The dark mystery of a 1992 Nirvana classic: “I can’t decide what caused her to die”
Grunge was a genre built around angst and longing, and all of the huge bands who came from the genre are a reflection of the same.
When you listen to the music of bands like Nirvana, the droned-out guitar sounds and use of fuzz are truly stunning to listen to. It’s rock music, but more romantic than that, as it’s rock but presented in a way that people had never heard before, with a great deal of heavy lingering emotion behind every single second.
Of course, there was more to it than just the music, as the lyrics that bands would write about also played a huge role in cementing grunge as one of the must-listen genres of music. Kurt Cobain was a huge contributing factor to that, as fans would flock from far and wide in a bid to scream the words of Nirvana to the heavens. Not a single syllable was missed, and there was a lot to belt out.
What’s interesting is that Cobain didn’t really follow a pattern when it came to writing lyrics. Most artists, you tend to find, have a very specific approach when it comes to putting together the words of a song, but Cobain was always happy to let things take shape in a way that was natural, which also made for unpredictability. Some songs were about political and societal issues, some were works of fiction, while others weren’t about anything at all.
Take their biggest hit, for example, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. How many of us have yelled out the words to this track on a night out? And yet, none of us could say what it’s about. That’s because it’s not really about anything. The title came from a piece of graffiti, but everything further than that seems to have sprung out of thin air.
In complete contrast, you have other songs like ‘Rape Me’ which are deeply rooted in societal issues. Cobain was never worried about making his stance on certain topics known, and that meant writing songs like this that were brutal takedowns of where society falls short. The song came from a news story he had heard, which he decided to turn into a grunge anthem. He didn’t want the meaning to be misinterpreted, and so was very upfront when writing everything.
“Having to resort to doing something like that is almost embarrassing because people didn’t understand when we [had] a song like ‘About a Girl’ or ‘Polly’. And having to explain that, and having misunderstandings about it,” he said, “I decided to write ‘Rape Me’ in a way so blunt and obvious that no one could deny it, and no one could read into it any other way.”
And then you have songs like ‘Lithium’, which Kurt Cobain said was a story he made up, but that was shrouded in a dark mystery. Granted, he said that when it came to channelling the narrator’s voice, he would draw from personal experiences with heartbreak; however, this is one of those songs that completely lends itself to fiction. There is still an element of mystery embedded within it all, as we don’t know how the circumstances within the track came about, but that can all be left to the listener’s imagination.
“The story is about a guy who lost his girlfriend,” he said, “I can’t decide what caused her to die; let’s say she died of Aids or a car accident or something, and he’s going around brooding, and he turned to religion as a last resort to keep himself alive, to keep him from suicide.”
