyrics, describing the entirety of In Utero as “very impersonal,” to The Observer in 1993, and once wrote, “Why in the hell do journalists insist on coming up with a second-rate Freudian evaluation of my lyrics, when 90% of the time they’ve transcribed them incorrectly?”
Still, the personal nature of the lyrics across In Utero is evident from the very start, which Grohl agreed with. “A lot of what he has to say is related to a lot of the shit he’s gone through,” the drummer told Michael Azerrad in 1993’s Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana. “And it’s not so much teen angst any more. It’s a whole different ball game: rock star angst.”
The song continues to scathe against everyone in Cobain’s path: industry heads who profit from Nirvana’s success, “self-appointed judges” posing as critics who wield their opinions against their music and so-called fans who have cast judgment on Cobain’s personal life. His resentment for the latter echoes in a reference to the public’s mistreatment of his wife, Courtney Love, likening it to a scene out of the Salem Witch Trials: “If she floats then she is not / A witch like we had thought.”
Continuing to grapple with the sudden success of Nevermind and the subsequent spotlight placed on his life, Cobain also addresses the attention the media paid to his family dynamic and upbringing. He notes his relationship with his father in a poignant recollection of, “I tried hard to have a father, but instead I had a dad,” and proclaims that while he no longer hates his father, “There is nothing I could say that I haven’t thought before.”
Each chorus ends with, “That legendary divorce is such a bore,” in reference to his parents’ divorce when he was a child, which became a routine point of discussion in the media. With a bitter snarl, Cobain quiets any question of his past as he, himself, sings from the lens of fatherhood; the concept of “family,” for him, holds increasing weight.
Told from the perspective of a young man disillusioned with fame and the unfortunate attention that he was subject to, ‘Serve The Servants’ set the tone for In Utero from its opening line. Long gone were the days of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and, in their place, was a mix of cynicism and humour that showed an understanding (and subsequent resentment) of what Nirvana’s stature in popular culture meant to an entire generation. To “serve the servants” was not something that Cobain looked forward to; it signalled fame as a dual blessing and curse.
