About a Girl (Nirvana song)

"About a Girl" was first recorded in the studio in December 1988 by Jack Endino at Reciprocal Recording in Seattle, Washington. It was one of nine songs recorded during the 30-hour, six-day session that ended up on the band's July 1989 debut album, Bleach. As Endino recalled in a 2004 interview with Rob Nash of The Independent, "They just banged it out—they had it all figured out; they were rehearsed. They would do the songs in one or two takes; [Cobain would] get the vocals as one overdub, that would be it, and then on to the next song. So it was a pretty easy record to make."[5]

On October 26, 1989, a version of "About a Girl" 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.[6] Another version was recorded on November 1, 1989, at Villa 65 in Hilversum, Netherlands for the VPRO radio show, Nozems-a-Gogo.

A live version of the song, recorded at the Pine Street Theatre in Portland, Oregon on February 9, 1990, appeared on the British 12-inch and CD versions of the "Sliver" single in 1991.

On November 18, 1993, "About a Girl" was performed as the opening song on the band's MTV Unplugged appearance at Sony Music Studios in New York City. This version of the song featured Pat Smear on the second guitar.

"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.

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" is an alternative rock song that runs for two minutes and forty-eight seconds.[7] 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.[7] "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.[7] The song primarily alternates between the open chords of Em and G in the verses and follows a chord progression of C♯₅–G♯₅–F♯₅–C♯₅–G♯₅–F♯₅–E₅–A₅–C₅ during the refrain.[7] 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 slightly away from the place expected.[8] "About a Girl" has an aching, wistful melody which Cobain sings over simple chord progressions. His electric guitar playing grows rawer and noisier throughout the track.[8] It was also described as a pop song by Cobain, producer Butch Vig, and original Nirvana drummer Chad Channing.[9]

According to Chad Channing, the band'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."[10]

The "girl" was Tracy Marander, Cobain's then-girlfriend, with whom he lived at the time. The lyrics address 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 occasionally threatened to move into his car, at which point Marander would usually relent.[11] 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, Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana.

In a March 1989 Melody Maker interview, music journalist Everett True named "About a Girl" as one of several songs on Bleach, along with "Blew," "Big Cheese" and "Sifting," that were "crafted round a firm base of tune, chorus, melody."[16]

"About a Girl" has retrospectively 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 [Cobain's] considerable songcraft."[17] Evan Rytlewskia of Pitchfork called it "a glimpse at the melodic impulses that would make [Cobain] one of the defining rock musicians of the ’90s."[18] According to Will Bryant of Pitchfork, it was "curious, based on the clean guitars and tinny cymbals that dominate ["About a Girl"], 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."[19] 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."[20]

In 2004, the NME ranked "About a Girl" second on their list of the "20 Greatest Nirvana Songs Ever."[21] The same year, Q ranked it second on their list of the "10 Greatest Nirvana Songs Ever."[22] In 2015, it was placed at number eight on Rolling Stone's ranking of 102 Nirvana songs.[23] 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."[24] In 2019, it was ranked eighth on The Guardian's list of "Nirvana's 20 greatest songs".[25] In 2023, it was ranked third on the A.V. Club's "Essential Nirvana: Their 30 greatest songs, ranked" list, with Stephen Thomas Erlewine describing it as being "driven by one of Kurt Cobain’s prettiest melodies."[26]

"About a Girl" is a BMI award-winning song.[27]

The song inspired the title of the 1998 novel About a Boy, by British author, Nick Hornby.[28]

In November 2019, American rock band Puddle of Mudd performed an acoustic version of "About a Girl" during a session at SiriusXM.[29] The cover has been widely criticized and ridiculed, with most of the focus being placed upon vocalist Wes Scantlin's strained, off-key vocals.[30][31]

On April 24, 2020, the song was performed by American musician Post Malone as part of his 15-song Nirvana tribute concert live-streamed on YouTube, which raised more than $4 million for the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.[32][33]

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."[34]

• The versions of the song recorded for the BBC in London on October 26, 1989, and for VPRO in Hilversum on November 1, 1989, both remain unreleased.