Home Read Classic Album Review: Nirvana | Nirvana

Classic Album Review: Nirvana | Nirvana

Kurt Cobain's final song is accompanied by decent rarities & hits on this compilation.

This came out in 2002 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):

 


It’s obvious this self-titled Nirvana anthology exists primarily as a vehicle to sell one song — and no, it’s not the one you think.

The number in question is the previously unreleased gem You Know You’re Right, the last song the band completed before Kurt Cobain went on his final downward spiral. And listening to the bleak but brilliant track, with its trademark soft-loud dynamic tension, darkly propulsive groove and lyrics that seem tragically ironic in hindsight (“Things have never been so swell / I have never felt as well”), it’s clear the rest of the CD could easily have been phoned in. But give the folks at Geffen credit; they put a little effort into it. So, along with the obvious hits — Smells Like Teen Spirit, Lithium, In Bloom, Heart Shaped Box and so on — they’ve included odds ’n’ ends like Been A Son and Sliver (which originally appeared on singles) and a wide-bodied remix of Pennyroyal Tea that was pulled after Cobain’s 1994 death. Admittedly, your average Nirvana fanatic already has most if not all of it. But for the casual fan, it keeps this album from being just a one-song CD.

 

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