Listening Room: Nirvana - “Milk It”
I was drawn to Nirvana because of Cobain’s ability to mix anger and pop. I didn’t necessarily understand that then, but I get it now. There’s no shortage of irony that the dominant anti-pop band of the ’90s best songs were pop songs, cleverly disguised by Cobain’s genius.
I never really got much from Nirvana’s lyrics when they were at the height of their popularity. The saturation of “Cobain the martyr†coverage and subsequent release of Unplugged in New York, I felt overdosed on Nirvana and didn’t listen to any of their songs for years. I didn’t get rid of the records because I told myself I liked them, but I moved on.
Three or four years later, while in college, I revisited those records and was amazed! These albums were better than I remembered. For a change, the hype was right. The billions of dollars The Gap spent trying to sell designer grunge to teenagers couldn’t negate the fact that these were some brilliant records. The blind squirrel that is the mainstream found its nut, pun partially intended.
“Milk It†uses nearly every element of the Nirvana playbook. The soft/loud dynamic is used. Sonically, producer Steve Albini’s fingerprints seem to be all over this song. The detuned guitars have that very In Utero ambiance. Cobain’s guitar doesn’t exactly create a melody during the verse, nor does it serve the rhythm. Instead it plinks out nonsensical notes, bathed in the glorious Albini effect. In addition to loving the guitar sounds Cobain and Albini crafted together, Krist Novoselic’s bass has the gorgeous boom and buoyancy to it.
I might be alone in this, but I find it brilliant that Kurt Cobain could toss out a line like “Look on the bright side of suicide†with a mix of fury, menace, and humor. Cobain tosses out a string of contradictory lines that sound like nonsense on the surface and a few biting or funny one liners.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel when you have a great formula and a great song. “Milk It†is not a lead song, it’s a supporting one. It isn’t the reason In Utero is a great album, but In Utero wouldn’t be great without it.
Filed under: Tags: Listening Room, Nirvana
i had no Nirvian for quite some time. then i read an article about Cobain, specifically about In Utero. some of the tunes on there come from very odd angles, my favorite being “Scentless Apprentice”, which came from this old, oddball horror movie.