Kurt Cobain was not one for unpicking his own lyrics, often bemused at attempts from fans, writers and commentators to try and find some deep significance in Nirvana songs. The more famous the band had become, Cobain ventured, the more he’d noticed that people wanted there to be a heavy meaning to his songs when sometimes there wasn’t.
“People expect more of a thematic angle with our music, they always want to read into it,” he stated in a 1993 interview. “Before I was just using pieces of poetry, just garbage, stuff that would spew out of me at the time and a lot of times when I would write lyrics, it would be at the last second because I’m lazy. Then I find myself having to come up with explanations for it and I thought I’d prevent that this time and actually have an explanation for some of the songs at least.”
