About A Girl

First off, let me say right up front that I am not a huge Nirvana fan. For some of you reading, that statement might seem like blasphemy. I don’t dislike their music; if I did, I wouldn’t post their shit here. I enjoy it, I just didn’t go totally over the moon like everyone else seemed to when they burst on the scene in the early 1990‘s. Funny then, that the song that’s probably my favorite of their’s originally appeared on their 1989 debut, Bleach, an album that didn’t even chart until 1992, after Smells Like Teen Spirit exploded on MTV. For a lot of casual Nirvana fans, the version of About A Girl they are most familiar with is probably the MTV Unplugged one, recorded live in New York City. That’s not what’s embedded here. This video is the one that Music Choice used to show, probably because MTV was like, “Fuck you, you can’t show the Unplugged one,” and I don’t think Nirvana shot a traditional video for this. While the Unplugged version is great, it has a kind of sickly sweetness to it that doesn’t 100% click with me; Kurt Cobain‘s vocal performance here has a longing quality to it that I relate to more, and the rest of band’s almost frenetic playing complements it well.

If the embedded video doesn’t load, click to watch Nirvana – About A Girl (Live at the Paramount Theatre) at YouTube.