This hugely sucessful first single by Nirvana launched
them into the spotlight in 1992. With it's
popularity, Kurt was taken up as the "Savior" of so called
generation X. This song though,
shows why Kurt wasn't too happy with his new title, and
the lyrics to this song clearly show it.
Lyrics
Load up on guns Bring your friends Its fun to lose, and to pretend She's overbored, and self assured O no, I know a dirty word! (Corus)
Im worse at what, I do best
Corus Now I froget
A Denial (repeated) |
Interpretation
Where do I begin. This song is a beautiful satire of so called "Generagion X", but it still applies to today's kids (and most adults for that matter). The song starts out with Kurts' twanging guitars, and then jumps right into the song, with the drums banging the main beat. Throught the song, especially in the beginning, Kurt mumbles his words, which makes it hard to understand. This is no mistake. This is how Kurt sings, but is its more pronounced in this song. Coupled with the somewhat abstract lyrics, this represents the incoherant thoughts and ideas that are prevelent in X (i will use this to refure to Kurt's generation, which this song is about). In the first verse, Kurt refers to guns. This is a reacuring theme in the album "Nevermind", though I am not sure what they represent. I would say it is only showing how prevelent they (guns) are in our society, but they must represent something else because of the way they are refered to in the rest of the album. The 3rd and 4th line have a similar theme. They are makeing fun of society's acceptance falsehood. Being overbored and self assured, she (X), is full of bullshit. I feel that this is makeing fun of the "feel good" morals that are prevelent in todays soceity. This is when kids are lied to and overcomforted just to make them "feel good" and keep up their self asteem. The line, "O no, I know a dirty word" is Kurt saterizing adults who condem swares as sins, saying it is not such a big deal. The corus to this song starts out with Kurt yelling, "Hello". He is yelling this to get attenion, meaning, "Hello, how dumb can u be, dont you see how stuipid you are?". The main part of the corus is showing how passive X is. An alert person would think it would be more dangourus with the lights out, but Kurt says its less. This has a duel meaning. First, Kurt is showing how X thinks so illogical. Second, Kurt uses the "dark" as a metephor, meaning being in the dark intellectually. In useing it this way, Kurt showing how X prefers to be stupid and nieve. Kurt then goes into the famous "Here we are now, entertain us." line. This again shows the passivness of X, and how they just like to sit back and be entertained (dont we all?). "I feel stupid" is again refering to the X's passivness and nieveness, but im not sure whats so contagious about it. "A mulatto, an albino, A mosquito, My libido"; im not sure what this means. "Im worse at what I do best, and for this gift, I do feel blessed."
This is again refering to X's willingness to accept less, and its passivness.
The rest of the second verse is makeing fun of cliques. Finnaly,
the third corus summerizes the song. With the referance to taist,
Kobain does 2 things, of which I can not justify very well with words,
for they are so compex and somewhat abstract. First, he shows how
X applies the "feel good" additude to a basic idea of taist. This
shows how stupid X is if nothing else. There is no referance to bad
taists, just good ones. Second (and this might seem like jump), this
is the first example of Kobain's exploration of nature and natural things.
The reason we taist is to identify sugar and fat in food, which taist good.
These are also essential to our survival. Things that are bad for
us, taist (and smell) bad. It is part of our survival. Many
other referances to animals and nature occur throught Nevermind.
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