About a girl
About a girl | |
---|---|
Nirvana | |
publication | August 8, 1989 |
length | 2:48 |
Genre (s) | Grunge |
Author (s) | Kurt Cobain |
text | Kurt Cobain |
music | Kurt Cobain |
Producer (s) | Jack Endino |
album | Bleach |
About a Girl is a song by the American rock band Nirvana . It is the third song on the debut album Bleach , released in the summer of 1989, and the first song on the posthumously released album MTV Unplugged in New York , from which there was also a single in October 1994.
history
Kurt Cobain wrote the song while simultaneously writing the compilation album Meet the Beatles! heard. At the time, Cobain tried to hide his talent for composing catchy pop songs. Concerned to alienate his own grunge-oriented fans, he hesitated to publish the song on the album Bleach . Music critic David Fricke told Rolling Stone magazine in a 1993 interview :
“Even to put about a girl on bleach was a risk. I was heavily into pop, I really liked REM , and I was into all kinds of old '60s stuff. But there was a lot of pressure within that social scene, the underground - like the kind of thing you get in high school. And to put a jangly REM type of pop song on a grunge record, in that scene, was risky. "
“ Packing About a Girl on Bleach was risky. I was really into pop, I was into REM a lot, and I was into all kinds of old '60s stuff. But there was a lot of pressure within the social scene, the underground - like the things you experience in high school. And putting a REM-like pop song on a grunge album in this scene was risky. "
The producer of Bleach Jack Endino , was still enthusiastic about the song and even considered it a potential single. Years later, Butch Vig , who produced the hit album Nevermind , released in September 1991 , said About a Girl was the first hint that there was more to nirvana than grunge. In 2004, Vig told the English music magazine New Musical Express :
"Everyone talks about Kurt's love affair with… the whole punk scene, but he was also a huge Beatles fan, and the more time we spent together the more obvious their influence on his songwriting became."
"Everyone was talking about Kurt's love affair with ... the whole punk scene, but he was also a huge Beatles fan, and the more time we spent together, the more obvious its influence on his songwriting became ."
About a Girl was recorded for Bleach by Endino in Seattle in December 1988 . It remained one of the few songs from the album Bleach that Nirvana played live until Cobain's death in April 1994.
A live acoustic version was recorded during the MTV Unplugged session on November 18, 1993 at Sony Music Studios in New York City . This was released on the posthumously released album MTV Unplugged in New York in October 1994 and was the only single from the album to top the "Modern Rock Tracks" charts.
The recording on Bleach was released again in October 2002 on the best-of compilation album Nirvana . The unplugged version appeared in 2010 on the second best-of album Icon and the live performance in 2007 on the DVD MTV Unplugged in New York . The unplugged version also appeared as a replayable song for the Guitar Hero World Tour video game, and the version of Bleach is available as downloadable content for the Rock Band video game .
Composition and lyrics
About a Girl was recorded in the key of E minor with an open chord on E minor and G for the stanzas . The power chords on C # 5-G # 5-F # 5 are used twice at the start of the chorus , followed by E5-E5-A5-C5 at the end of the chorus.
According to Chad Channing , Nirvana's drummer at the time of Bleach , Cobain didn't have a title for the song when he first got into the studio with it. When asked what the song is about, Cobain replied laconically: "It's about a girl".
The girl in question was Tracy Marander, Cobain's girlfriend at the time, with whom he was living at the time. Marander obviously asked Cobain why he wasn't dedicating a song to her, and Cobain responded with About a Girl . The song is about the fragile relationship between the two and Cobain's refusal to take a job or help clean the apartment where many of his pets lived. When there was a dispute over the matter, Cobain threatened to move into his car, and Marander usually gave in. Cobain did not tell Marander that he had written About a Girl for her. In the 1998 documentary "Kurt & Courtney" by Nick Broomfield , Marander reveals that she only found out about it after reading the book "Come as you are: The Story of Nirvana".
Alternative versions
In addition to the original version of About a Girl on the album Bleach and the acoustic version of MTV Unplugged in New York , which were also released as a single, there are a few other versions:
- A live version, recorded on February 9, 1990 at the Pine Street Theater in Portland, Oregon , appeared on the B-side of Sliver's single in 1990. Cobain later expressed and labeled his discomfort with the release of this version she as “bungled” in “a most unappealing way”. The entire Pine Street Show was released in 2009 as bonus material to the re-released deluxe version of the Bleach album .
- A live version, recorded on October 31, 1991 at the Paramount Theater in Seattle , appeared on the 1994 VHS video Live! Tonight! Sold Out !! and 2006 on the DVD of the same name .
- A solo-recorded demo version was released in 2004 in the box set With the Lights Out and in 2005 on the compilation album Sliver: The Best of the Box .
- A live version, recorded on November 25, 1991 in the Paradiso concert hall in Amsterdam , appeared as bonus material on the Live! Tonight! Sold Out !! DVD in 2006 ! .
- A concert recording from the UK Reading Festival on August 30, 1992 was released on the album and DVD Live at Reading in 2009.
Cover versions
According to the official website of the band Foo Fighters , Dave Grohl , the drummer of Nirvana and lead singer of the Foo Fighters, recorded a cover version of About a Girl . This was created during a studio session with music producer and friend Barrett Jones before Nirvana broke up in 1994. The recording was not published.
literature
- Michael Azerrad: Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana . Verlagsgruppe Koch GmbH / Hannibal, Höfen 1994, ISBN 978-3-85445-099-3 , p. 381 .
Web links
- Discography on sliver.it
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release date
- ↑ Release dates
- ↑ a b Release date "About a Girl" . In: Rate Your Music .
- ↑ Michael Azerrad: Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana . Verlagsgruppe Koch GmbH / Hannibal, Höfen 1994, ISBN 978-3-85445-099-3 , p. 381 .
- ↑ David Fricke: Kurt Cobain: The Rolling Stone Interview. (No longer available online.) In: Rolling Stone . October 25, 1993, archived from the original on September 4, 2012 ; Retrieved October 26, 2013 .
- ↑ Krist Novoselic: Bleach: Krist Novoselic Interviews Chad Channing. (No longer available online.) In: Seattle Weekly. October 28, 2009, archived from the original on October 29, 2013 ; Retrieved October 26, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.