90's Jams #9: Nirvana "Heart Shaped Box" (1993)

90's Jams enters single digits, and it's getting a lot tougher to get into the worthiness without sounding like a douche... And then we remembered "Heart Shaped Box" probably has a wikipedia entry... It doesn't mention exact dates, but I recall reading in one of those big Nirvana biographies that this song took something like 9 months to complete... The two verses are described by Charles Cross as "the most convoluted route any songwriter undertook in pop history to say 'I love you'." The vocal melody in the verses may have further raised fans suspicion of Courtney Love receiving ghostwriting assistance from her husband on Live Through This, although it's been noted that Cobain purposely constructed the melody on the verses to sound like a Hole song. In the chorus, Kurt snarls "fuck you" to the media, ironically complaining "I got a new complaint" with a dissonant 2-note interval in both the vocal melody and guitar solo, which couldn't possibly have sounded more overwhelmingly sarcastic. And then of course, there's the performance and the recording itself, matching most of the darkness and catharsis of the rest of In Utero's "Godzilla tearing down buildings in slow motion" massiveness...