BuAYYYE-be
NIRVANA, "Drain You" | Nevermind, 1991
One of the heartbreaking remainders in a world without Kurt Cobain is that once you get past all the clatter of his life — the suicide, the drugs, the dysfunction with Courtney, even the success — you realize the thing that powered it all: Kurt was a total romantic. His heart ballooned with the good stuff, and it let itself out through his music. He tried to hide it behind sarcasm, addiction, and even rage. None of it worked. And if you were a young person, and you were giving your first listens to Nevermind, you eventually got beyond the songs they kept playing on MTV, and you found this little gem describing love in its most disgusting form: being lost in a co-dependence so pink you don’t at all mind passing meat mouth-to-mouth in a kiss. It also turns dark — dilated pupils and poison apples and references to piss. But long before the downfall, there’s that moment at the very beginning, bouncing along on a happy beat and muddled guitar roar, when Kurt takes on a playful third-person perspective to scream a sing-along “baby." It’s sweet proof that in order for true love to be doomed, it must first exist. Often in unlikely places.
