The Nirvana song that hates its audience

When Nirvana first broke onto the scene, there’s a good chance that most fans weren’t paying attention to the lyrics. Although Kurt Cobain may have put time and effort into writing lyrics to songs like ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, his words were often incoherent from one line to the next, as he focused on the sounds of words rather than any set structure. While Cobain did write tunes with hidden meanings from time to time, one of the group’s hits was openly malicious towards their fans.

Once the band were signed to Sub Pop, they got their first taste of the business side of the music industry. Rather than play music for the sake of playing it, Cobain got an education about what the rules of the road were, as labels became interested in selling the music to people rather than participating in an artistic experience together.

While the band were still making things work on the indie circuit, they ended up signing to Geffen Records because of the various networking going on at Sub Pop. As Krist Novoselic recalled in Classic Albums, “Sub Pop was going to be a subsidiary of some other big label, and I just thought, ‘Wow, cut out the middle man. We should just get our own deal.

Even though working on the same label as rock giants was alluring financially, Cobain had mixed feelings about potentially becoming a huge rock band. Since this was the same label as hair metal titans and later competitors Guns N’ Roses, Cobain didn’t want any of the macho bravado to rub off on their niche audience.

While the band were still making things work on the indie circuit, they ended up signing to Geffen Records because of the various networking going on at Sub Pop. As Krist Novoselic recalled in Classic Albums, “Sub Pop was going to be a subsidiary of some other big label, and I just thought, ‘Wow, cut out the middle man. We should just get our own deal.’”

Even though working on the same label as rock giants was alluring financially, Cobain had mixed feelings about potentially becoming a huge rock band. Since this was the same label as hair metal titans and later competitors Guns N’ Roses, Cobain didn’t want any of the macho bravado to rub off on their niche audience.

To preserve his fanbase, Cobain wrote ‘In Bloom’ about the specific subsection of fans that he didn’t want in his life. While the song’s verses are relatively abstract, the chorus calls out the fans who only listen to bands like Nirvana for the guitar riffs and the melodies rather than the lyrics.

Imagining the ideal high school jock, Cobain created the archetype for the fans he despises, who want nothing more than to sing along to their pretty songs while he shoots his guns, all while never knowing that the song is openly mocking them. While ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ may have been about rallying against authority, ‘In Bloom’ was about keeping their fanbase as pure as possible.

With the release of Nevermind, though, much of the song’s irony was lost on the public, as fans from all walks of life became enamoured with Cobain’s melodies on tracks like ‘Come As You Are’. Dave Grohl would later discuss how strange it was to see those people at the band’s shows, saying in the documentary Back and Forth, “It went from cool college kids to jocks. That was the biggest change for me. I would look out behind the stage and be like, ‘There’s jocks here, that’s interesting. Wait, they like our music? They used to kick my fucking ass for listening to this music”.

While Cobain was more than happy to become a rock star, he wasn’t prepared for his audience to flip completely. After his bid to become one of the biggest bands in the world, the massive success caused Cobain to withdraw, rarely playing shows on the Nevermind promotional tour and trying his best to tone down the band’s commercial potential on In Utero. Nothing was going to kill the world’s admiration of Nirvana, but ‘In Bloom’ remained the one song that is completely honest about their disdain for the braindead side of their fanbase.