correct. Although I believe a shotgun was Kurt's choice in '94 and not a revolver . . . it is still pretty f'ing dark though. The best art is created in pain.
It's hard to gauge time, especially as you get older, but 'Nevermind' seems about twenty years ago at a stretch! Which begs the question, when/where are the other ten years? 🤔
You know most towns have a sign at the city limits that says "Welcome to such and such", Aberdeen Washington where he was from says "Welcome To Aberdeen, Come As You Are"
this is true, and SO funny considering kurt wrote openly about how much he hated aberdeen and was traumatized by his time there. also shows a pretty wild misunderstanding of the messaging of this song by the chamber of commerce, or whomever made the decision to have that sign made XD
"Heart Shaped Box" is also a MUST if you're gonna get to know Nirvana. If you haven't done "Smells Like Teen Spirit" that's also required listening..... for SURE you'll recognize it from somewhere!
Hearing Nirvana for the first time (in high school in the early 90’s) was amazing. I’d never heard anything like them before. And yes, their music hit different after Kurt died. I still remember that day too. I was heartbroken.
Yes! I was in 8th grade, Middle School, going into my Freshman year of High School... but, I'm not going to go any further...just because...it was (and still is even now) a very tough and hard time to go through. For friends of mine, families, etc;
When I heard he died I wasn’t really shocked. It was inevitable. Knew it was going to happen, just didn’t know when. Luckily I got to see them a few months prior to 94.
I remember listening to this album and Pearl Jam Ten on the school bus every day and at my friend’s house in the afternoons. I graduated high school in 94. It was odd; high school had sort of begun with their breakout and ended with that shit day when Kurt died. I still remember Courtney Love reading snippets from the suicide note on the phone with Curt Loder at MTV News. “So there’s a bunch of shit that’s none of your business, and then he says, ...’and I just have so much empathy and I don’t want to let anybody down...’ so why’d you do it you fucking asshole?!” I still get emotional thinking about it. I couldn’t help thinking that we, the fans, were sort of responsible. He never wanted to be the poster boy for our generation. And he certainly wasn’t emotionally equipped to be. But damn it, he was talented. And funny, and by all accounts very sweet. We had some great music in the early 90’s. And we lost some really talented dudes for one reason or another. Kurt, Layne, and Shannon. Tupac. More recently, Scott Weiland. Chris Cornell. Dolores O’Riordan. So many of the people responsible for the soundtrack to some of the best years of my life.
When Kurt died, and everyone realized that the first three songs on "Nevermind" all mention guns at some point...well, we all felt like we'd missed something that had been staring us in the face for years.
@Anthony Cunningham I think probably so. Climbing bitch, latched onto him as someone with talent, and wanted to yank every dime out of the commercialization of Nirvana.
When someone dies like that, it's only natural to look back a see if there were clues. With musicians , one natural looks to their lyrics. Same as when Chester died, everyone went back and examined Linkin Park's lyrics.
@Anthony Cunningham Except that's not what happened. It's what a lot of people wish had happened because they can't accept that Kurt committed suicide, and coming up with a conspiracy theory to explain it was easier than coming to terms with the fact that someone they loved decided death was preferable to their adoration. That's a really tough pill to swallow, and I say that as someone who has had to deal with the aftermath of a loved one's suicide.
@@TheClayCoKid I think he means he shouldn't have started the legendary rock band Foo fighters and be a front man and play guitar. Which is ludicrous to say. Foo's Rock 🤘
I find the lyrics to "You know you're right", the last song he worked on before he died, to be hard to take. Also his song "I hate myself and want to die" from the Beavis and butthead soundtrack is another example of "holy shit" in retrospect
...but Only in retrospect, as he himself has stated that the title held No deeper meaning than the fact he found the Public Medias paintings of him as the "miserable-all-the-time" depressed guy, when in reality he was quite alright with life at the time, As Well as the fact that the lyrics of the song make no connection to the tittle, so yeah - nothing too significant about that title, other than the mere coincidence of what was about to follow...
When that single dropped, fans were ready for it. The first single, "Smells ..." was Big, but when you heard the whole album, that song "Come As You Are", always caught the listener. We just knew that was gonna be the next single. I was there, I lived it. The whole NIRVANA craze was massive.
I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan when they first came to America. I have enjoyed a massive amount of great talent. AM radio was a blessing. Hours and hours of nothing but pure joy.
@@barbarastrayhorn4667 Wow, so you’re definitely an older school Nirvana fan! I was 9 when “Nevermind” was released, and I tend to meet Nirvana fans born after 1994.
In 1991, Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" punched everyone in the mouth! The whole world was introduced to these guys, and even though it was short lived, the impact of the music and what it stands for will live forever. R.I.P. Kurt, you are missed.
For me, the song was basically saying "I know who you really are from our past, so just be yourself and I'll be your friend", with the "gun" being a metaphor for ulterior motives. Never struck me as being related to Cobain's death.
That is EXACTLY how it felt in April of '94: retroactively eerie. Shock jocks and hack comedians thought they were pretty clever pointing that lyric out after the fact, but every fan or even casual listener had already recalled it.
Supposedly he got that thick guitar sound by using piano wire instead of guitar wire. Truly a remarkable song from a bona fide musical maestro. Kurt had demons and struggles his entire life. It is so sad that he lost that battle. So many of the best singers of the 90s are no longer with us such as Kurt, Layne Staley, Chris Cornell, Chester Bennington, and Scott Weiland, just to name a few. RIP to such talented performers. Thanks for reacting to this! ~Be Blessed
The music identity of my generation is all but wiped out. So sad to think a lot of those groups we’ve got zero chance of ever seeing in concert one last time.
No. He used Dean Markley .10 strings. That watery sound comes from both the bass and guitar tracks running through a Yamaha SPX90 on the " Symphonic" preset when mastered. That added some more chorus to the guitars, as Kurt also used an EHX Small Clone on this track.
Hey Jamel. To answer your questions; The album 'Nevermind' by Nirvana was recorded at different times in 1990 and 1991. It was released in September 1991. Kurt Cobain died on April 5, 1994. And yes, listening to this song after Kurt's suicide had a *very* different feel than it did before he died. It's still eerie. Your words, "I enjoyed this, but I didn't at the same time" sums up how so many of us fans felt, and still feel, about this song.
Jamel, Kurt quoted one of Neil Young's songs in his suicide note. "It's better to burn out, than to fade away" from the song "My, My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue).
I vividly remember hearing this song coming through my speakers like an alien. It cut through reality and the cultural sea changed immediately. I’ve never been so profoundly moved that way by music ever since, it changed everything and suddenly there was a light guiding me through the charades of society.
Absolutely loved this song when it came out, that spidery guitar almost feels like a nod to The Cure's "One Hundred Years". I will say though, this song definitely felt like a gut punch after he passed. I still love this song, but it always makes me incredibly sad and at the same time it's so damn good! 💔
I remember hearing of his passing. I was a huge fan. I still am. I can tell you exactly where I was when I found out. This was the first song I heard after that. It still hurts. I love this song but it still makes me cry when I think about that.
That afternoon I overheard some people in a dorm room discussing it, saying "he was like our generation's Jim Morrison" and I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard.. until I found out myself an hour later. Then I realized oh yeah, that's more or less so.
@@djlp2212 I'm not talking about "Come As You Are" their song "You Know You're Right" was released long after Cobain's death and was one of the last tracks the band ever recorded.
The tragedy of the end of Kurt’s life was a few years later. When I first heard this song, I never thought anything of the lyrics being prophetic. I was lucky enough to see them in concert the New Years Eve just a few months before his passing. After that, YES, this song was full of foreshadowing. It’s still one of my favorite songs but it makes me a little sad too.
The whole grunge scene was full of depressed thoughts and imagery. With Nirvana especially, you can't escape it. But some of their music is still light and fun! I suggest an old deep track "Sliver" short and almost still innocent
This song is really about how Kurt felt about people and/or friend's in general. Kurt Cobain was quoted once saying, "a friend is nothing but a known enemy." Also, I think in saying he doesn't have a gun is his way of saying... Come like you and I know you are and it'll be peaceful as far as he's concerned. "No, I don't have a gun." 🤷🏼 Hope that made some kind of sense. 😆
@@benleetch6593 I've never heard that version. But basically, only Kurt knows what it really means. I'll have to search some song facts and see what, their breakdown is. I'm sure there's info out there, just never looked into it that much.🤷🏼 😊✌
@@benleetch6593 that is completely fabricated. you wouldn’t soak needles in bleach. It would leave them dangerous and unusable. some idiot just decided “I bet that songs about heroin!”
Agree with this partly. The drug underworld can be seedy and violent. I think he is saying I don’t have a gun, come as you are, not packin. Reminds me of when Uncle Jun told Tony the opposite in telling him if he comes to see him, he better come heavy.
I am not a big fan, but Come as you are, specially the acoustic version and Heart shaped box are so amazing songs "Come doused in mud, soaked in bleach As I want you to be"
Nirvana was suppose to headline Lollapalooza in 94, smashing pumpkins took their place after Kurt suicide. The first song that blared out of the speakers that day was 'all apologies' by nirvana. It was eerie, and everyone in the venue was singing along to it. It was the end of something, and we all felt it. Never been able to listen to Nirvana, the same way again. I hear this song now, and it takes me back,, but not in a good way.
I was 12 when I first heard it, my parents got divorced, then a few months later he took his life away... It was a hard time for me, but Kurt changed my life forever, I started playing guitar, and more than 25 years later I'm still here, listening to his songs, and realizing how genius it was :-) thanks man, all the best!
I was 32 years old when this song was released. I remember hearing it for the first time back in '92 and saying to my ex, "He keeps repeating 'memories' and then 'I don't have a gun,' as if he's suffering from bad memories and contemplating suicide." A couple of years later, Cobain blew his own brains out. So yeah... some of us saw it coming back then. I wasn't the only one.
You might also check out "LIfe Goes On" from The Damned (1982) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-M0tA4MvnlOY.html, which pre-dated the Killing Joke song (1984).
As an 80s rock fan, I ignored this whole genre. But this rise of grunge sent the 80s bands back to playing small bars, and they would do meet n greets with fans for free after the shows. So in a way, I'm grateful for it. 🤣 Oh, BTW Eddie Money's old FB page shared one of your video reactions yesterday =)
Nevermind is such a timeless album and I really get how Nirvana and their albums created a new aesthetics and inspirations to artist. They always be my favorite band to listen to
For me this is their greatest track. The feeling of alienation is absolute & the withdrawal into yourself. The watery guitar, water everywhere, dissolving the self back into where it all began, where it all went wrong. Always makes me think of Tarkovsky's similar fixation with water, always a theme in his films.
You should check out "Blow Up the Outside World" by Soundgarden. Another song that might give you goosebumps knowing that Chris Cornell committed suicide as well.
There are "conspiracy theories" about Chris Cornell, that he didn't commit suicide but was instead "silenced" for the documentary he and Chester Bennington were working on about sex trafficking children. Chris and Chester were very close friends, Chester died/was killed on Chris Connell's birthday (allegedly). There's a lot of information out there about what may have happened. I'll leave a link here to a short video talking about the documentary and what may have happened to Chris and Chester as well as a few other high profile people who "committed suicide" totaldisclosure.net/louder-than-love/chris-cornell/ I'd prefer to find out these are just rumors but the amount of info starting to come out about this stuff causes me to lean towards the conspiracy theories, as much as I hope it's not true.
Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged Album.... great collection of their songs and cover songs done acoustically live in front of a small crowd. My favorite because of the raw emotion in his voice is Where Did You Sleep Last Night. The MTV original broadcast was in Dec of 93.....just before Kurt’s tragic passing in April 94. Thanks for the channel...brings back memories on why I love music and love seeing your reaction to these great songs.
I, too, recommend Nirvana's "Lithium" like several others. Here's a link to a live performance: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Z05qiPnLpMM.html
RIding around in a friends car in Colorado Springs in1992, everyone in the car singing along and knowing it was something special. RIP Kurt and Thank You.
Morphine!!! Buena, All Wrong, Thursday are my faves. There is NO BAND that sounds like these guys. But they sound sooo good. Drum kit, slide bass, baritone sax and voice. That's it Jamel, but they make such good noise.
It was released a bit under 3 years before he passed. Nirvana was the soundtrack of my life in high school. He passed just before I graduated. It was really hard. His music really spoke to us loners.
There was a lot of career after this song. This was from Nevermind, their breakout album, and it represents the beginning of Cobain's superstardom, certainly not an imminent indication of suicide. But it does fit in with everything else and makes it obvious in hindsight that Kurt was inherently at risk.
I live 5 miles from his home were he was a kid .Coming In to Aberdeen Washington there Is a sign that says WELCOME TO ABERDEEN COME AS YOU ARE people from all over the country and the world come to take pictures by the sign. My 2 sons loved his music and so many more local people mourned his death suicide hurts so many !
Some other Nirvana songs you need to do a reaction to. All Apologies (this was the last track on the band's final album), Rape Me, Sliver, Something In The Way (very sad song), You Know Your Right, and On A Plane (very funny lyrics)
Passed through Aberdeen last summer going to the beach and the 'Entering Aberdeen' sign (now) says, "Welcome To Aberdeen - Come As You Are". I smiled and thought, that's a nice 'city slogan'.
Jamel. Please do us a favor and listen to Sublime. Any of them man. The lyrics are beautiful. Set the new RU-vidr reacts trend with Sublime!!!! Youre the best youtuber anyway. You actually get music. Other people are just reacting to the video. You listen to the music. Give sublime a shot brother
I first heard this song was I was 11 or 12. I'd never heard of Nirvana before that. My friend gave me the single CD and I played it on my mom's CD player. Before that, I only really knew my mom's music (The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Michael Jackson, The Eagles, etc). It blew me away because I had just never heard anything like it and it was my introduction to ALL of the rock I'd fall in love with later. Every time I hear it I still hear the same "other" quality that it had then.
"Come as You Are" was recorded in May 1991(released, March 1992).... Kurt "died" in April 1994. This song is just another in a long list of his songs and other writings chronicling Kurt's thoughts and descent into the abyss. Just my opinion.... But....."come doused in mud, soaked in bleach as I want you to be. As a Trend, as a friend as a Memoria (a "crafted" delivery of speech and prose)" seems like a lyrical testament to how he felt about the "world" HE was living in. Again, just MY thoughts, for whatever it's worth. Peace and Light to all....
You have to listen to their MTV Unplugged performance! You can pick any song and it is amazing, but the last song "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" is one of my all time favorites of any music by anyone ever. The ending and the look in Kurt's eyes is so powerful. I still remember the moment I heard on the radio that he had died, I was in the 8th grade and at that age when music has become a huge part of your world, so it was crushing. I remember MTV playing "All Apologies" a lot right after it happened. I'm grateful for the time he was here with us and the music he gave us and I consider myself very lucky to have grown up at the time that I did, becoming a teenager just as grunge and alternative were becoming big and graduating right before Britney Spears came along and the boy bands became the big thing. There'll never be another Nirvana. R.I.P. Kurt
Jamel...your reaction to some of these songs is priceless truth. I truly appreciate that you always "come as you are" to these songs. Yep, sometimes you overthink the meanings, but when you nail it you nail it HARD!! Peace, my brother. Stay safe and healthy. Peace out.
I 💚 Nirvana! So glad that I got to see these guys live. My nephew gets 'mad' at me because I got to see bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, etc. He was born around this time. I told him that I would have gladly taken him to see them. I did take him to see his 1st concert which was Pearl Jam. Good review 👍
@@redsmoker37 Well Atmosphere is one of the more epic and dark but beautiful songs in Joy Division's discography, So I feel that it wouldn't be too off putting.
Loss of a simpleton genius best way I can describe it. But just recently I found something on the Internet that showed me a song that Kurt Cobain , which was not of their doing, meaning, it was a cover song. Lately I've been finding out a lot of bands have been doing this for a long time and it really surprised me. Decades of amazement wasn't even real. Based on lies. What a world we live in, what planet exists only justifies its existence.
@@jkalewine there was a song that Nirvana did that wasn't theirs, it was a cover song. What I meant is that a lot of bands that have hit sogs that they don't give credit to the rightful owners, meaning it wasn't written by them. I forget the name of the song but I'll look it up.
@@diakojim1977 Dylan Carlson from NW band EARTH didn't kill him. They were tight drug bros. Courtney hired a man from California named Allen Wrench for 50 grand, because Kurt was going to divorce her ass. And then El Duce from The Mentors accidently, drunkenly mentioned it on that Kurt and Courtney Documentary, and was mysteriously hit by a train soon after. And Allen Wrench was the last person anyone had seen Duce with on the day El Duce died. Allen Wrench did it, and Courtney hired him.
Nirvana sounds just as fresh today as when it came out. But the song after the fact made me feel eerie! They now have a sign in Kurt's hometown saying Come as U are..
This song was out in 1991 and he died in 1994 so a few years later. I know what you mean though about the gun parts in the song. It feels like foreshadowing what was going to happen. I get the same feeling now when I listen to some Linkin Park songs too. You hear some lyrics and it just doesn’t sit right anymore.
I've never heard this song linked to his suicide before now, and never thought about it myself. This was released about three years before he died. It's a song about accepting people for whom they are. A lot of songs mention guns, and this one is so far from depression and suicide, it has pretty much nothing to do with his death. He wrote other lyrics that can much more easily be linked to it.
@@chitlitlahTo clarify, I didn't say this song is linked to his depression. I said that a lot of conspiracy theorists try to use this song as proof that he didn't kill himself because of the "I don't have a gun" line while ignoring all of Kurt's other songs that are about his depression.
@@artiezonk Dude, what are you talking about? Everyone who knows about Kurt knows he was very fond of guns. He had multiple. He grew up with them and enjoyed shooting. The lyrics "I don't have a gun" are not literal. It amazes me how abstract Kurt's lyrics are yet people want to find anything he says and interpret them as literal as possible.
The album came out in 90 or 91 and he died in 94. I was listening to Nirvana when they hit it big with Smell Like Teen Spirit. The MTV unplugged they did was a masterpiece for an acoustic album. Back then I my brother had a lot of cassette tapes, all I wanted to do was plug in a set of headphones. The bands that were blowing me away at the time was Faith No More, Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Ugly Kid Joe, Metallica, Megadeth, and Pearl Jam. Couple you songs for a reaction are both cover songs done by Faith No More, easy and reunited.
Nirvana is my college years. Every time I hear their music there is a small part of me that is still rail thin, wearing baggy hip hugger jeans with a huge belt and cut off shirt and I’m falling deeply in love for the first time. Man, those were the days.
One of my all time favorite songs from any artist in any genre. The opening is sublime. Note I bought this when it was released in 1991. My feelings about the song after Cobain's death by suicide haven't changed. His brilliance and the tragedy are both separate and intertwined. All we can do at this end of history is enjoy the work.
Jamel_aka_jamal, do yourself a favor, don't react to every single Nirvana song as an insight into his death. It's a waste of time and will just hinder your Nirvana experience. Kurt's lyrics are not all just insights into his death.
Definitely my favorite from Nirvana. *CAVEAT* - About 25 years ago I was listening to this song when my oldest daughter came up to me and said - "But Daddy, he did have a gun." My response was - "Yes Baby ... unfortunately."
Need to go listen to more Nirvana, now! I used to think how weird it was going to be when we reached our 80s and still banging to this! Great memories and this music never gets old
I imagine all the future old folks homes we'll be in, all us crusty old gen x-ers fighting over whether we're playing screaming metal or happy hardcore 🤣
Played this song at Mt brothers funeral 11 years ago after he took his own life, he was my best friend and the one who introduced me to nirvana in 1990
Kurts lyrics were so abstract, that I think people overlooked them at the time it came out, but there were definitely noticeable themes. "Nevermind" has a ton of songs referencing guns, and on "In Utero" he references life and death in most songs as well as the album art. Very eerie looking back on it all knowing what happened
The released "You know you're right" 12 or 15 years later and it was better than anything being put out and was a huge success. My little cousin was trying to tell me about a new band Nirvana....and I was like....um...dude. He died over a decade ago. I saw them live in LA for New Years Eve. He had no idea. My point being...he was making music that is going tp last and was way ahead of the curve.
It definitely felt different for me, without question! Along with all their other songs.Actually Aberdeen Washington has a sign now saying Come as You are dedicated to their native son...
