The Top 5 Worst Nirvana Lyrics

The Top 5 Worst Nirvana Lyrics

By: Brian Cotnoir

Hey All.  So I don’t think anyone is as surprised as me of the recent popularity of my new segment “Top 5 Worst Lyrics”.  Usually my music related posts aren’t that popular or as well received as my film posts, but I have to say I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback for my Worst Lyrics articles.  However, one criticism I keep receiving is that I pick on popular artists that lots of people like that I just don’t care for at all.  So to be fair, I’ve decided to rip apart the lyrics of a band I really like.  From sophomore year of High School until the year I graduated after college I always had at least one poster of Kurt Cobain hanging in my room; I even once played bass in a Nirvana cover band (we weren’t all that good).  As much I am a fan of Nirvana, I can admit that not all of Kurt Cobain’s lyrics can be considered poetic gold. So here they are for you: the Top 5 Worst Nirvana Lyrics Ever.  Now just to clarify, I’m not saying these songs are bad, I’m just saying that one or two lyrics that don’t sound as good or fit in well with the rest of the song.  So here we go.

5.) In Bloom

Now personally, this is one of my favorite Nirvana songs, but the lyrics are someone peculiar.  It is said by some that Kurt Cobain wrote the lyrics to “In Bloom” to make fun of fans of Nirvana who showed up to shows and could never sing the right lyrics.  Other reports say that the song is Cobain poking fun at his friend, Dylan Carlson.  The worst (and trust me, I’m using that term very thinly) lyrics in the song has to come from the chorus

“He’s the one who likes all our pretty songs/and he likes to sing a long/and he likes to shoot his gun/but he knows not what it means”.

I always wondered why Cobain chose to end it with “He knows not what it means” instead of “but he don’t know what it means”?  I know plenty of people who always thought Cobain sang “but he don’t know what it means”, and to be honest I think it flows much better than the oddly jumbled “he knows not what it means”, but that’s just my opinion.

4.) All Apologies

This mournful ballad from Nirvana’s 1993 album “In Utero” has been very popular with fans of Nirvana since the death of Cobain.  But when you actually take a moment to examine the lyrics the song is just Cobain spitting out a bunch random and jumbled lyrics such as:

“I’ll take all blame/aqua seafoam shame/sunburn with freezer burn/choking on the ashes of her enemy” 

Not to mention the song features a lot of repetitive lyrics such as:

“In the sun/in the sun I feel as one” and the outro “all and all is all we are”

I understand why people like this song, but I think it’s a more simplistic and less deep then most people think.

3.) Dumb

I used to own a poster of Kurt Cobain from MTV Unplugged and the poster featured lyrics from the Nirvana song “Dumb”, and I can’t tell you how many times I would look at that poster and say to myself “that’s a really dumb lyric”.  The lyric I am talking about:

“I think I’m dumb/or maybe just happy/think I’m just happy”

Which is it, Kurt?  Are you dumb or happy?  Is this like a reference to that old saying “Ignorance is Bliss” what is the meaning of this—as you put in—dumb lyric?

2.) On a Plain

I’m not sure if “On a Plain” can count as a song, because it just appears to be a bunch of garbled words sung together.  I mean just look at the opening lines:

“I’ll start this off without any words/I got so high that I scratched till I bled”

But wait it gets weirder than that

“My brother died every night/It’s safe to say/don’t quote me on that” and “Black Sheep got blackmailed again/forgot to put on the zip code”???

Then there’s one of the laziest choruses ever:

“I’m on a plain/I can’t complain”

Seriously, how high was Cobain when he wrote this song?

1.) Sliver

One thing, I’ve always heard about Kurt Cobain was that he was this deep, sensitive, progressive songwriter, well he proved to be none of those things on the song “Sliver”. The song is basically the story about a time when Cobain was a young child and his parent’s dropped him off at his grandparents so they could go out on a date.  Somehow, Cobain manages to make this first-world problem sound like a more serious issue.  The verses are to “Sliver are only 2-3 sentences long followed by Cobain shouting “Grandma take me home/Grandma take me home”.  I’m dead serious when I say this: I think “Sliver” is Nirvana’s version “Ob-La-Di, “Ob-La-Da”.

So there you have it: Those are the Top 5 Worst Nirvana lyrics, but even with all that terribleness, Nirvana is still one of the greatest and most influential American Rock Bands of All-Time.  Be sure to subscribe and join us again on another edition of “Top 5 Worst Lyrics”.

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