About a Girl (Nirvana song)


"About a Girl" is a song by American rock band Nirvana, written by vocalist and guitarist Kurt Cobain. It is the third song on their debut album, Bleach, released in June 1989.
A live, acoustic version, recorded during Nirvana's MTV Unplugged appearance in November 1993, was released as a single in October 1994, to promote the album, MTV Unplugged in New York. It was the first single released since Cobain's death in April 1994, reaching number one on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart and number 22 on Billboard's Hot 100 Airplay chart.

Origin and recording

"About a Girl" was written in 1988, reportedly after Cobain spent an afternoon repeatedly listening to Meet the Beatles!, the 1964 second American release by the Beatles. The song was first recorded in the studio in December 1988 by Jack Endino at Reciprocal Recording in Seattle, Washington. This version appeared on the band's debut album, Bleach, in June 1989. It was debuted live at a dorm party at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington in February 1989.
According to Cobain, he had been attempting to conceal his pop songwriting at this time, and was reluctant to include the song on Bleach for fear of alienating the band's then-largely grunge fan base. In a 1993 Rolling Stone interview with David Fricke, he explained:
"Even to put 'About a Girl' on Bleach was a risk. I was heavily into pop, I really liked R.E.M., and I was into all kinds of old ‘60s stuff. But there was a lot of pressure within that social scene, the underground — like the kind of thing you get in high school. And to put a jangly R.E.M. type of pop song on a grunge record, in that scene, was risky."

However, Endino was excited about the song, and even saw it as a potential single. In a 1997 interview with Gillian G. Gaar for Goldmine, he recalled Cobain's initial trepidation about including the song on Bleach.
"I think Kurt felt nervous about putting 'About a Girl' on there, but he was very insistent on it. He said, 'I've got a song that's totally different from the others, Jack, you've gotta just humour me here, because we're gonna do this real pop tune.' The question was raised at some point, gee, I wonder if Sub Pop's going to like this, and we decided, 'Who cares?' Sub Pop said nothing. In fact, I think they liked it a lot."

In 2004, Butch Vig, who produced Nirvana's 1991 breakthrough album Nevermind, cited "About a Girl" as the first hint that there was more to Nirvana than grunge. "Everyone talks about Kurt's love affair with... the whole punk scene, but he was also a huge Beatles fan, and the more time we spent together the more obvious their influence on his songwriting became," Vig told the NME.
On October 26, 1989, a version was recorded by Ted de Bono at Maida Vale Studios in London, England, during Nirvana's first BBC Peel Session. The full session was first broadcast on November 22, 1989. Another version was recorded on November 1, 1989 at Villa 65 in Hilversum, the Netherlands for the VPRO radio show, Nozems-a-Gogo.
The studio version of "About a Girl" was re-released on the band's first "best of" compilation, Nirvana, in October 2002. The MTV Unplugged version was re-released on a second hits compilation, Icon, in August 2010.
"About a Girl" was performed for the final time live at Nirvana's last concert, at Terminal Einz in Munich, Germany on March 1, 1994.

Composition and lyrics

Music

"About a Girl" is an alternative rock song that runs for a duration of two minutes and forty-eight seconds. According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by BMG Rights Management, it is written in the time signature of common time, with a moderately fast rock tempo of 130 beats per minute. "About a Girl" is composed in the key of E minor, while Kurt Cobain's vocal range spans one octave and six notes, from the low-note of B3 to the high-note of A4. The song primarily alternates between the open chords of Em and G in the verses and follows a chord progression of C5–G5–F5–C5–G5–F5–E5–A5–C5 during the refrain. During the verses, Cobain repeats the same two chords as Krist Novoselic's bass line continuously ascends while a vocal harmony and tambourines appear in the background. The song's chorus features slight key modulation, where chords land just a slightly away from the place expected. "About a Girl" has an aching, wistful melody which Cobain sings over simple chord progressions. His electric guitar playing grows rawer and noisier over the course of the track.

Lyrics

According to Chad Channing, Nirvana's Bleach-era drummer, Cobain didn't have a title for the song when he first brought it into the studio. When asked what it was about, Cobain replied, "It's about a girl."
The "girl" was Tracy Marander, Cobain's then-girlfriend, with whom he lived at the time. Apparently, Marander had asked Cobain why he had never written a song for her, and Cobain responded with "About a Girl." The lyrics addresses the couple's fractured relationship, caused by Cobain's refusal to get a job, or to share cleaning duties at their apartment, which housed many of his pets. During arguments on the subject, Cobain would occasionally threaten to move into his car, at which point Marander would usually relent. Cobain never told Marander that he had written "About a Girl" for her. In the 1998 Nick Broomfield documentary Kurt and Courtney, Marander revealed that she only found out after reading Michael Azerrad's 1993 Nirvana biography, .

Reception

"About a Girl" has frequently been cited as early evidence of Cobain's talent as a pop songwriter. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic wrote that the song "illustrated signs of considerable songcraft." Evan Rytlewskia of Pitchfork called it "a glimpse at the melodic impulses that would make one of the defining rock musicians of the ’90s." According to Will Bryant of Pitchfork, it was "curious, based on the clean guitars and tinny cymbals that dominate , how Nirvana ever came to be identified with grunge, the genuinely dirty and moody sound more readily associated with contemporaries Mudhoney, Soundgarden and Tad than the punk-metal hybrid Nirvana favored." The NME described it as "Kurt's first true masterpiece," which "showed Nirvana's soft underbelly could be just as arresting as their ear-splitting thrashes."
In 2004, the NME ranked "About a Girl" second on their list of the 20 Greatest Nirvana Songs Ever. The same year, Q ranked it second on their list of the 10 Greatest Nirvana Songs Ever. In 2015, it was placed at number eight on Rolling Stone's ranking of 102 Nirvana songs. It was ranked at number 112 on Pitchfork's 2015 list of The 200 Best Songs of the 1980s, with Raymond Cummings calling it a "sharp, perceptive, well-constructed, and almost Beatles-esque" song "that demonstrated a potential beyond grunge's ghetto." In 2019, it was ranked eighth on The Guardian's list of Nirvana's 20 greatest songs.
"About a Girl" is a BMI award-winning song.
On April 24, 2020, the song was performed by American musician Post Malone as part of his 15-song Nirvana tribute concert livestreamed on YouTube, which raised more than $4 million for the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.

MTV Unplugged version

Featuring Pat Smear on second guitar, the MTV Unplugged version was released as a single in October 1994, to promote the album MTV Unplugged in New York, released the following month. It was the only commercial single released from the album, and featured the Unplugged version of "Something in the Way" as the b-side. Cobain opened the song by saying, "This is off our first record. Most people don't own it."
Reviewing MTV Unplugged in New York for the NME, John Harris wrote that the song's "musical backdrop suggests The Beatles in 1964, at their lovelorn best: minor-key introspection gives way to regular traces of lightened-up calm, only to regain the upper hand within bars.... For that reason, encapsulated in the fact that it rides on a divinely simple verse/ chorus/ verse undertow, it may be the most beautiful song here."

Track listings

;Australian CD, French CD, French CD distributed in Europe
  1. "About a Girl"
  2. "Something in the Way"
;US promo CD
  1. "About a Girl"
;Mexican promo split CD and Italian jukebox split 7" with Aerosmith
  1. "About a Girl"
  2. "Blind Man"

    Chart positions

Weekly charts

Chart Peak
position

Year-end charts

Chart Position
Canada Top Singles 88
France 83
Iceland 23

Accolades

Recording and release history

Demo and studio versions

Live versions

Date recordedVenueReleasesPersonnel
February 9, 1990Pine Street Theatre, Portland, OregonSliver
Bleach
October 31, 1991Paramount Theatre, Seattle, WALive! Tonight! Sold Out!! Live at the Paramount
  • Kurt Cobain
  • Krist Novoselic
  • Dave Grohl
November 25, 1991Paradiso, Amsterdam, NetherlandsLive! Tonight! Sold Out!!
  • Kurt Cobain
  • Krist Novoselic
  • Dave Grohl
    • August 30, 1992Reading Festival, Reading, EnglandLive at Reading
  • Kurt Cobain
  • Krist Novoselic
  • Dave Grohl
    • November 18, 1993Sony Music Studios, New York City, New YorkMTV Unplugged in New York Icon
    • Kurt Cobain
    • Krist Novoselic –
    • Dave Grohl
    • Pat Smear
    December 13, 1993Pier 48, Seattle, WashingtonLive and Loud
  • Kurt Cobain
  • Krist Novoselic
  • Dave Grohl
  • Pat Smear

    • In popular culture

  • The song inspired the title of the 1998 novel About a Boy, by British author, Nick Hornby.
  • The studio version appears as downloadable content in the Rock Band video game.
  • The MTV Unplugged version appears in the rhythm video game Guitar Hero World Tour.
  • In November 2019, Puddle of Mudd performed a rendition of the song's Unplugged version for a session at SiriusXM. The cover has been widely criticised and ridiculed, with most of the focus being placed upon singer Wes Scantlin's strained, uncomfortable and off-key vocals.

    Personnel

    • Bleach version
    MTV Unplugged in New York version