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About a Girl (Nirvana song)

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For the Canadian television series, see About A Girl (TV series).
"About a Girl"
Song
B-side"Something In The Way" (live)
"About a Girl"
Song

"About A Girl" is a song by the American grunge band, Nirvana. It is the third song on their 1989 debut album, Bleach. It is also the first song on the posthumous MTV Unplugged in New York album from which it was a single in 1994.

History

Dating back to at least 1987, "About A Girl" is often considered to be Kurt Cobain's first great pop song. It is also perhaps the closest he ever came to writing a traditional love song.

According to the 1993 Nirvana biography Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana by Michael Azerrad, "About A Girl" was written after Cobain spent an entire afternoon listening to Meet the Beatles! repeatedly. At the time, Cobain was trying to conceal his pop songwriting instincts, and he was reluctant to include the song on Bleach for fear of alienating the band's then-exclusively grunge fanbase. "To put a jangly, R.E.M. type of pop song on a grunge record, in that scene, was risky," he admitted in a 1993 Rolling Stone interview.

However, the producer of Bleach, Jack Endino, was excited about the song, and even saw it as a potential single. Years later, Butch Vig, who produced Nirvana's 1991 breakthrough album Nevermind, would cite "About A Girl" as the first hint that there was more to Nirvana than grunge. "Everyone talks about Kurt's love affair with...the whole punk scene, but he was also a huge Beatles fan, and the more time we spent together the more obvious their influence on his songwriting became," Vig told the NME in 2004.

"About A Girl" was recorded for Bleach in December 1988 by Endino in Seattle, Washington. It remained one of the few songs from Bleach which Cobain continued to perform live until his death in April 1994. The acoustic MTV Unplugged rendition, recorded in 1993 and released posthumously on MTV Unplugged in New York in 1994, is perhaps the most familiar reading of the song.

Meaning

According to Chad Channing, Nirvana's drummer around the time of Bleach, Cobain didn't have a title for the song when he first brought it into the studio. When asked what it was about, Cobain replied, "It's about a girl."

The girl in question was Tracy Marander, Cobain's then-girlfriend, with whom he lived at the time. Apparently, Marander had asked Cobain why he had never written a song for her, and Cobain responded with "About A Girl." The song addresses the couple's fractured relationship, caused by Cobain's refusal to get a job, or to share cleaning duties at their apartment (which housed many of his pets). During arguments on the subject, Cobain would occasionally threaten to move into his car, at which point Marander would usually relent.

Strangely, Cobain never told Marander that he had written "About A Girl" for her. In the 1998 Nick Broomfield documentary Kurt and Courtney, Marander revealed that she only found out after reading Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana.

Other versions

A live, electric version of "About A Girl," recorded in 1990, appears as a B-side on CD versions of the band's 1990 single for the song "Sliver".

Another live electric version, recorded in 1991, appears on the 1994 home video, Live! Tonight! Sold Out!!. Another live version from Nirvana's show at the Paradiso Club in Amsterdam on November 25, 1991 appears on the re-released version of Live! Tonight! Sold Out!! which was re-released on DVD in 2006.

A solo acoustic demo version appears on the 2004 Nirvana box set, With the Lights Out, and on the 2005 compilation album, Sliver: The Best of the Box. The “Bleach” version was re-released in 2002 on the band's "best-of" compilation, Nirvana.

Single

"About A Girl" was released as MTV Unplugged in New York's only commercial single and reached number one on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart in late 1994. Five thousand numbered limited edition copies were sold in Australia, while a standard single was sold in countries across Europe. The following songs appear on the single:

  1. "About A Girl" (Cobain)
  2. "Something In The Way" (Cobain)

Chart positions

Singles charts

Year Single Chart Position
1994 About A Girl Official Australian Singles Chart[1] No. 4
1994 About A Girl Official Finland Singles Chart[2] No. 8
1994 About A Girl Official Belgium Singles Chart[3] No. 13
1994 About A Girl Official Sweden Singles Chart[4] No. 20
1994 About A Girl Official Italian Singles Chart No. 20
1994 About A Girl Official Holland Singles Chart No. 22
1994 About A Girl Official French Singles Chart[5] No. 23

Airplay charts

Year Single Chart Position
1994 About A Girl Modern Rock Tracks (US)[6] No. 1
1994 About A Girl Mainstream Rock Tracks (US)[7] No. 3
1994 About A Girl Finland Mitä hittiä Chart[2] No. 7
1994 About A Girl Tripple J Hottest 100 (Australia) No. 7
1994 About A Girl Latvian Airplay Charts[8] No. 4
1992 About A Girl Polish Airplay Charts[9] No. 3
1993 About A Girl French Airplay[10] No. 9
1994 About A Girl Canadian National Airplay Charts[11] No. 9
1994 About A Girl Top 40 Mainstream (US)[12] No. 29
1994 About A Girl Hot 100 Airplay (US) No. ?

Accolades

  • Ranked #2 in NME's "Top 20 Nirvana Songs" (2004)
  • Ranked #2 in Q's "10 Greatest Nirvana Songs Ever" (2004)
  • Ranked #1 in Q's "The 100 Greatest Singers and their 1000 Greatest Songs" (2007) in which Kurt was ranked as the 7th greatest singer

Covers

"About A Girl" has been covered by the American trip-hop band, Cibo Matto.

According to the official Foo Fighters web site, Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters lead singer Dave Grohl covered "About A Girl" during a studio session with music producer Barrett Jones[citation needed]. It has yet to be released.

Trivia

Cobain was eulogized by Patti Smith in a song called "About a Boy" on her 1995 album, Gone Again. The same title was used for a 1998 novel by the British writer, Nick Hornby. The novel makes several references to Cobain and Nirvana.

References

  1. ^ Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970-1992. St Ives, N.S.W. ISBN 0646119176.
  2. ^ a b Pennanen, Timo (2003). Sisältää hitin: levyt ja esittäjät Suomen musiikkilistoilla vuodesta 1972. Otava Publishing Company Ltd. ISBN 951121053X.
  3. ^ Het Belgisch Hit Boek - 45 jaar hits in Vlaanderen 1954-1999. By Robert Collin
  4. ^ http://swedishcharts.com/search.asp?search=Nirvana&cat=s
  5. ^ http://lescharts.com/search.asp?search=Nirvana&cat=s
  6. ^ http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/retrieve_chart_history.do?model.chartFormatGroupName=Singles&model.vnuArtistId=5316&model.vnuAlbumId=810092
  7. ^ http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/retrieve_chart_history.do?model.chartFormatGroupName=Singles&model.vnuArtistId=5316&model.vnuAlbumId=810092
  8. ^ http://www.lanet.lv/misc/charts/
  9. ^ http://www.polskieradio.pl/
  10. ^ http://www.infodisc.fr/ French Airplay Chart
  11. ^ Top 40 Hits, The Essential Chart Guide, 1975 - 1999. By Nanda Lwin. ISBN1-896594-13-1
  12. ^ http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/retrieve_chart_history.do?model.chartFormatGroupName=Singles&model.vnuArtistId=5316&model.vnuAlbumId=810092
Preceded by Billboard Modern Rock Tracks number-one single
December 10, 1994 		Succeeded by
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