The music of Nirvana was always a beautiful contradiction. Despite the fact that the melodies spinning around in Kurt Cobain’s head may have been prime radio fodder from the first minute they hit your eardrums, he never wanted anything to do with the mainstream charts, either, practically doing everything he could to mess up his sound at every turn. While Cobain didn’t always design Nirvana’s work to be commercially successful, he admitted ‘Sliver’ was the closest thing to a dopey pop song they had ever made.
Considering where the band started on Bleach, it would have been easy to guess that they would have remained kings of the underground for the rest of their lives. Even when they were signed to Sub Pop Records, CEO Bruce Pavitt didn’t think that they had that much potential at first, only signing them to record the single ‘Love Buzz’ and seeing where things went from there.
After the group started to gain traction due to Cobain’s massive wail, they were rushed back into the studio to record their debut album. Anything that Nirvana ever touched feels like it’s anointed by the gods these days, but Bleach is still the band at their most sonically blemished, spending a little less than 30 hours recording the entire project.
While the chances of getting a piece like ‘Paper Cuts’ on the radio were practically a pipe dream, ‘About a Girl’ became the mission statement for where they would go. Influenced by underground bands like R.E.M., Cobain wrote the song with a pop mindset, which would go on to influence his writing later on Nevermind.
Before they went into the studio again, Cobain started to realise that there was some dead weight in the rhythm section. After playing with Chad Channing for years, Cobain let him go in favour of Dave Grohl from the hardcore outfit Scream. Since Grohl wasn’t available for a few months, Nirvana would duck into the studio with Dan Peters of Mudhoney to cut ‘Sliver’ as a one-off single.
If ‘About A Girl’ was too pop-friendly for some of their underground audience, ‘Sliver’ may as well have been performed by The Monkees. Featuring a massive singalong chorus and infectious bassline, Cobain wrote the kind of lyrics that felt like a joke from the minute he started singing, complaining about being stuck at his grandparents’ house and begging them to take him home.
When talking to Michael Azerrad in the book Come As You Are, Cobain would later say that he was testing the waters for what he could do, saying, “I decided I wanted to write the most ridiculous pop song I had ever written to prepare people for the next album.” Once Grohl was behind the kit, those pop tracks went from lighthearted romps to the sound of rock’s future.
After going into the studio with Butch Vig, Nevermind would become one of the most celebrated albums of the decade, marking one of the biggest shifts in rock history as millions of fans ditched their teased hair for flannel shirts. Although Cobain may have liked the admiration, success would ultimately become a double-edged sword for him, quickly becoming withdrawn whenever he was praised for his new material.
Even though it only made it onto the compilation album Incesticide, ‘Sliver’ is a real turning point in Nirvana’s career where everything started to shift. One day, they were looking to be the most celebrated indie band in the world, and the next, they had turned the entire music industry on its head.
