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100 Songs That Have Moved Me | Song #011: "Come as You Are" (1992)
Title: "Come as You Are"
Artist: Nirvana
Composer: Kurt Cobain
Producer: Butch Vig
Release Date: March 3, 1992
Peak Chart Position: #3 (Modern Rock Tracks/Mainstream Rock Tracks)
Album: Nevermind (1991)
Rolling Stone metadata:
Words from the artist:
How this song moves me:
Like so many other iconoclastic moments from my childhood, I missed the Nirvana train completely. Oh, I knew of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and the ~controversial~ Nevermind album cover, but they weren't really on my radar. No surprise, really - I was a preteen when Kurt Cobain killed himself, so I wasn't exactly in his target audience :P but I did have some pretty music-savvy friends, even in elementary school. One friend in particular loved Nirvana - and as I grew up and started listening to their music, I totally understood why.
"Come As You Are" is a sort of all-inclusive call to arms, a rare song of acceptance in any otherwise dark and judgmental genre. The lyrics, as suggested by the critics, are little more than contradictory cliches, but that's one of the things I like about it. Society adheres to strict rules to preserve the social fabric, and as such, there are the "wanted" and the "unwanted." Kurt definitely spoke to (for?) the latter group. Even this early into his career, his personal hell was palpable. The proverbial "tortured genius" continued to open himself up with this second album, but I don't know that he was anticipating what a huge hit it would become. The fact that he thought this song would be the one to break the band into the mainstream (instead of "Teen Spirit") speaks volumes. It's always a little dangerous to be so accepting of the freaks - and, indeed, he came to regret the intense loyalty of the audience the band garnered with this album.
Nirvana definitely changed the direction of music, and as such, they have been analyzed to death. I think their ultimate meaning, though, comes down to the individual. For me, in my darkest, loneliest moments, I find a sort of strange comfort in Nirvana's albums, and this song in particular, knowing I'm not alone in feeling this way. It's nice to feel accepted as I am, flaws and all, even if only for just a moment.
My favorite Nirvana song, coincidentally, was the B-side to this song when it was released as a single - "Drain You," the twisted version of a love song (big surprise that I like it so much, LOL):
Artist: Nirvana
Composer: Kurt Cobain
Producer: Butch Vig
Release Date: March 3, 1992
Peak Chart Position: #3 (Modern Rock Tracks/Mainstream Rock Tracks)
Album: Nevermind (1991)
Rolling Stone metadata:
Rank: #452
Blurb: "It's just about people and what they're expected to act like," Cobain said. "The lines in the song are really contradictory. They're kind of a rebuttal to each other." The song is driven by a simple riff that Vig goosed with a flanged, subaquatic guitar effect. Cobain apparently lifted it from a 1985 song by U.K. art-metal band Killing Joke, whom Dave Grohl paid back 12 years later by drumming on their 2003 album. (Source)
Words from the artist:
"Come as You Are" was one of the few songs Nirvana recorded onto the rehearsal tape the group sent to producer Butch Vig prior to the recording of Nevermind in 1991. The group recorded the song with Vig during album sessions at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California, in early 1991. Cobain recorded his guitar solo in two takes, as well as three takes of vocals, of which the first was used. Vig then asked Cobain to double track his vocals throughout the entire song. During the harmony overdub session, Cobain accidentally sang the phrase "And I don't have a gun" too early, appearing the fourth time he sings the word "memoria" after the guitar solo. He decided to keep the mistake in the final recording. Vig sampled Cobain singing "memoria" from the middle of the song and placed it in the background of the song near the end twice.
The song begins with Cobain playing an unaccompanied guitar riff for eight seconds. Cobain used an Electro-Harmonix Small Clone guitar chorus pedal to give his instrument a "watery" tone during the verses and pre-choruses. He is joined by the rest of the band for the first verse, which is moody and subdued. Once the band reaches the chorus, the song reaches full volume. The shift in dynamics is a technique Nirvana used on many of its songs. The song features one of Cobain's longest guitar solos. "Kurt really did not play a lot of solos," Vig said. "This one is more of a melodic part based on the vocal melody. It's not trying to show off pyrotechnics. It complements the melody of the song."
Cobain described the lyrics of "Come as You Are" as contradictory, and said the song was about "people and what they're expected to act like." Pointing to the line "Take your time, hurry up, choice is yours, don't be late," essayist Catherine J. Creswell writes that in Cobain's lyrics, "[p]hrases clump into strings of empty clichés whose own ostensible meaning is forced into contradictions or simple rhyme sound." (Source)
Grohl said that Cobain told him, "Music comes first and lyrics come second," and Grohl believes that above all Cobain focused on the melodies of his songs. Cobain was still working on the album's lyrics well into the recording of Nevermind. Additionally, Cobain's phrasing on the album is often difficult to understand. Vig asserted that clarity of Cobain's singing was not paramount. Vig said, "Even though you couldn't quite tell what he was singing about, you knew it was intense as hell." Cobain would later complain when rock journalists attempted to decipher his singing and extract meaning from his lyrics, writing "Why in the hell do journalists insist on coming up with a second-rate Freudian evaluation of my lyrics, when 90 percent of the time they've transcribed them incorrectly?" (Source)
Hearing Kurt Cobain sing "And I swear that I don't have a gun" gives "Come as You Are" a sting it was never meant to have when Nirvana's breakthrough album, Nevermind, was first released in 1991. However, coming from a band (and an album) whose raison d'être was usually bad karma, "Come as You Are" was a rare oasis of compassion and understanding; if it's hardly an up tune, with its descending minor-key melody and wobbly, effects-drenched guitar lines, it also suggests that the often judgmental Mr. Cobain was willing to accept his audience on their own terms, at least at this moment -- either "doused in mud" or "soaked in bleach." When Cobain declares that he's unarmed, it's an attempt to reassure listeners that no matter how much of a misanthrope he may be, his target is the world at large rather than the individuals in it, and that there was still room in this damaged world for everyone. A year after he recorded "Come as You Are," the world at large was showing up at Cobain's doorstep as he went from being a minor cult figure to a bona fide rock star, and it's significant that he wouldn't express quite this degree of openness for his audience again. (Source)
How this song moves me:
Like so many other iconoclastic moments from my childhood, I missed the Nirvana train completely. Oh, I knew of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and the ~controversial~ Nevermind album cover, but they weren't really on my radar. No surprise, really - I was a preteen when Kurt Cobain killed himself, so I wasn't exactly in his target audience :P but I did have some pretty music-savvy friends, even in elementary school. One friend in particular loved Nirvana - and as I grew up and started listening to their music, I totally understood why.
"Come As You Are" is a sort of all-inclusive call to arms, a rare song of acceptance in any otherwise dark and judgmental genre. The lyrics, as suggested by the critics, are little more than contradictory cliches, but that's one of the things I like about it. Society adheres to strict rules to preserve the social fabric, and as such, there are the "wanted" and the "unwanted." Kurt definitely spoke to (for?) the latter group. Even this early into his career, his personal hell was palpable. The proverbial "tortured genius" continued to open himself up with this second album, but I don't know that he was anticipating what a huge hit it would become. The fact that he thought this song would be the one to break the band into the mainstream (instead of "Teen Spirit") speaks volumes. It's always a little dangerous to be so accepting of the freaks - and, indeed, he came to regret the intense loyalty of the audience the band garnered with this album.
Nirvana definitely changed the direction of music, and as such, they have been analyzed to death. I think their ultimate meaning, though, comes down to the individual. For me, in my darkest, loneliest moments, I find a sort of strange comfort in Nirvana's albums, and this song in particular, knowing I'm not alone in feeling this way. It's nice to feel accepted as I am, flaws and all, even if only for just a moment.
My favorite Nirvana song, coincidentally, was the B-side to this song when it was released as a single - "Drain You," the twisted version of a love song (big surprise that I like it so much, LOL):
In his biography of Kurt Cobain Heavier Than Heaven, biographer Charles Cross wrote, "When Kurt was questioned about the song ["Drain You"] he said he had made a lot of it up on the spot but that the first line "One baby to another says I'm lucky to have met you"... was particularly important to the interpretation of the song..." (Source)