It would be hard to underestimate just how influential Nirvana was in its rather short lifetime. They literally were the linchpin of a musical revolution--I worked selling music when their second album exploded and our alternative music section went from maybe six to eight rows of CDs to well over a hundred over the next couple of years. Though they were only together from 1987 to 1994 and only released three studio albums over the course of their short-lived career, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their initial year of eligibility (2014). Even more amazing (to me, anyway) is despite their small studio output, they've sold over 75 million records worldwide. Since their demise, bassist Krist Novoselic has gone on to become quite the political activist, and drummer Dave Grohl went on to quite a bit of success as the front man for the Foo Fighters. The elephant in the room of all of this, of course, is the death of Nirvana's leader, the man who didn't want to rule the world, Kurt Cobain, by his own hand with a shotgun blast to the head. It's easy to wonder what might have been, but in the end it's a lot harder to accept what was and that there are no guarantees that whatever output the band may have had had Cobain conquered his many demons, wouldn't have tarnished their legacy.
Released as the third single from Nevermind, their generation altering 1991 album, "Lithium" would reach #64 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100. While the song did not have quite the commercial success of their biggest hit, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," here in the U.S.A., it did hit number one in Finland--who knew there were so many cool kids in Finland?
The easy choice would obviously be "Smells Like Teen Spirit," but oddly enough it was "Lithium" that turned me into a Nirvana fan. My kid brother and I were on vacation in L.A. the weekend Cobain died and you couldn't turn on a music station without hearing all Nirvana, all day and all night, and my brother was convinced that Cobain had written the line, "I'm so horny, that's okay, my will is good" for the both of us because we were both single at the time and not having a whole heck of a lot of luck with women. While my brother was most assuredly wrong, it did get me to listening to the song and despite having questioned whether their work was for people much younger than I (I was all of thirty-five) became a big Nirvana fan. "Lithium" (supposedly the song is about a man who turns to religion after his girlfriend has died to keep himself from committing suicide) is really your prototypical Nirvana song, alternating between the soft and the hard, with excellent vocals from Cobain, and featuring perhaps more than most of their songs the talents of Novoselic (his bass playing is pretty much the backbone of the soft parts) and Grohl (his drumming is the driving force of the hard parts). Taken as a whole, I wouldn't be afraid to say it is perhaps Nirvana's best song, though I'm sure plenty of others would disagree. In the end, it's an existence questioning song from an existence questioning album, and as far as I know, the only song in history whose chorus is the word "Yeah" sung over and over (to excellent effect, I might add).
Lyric Sheet: "Light my candles, in a daze, 'cause I've found God..."
Enjoy:
Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee
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