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nuggetsofthefuture:

Juliana Hatfield - Nirvana

With the benefit of hindsight, a lot of rock writers have established the narrative as follows: that Nirvana released Nevermind in September 1991, and immediately, the era of hair-metal was ended. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was instantly a huge hit, and everyone loved Nirvana immediately. As someone who was around at that time, though, I can tell you that this is revisionist history. There was a brief period inbetween the release of Nevermind and the success of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” during which Nirvana seemed like they might not gain that much benefit from their decision to sign to a major label. Sonic Youth had done it before them, after all, and had their video for “Dirty Boots” played on MTV during mid-afternoon programming. Goo nonetheless dropped out of sight of the mainstream—and ironically, it wasn’t until Nirvana hit big that Sonic Youth had any aboveground success, which came with their 1992 album, Dirty.

It was during this brief period, in the last few months of 1991, when Nirvana was still mostly showing up on “120 Minutes” and, weirdly enough, “Headbanger’s Ball,” that Juliana Hatfield wrote and recorded this song. When I heard it on the college radio station in my hometown that winter, I was already a Juliana Hatfield fan, having loved the final Blake Babies album, Sunburn. The words to “Nirvana” jumped out at me, though. Even though I was used to hearing my own thoughts and feelings reflected in her lyrics (I’m going to have to tell you guys about “Out There” by the Blake Babies sometime. What an incredible song), “Nirvana” had something else going for it—a name-check for my then-favorite band. Sure, by the time I heard it, Nirvana were #1 on the charts, and everyone really did love them… at least, in places where people kept up with the latest cultural trends. Out in the rural area where I grew up, the hair-metal years were still in full flower—and that was for people who even liked rock music. Garth Brooks t-shirts were just as common in my high school as Guns N’ Roses shirts. Nobody knew who Nirvana was, or if they did, they didn’t like them.

The title is a cute bit of misdirection by Juliana, though, because the song isn’t really about Nirvana. Well, it is a little bit—that’s a subplot, if anything. What it’s really about is contemplating suicide. And back when I was in high school, I did a hell of a lot of that. This probably sounds like a joke or an exaggeration, but it’s true: when I was in high school, I could never manage to have more than two friends at a time. If I made a third, one of the first two would stop talking to me. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong, but there was obviously something. I thought there was no one like me anywhere in the world, and the only things that ever told me otherwise were my records. This is one record that told me that someone somewhere understood what I was going through.

“Nirvana” is the heaviest song on Hey Babe, a record that is generally janglier and more poppy than it might seem from hearing just this song. It starts with feedback, at least 10 seconds of it, and the guitars that come in when the song actually starts are distorted. The drums hit hard and the verse riff is choppy and rough. Over all of this, Juliana sings: “I shut the windows and close the store. I lay down on the bathroom floor. Everyone I know is a bore.” Instead of a change here, the verse starts over again, and she continues. “I’m starting to think that everything stinks, and I could really use a drink. Then I get up and hit my head on the sink.” We’ve all had nights like this, right? Falling around your apartment and lying wherever you drop for unusually long amounts of time. Losing minutes, hours, in reveries that feel like black holes you’re falling down. Right? I can remember that from high school, though I would always lie on the floor of my room. I can remember curling up inbetween the foot of my bed and the corner of the room, right next to my stereo, with my headphones on, blasting some record uncomfortably loudly into my ears. It’d get dark and I’d still be sitting there with no lights on, because what’s the point of having lights on when you feel so horrible?

“Father, Father, Father,” Juliana sings, switching from the verse to a pre-chorus riff. “Should I end it all?” The music builds to a crescendo at this point, but switches it up on you when the change arrives, because the chorus is the quietest, most melodic part of the song. The distortion on the guitars clicks off, a melodic lead line comes in, and over it, Juliana croons in a high, sweet voice, “Here comes the song I love so much. It makes me wanna go and fuck shit up.” I have always loved the way she juxtaposes that harsh lyric with her softest possible vocals. I also love the sentiment there. When I was a teenager, putting on some record I loved at a ridiculous volume and trashing my room was one of my main forms of catharsis. I broke a bunch of tape cases that way—knocking over the stacks that would accumulate on the shelf next to my stereo. Never broke anything more expensive than that, though I did put my first guitar through the wall of my first apartment when I was 19 and had just dropped out of college. That was the night that my downstairs neighbors called in a complaint to my landlord, which led directly to my lease for that apartment not getting renewed. At least I didn’t get evicted. For the record, the guitar was fine.

Speaking of breaking stuff, the second verse of “Nirvana” begins with Juliana doing exactly that. “I slam my hand in the car door. I scream til I can scream no more, bloody and mean and rotten to the core.” She’s yelling these lines, getting about as heated as she ever gets, vocally; it’s tough to do too much screaming when you naturally have as sweet a voice as Juliana Hatfield has. She pushes it as far as she can on these lines, though. Then, on the prechorus, she switches it up, this time singing, “Satan, should I end it all?” I’m assuming this reference was the one that kept this song from being released as a single. Well, this and the use of “fuck shit up” on the song’s chorus. In 2002, the execrable Puddle Of Mudd had a #1 hit with a song whose chorus was the line “she fuckin’ hates me” repeated over and over, the curse bleeped out on every repetition. Ten years earlier, though, this was something that wasn’t done.

I didn’t talk about the entire chorus the first time it came around, but I should do so this time, because it’s important. “Here comes the song I love so much. It makes me wanna go fuck shit up,” Juliana sings again. She sings it four times on this song, and it never gets any less cool. But the rest of the chorus is the part that’s truly brilliant. “I’ve got Nirvana in my head,” she sings, cementing the reference to Nirvana in the song’s title as being a reference to the band and not the Buddhist place of enlightenment. I mean, I guess there’s a way you could still interpret it that way, but I don’t want to hear any arguments in favor of that interpretation, because it’s wrong, that’s all. She’s listening to Nirvana, just like I so often was back then, and that’s rad. It made me think, as a suicidal 16 year old, “Hey, Juliana Hatfield is just like me. She thinks about the same crappy stuff, and we even like the same bands.” And that made me more open to the final line of the chorus.

When Juliana Hatfield sings “I’m so glad I’m not dead” to end the chorus of “Nirvana,” I know exactly what she means. Throughout the song, she’s been asking some unseen figure (God? Satan? Her actual dad?) ”Should I end it all?” And it’s not that she’s stopped wondering about that by the end of each chorus. It’s just that, when she’s listening to Nirvana, for that one brief moment, she can feel happy to be alive. She can tell herself that she’s glad she’s not dead and try like hell to believe it, and maybe when “that sound comes around and goes in your ears,” she actually can mean it. “I can do anything, I have no fears,” she declares at the end of the song’s last verse, and at least in that moment, she means it. The music gives her strength, just as it gives us all strength in our darkest hours. That’s the point of this song in the end. It’s not just about hating yourself and wondering if you’d be better off dead, and it’s not just about listening to your favorite song. It’s about the way that your favorite song can save you, even if it’s only for three minutes at a time. It can make life worth living, even if only for the minute it will take for the chorus to come around again.

Back in 1992, when I was a junior in high school, Juliana Hatfield’s song “Nirvana” played much the same role in my life that the Nirvana song she’s singing about played for her. I used to lie on the floor of my room listening to it through headphones, singing quietly along, in a pitch far above my natural one, with the line, “I’m so glad I’m not dead.” I tried really hard to believe it. I have my bad days even now, but it’s a lot easier to believe it now than it was then. At least in part, I have Juliana Hatfield to thank for that.

justgettothegoodpart:

New Wilco! Holy moly.

Wilco - “I Might”

(Source: driver-suprise-me)