The Nirvana “hit single” that Kurt Cobain thought they got wrong
Kurt Cobain was a tough man to please. Across his tragically short career as the singer, songwriter, guitarist, and principal creative force behind Nirvana, Cobain recorded just three studio albums across half a decade. For the most part, you can find Cobain talking shit about all three if you look in the right places.
The most famous Nirvana album is also the one that Cobain seemed least fond of during his lifetime. Nevermind was a juggernaut, bringing together the underground sounds of the Seattle rock scene with the refined sound of stadium rock. As a punk rock purist, Cobain loved to complain about how much he hated Nevermind, specifically the recording and mixing supervised by Butch Vig and Andy Wallace.
“I’m embarrassed by it now,” Cobain famously told biographer Michael Azerrad in the book Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana. “It’s closer to a Mötley Crüe record than it is a punk rock record.” Vig opinioned that Cobain was just reacting to the album’s massive success, contending that the band were happy with the sound of the record when they finished recording it.
In any case, Cobain hoped to pull a 180 and create something darker and more confrontational with Nirvana’s next album. To do so, the band hired Steve Albini to record In Utero. Albini had produced legendary albums by the Pixies and The Jesus Lizard by the time he got the call to work with Nirvana. Cobain was clearly looking to take advantage of Albini’s punk rock bona fides.
Unfortunately, Cobain seemed impossible to please, taking aim at the recorded version of ‘Pennyroyal Tea’ shortly after its official release. In fact, in a strange about-face, Cobain thought that the song’s recorded version wasn’t commercial enough and even seemed nostalgic for the sound of Nevermind.
“[‘Pennyroyal Tea’] was not recorded right,” Cobain told David Fricke in 1993. “There is something wrong with that. That should have been recorded like Nevermind because I know that’s a strong song, a hit single. We’re toying with the idea of re-recording it or remixing it.”
The band never got around to it, although ‘Pennyroyal Tea’ was slated to be the third single from In Utero. Just a few days before its planned release day, Cobain was found dead, and the single was permanently shelved until an official release came out in 2014 to celebrate what would have been the 20th anniversary of the song’s original single release.
Check out ‘Pennyroyal Tea’ down below.
