Let the record state that Nirvana was never classified as a band with anything resembling a serious sort of demeanor. When Nevermind came out in 1991, they started a food fight and got kicked out of their own album release party. That same year, they did an entire interview with Dave Grohl asleep under the table. They were magnets for shenanigans, usually orchestrated by their own hands. So it’s no wonder that, as the band’s popularity grew, Kurt Cobain became increasingly frustrated with the public’s serious consideration.
By the time 1993 rolled around and Nirvana was working on their third album, Cobain expressed being “tired of taking this band so seriously and everyone else taking it so seriously.” These frustrations culminated in his proposed first title for the album: I Hate Myself and I Want To Die.
Cobain biographer Charles Cross noted in his 2001 book that this phrase originated in Cobain’s journals around 1992. It was also his go-to response when someone asked him how he was doing. As an album title, it was intended as a joke to offset the pressure of being considered seriously. Cobain also told Rolling Stone that it was an attempt to subvert the public’s view of him as a “pissy, complaining, freaked-out schizophrenic who wants to kill himself all the time.”
However, Krist Novoselic convinced Cobain to drop the title, as they feared fans wouldn’t realize it was a joke. Instead, they used the working titles Verse Chorus Verse and Sappy for a time, taken from two album tracks. Finally, they took the title In Utero from a poem Courtney Love wrote.
Nirvana’s Original ‘In Utero’ Title Would Have Been Much More Shocking Post-Suicide
Knowing about that original title 30 years later—even if initially intended as a joke—is pretty rough in context. It might have been more of a complete shock if Nirvana had gone through with it at the time, only for Kurt Cobain to commit suicide six months later.
Could that title, combined with the disturbing lyrical imagery, have led to a more conscious effort to get Kurt Cobain the help he clearly needed back then? Maybe an attempt to take Nirvana less seriously overall would have gone in the opposite direction instead.
But there’s no use theorizing over whether or not Kurt Cobain would be alive today if someone had just listened a little closer, or what have you. The troubling reality is that mental health resources were still lacking in the early 90s. At least compared to today’s standards, which are still not great.
What we do have is In Utero serving as a snapshot of Cobain’s complicated emotional upheavals. Several tracks swing wildly back and forth between saccharine pop and aggressive punk. Lyrically they alternated most often between images of death and birth. Overwhelmingly, In Utero deals with themes of sickness and disease.
It’s a telling sort of album in more ways than one. With several songs dated around 1990, In Utero makes it clear that Cobain was almost always going through some sort of dark period. Still, while his depression and drug use have become fixed elements in his legacy, it’s crucial not to forget that, as a band, Nirvana was often goofy as hell. And really, it’s much more fun to think about that instead.
Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc
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