Aneurysm (song)

Written in 1990, "Aneurysm" is one of the few Nirvana songs credited to all three members. It was first performed live on November 25, 1990, at the Off Ramp Café in Seattle, Washington.

The first studio version was recorded on January 1, 1991, at Music Source in Seattle, Washington, where the band had recorded material for their Blew EP with Steve Fisk in 1989. Still under contract with Sub Pop, the private session was recorded for free by the band's audio engineer Craig Montgomery, who was friends with Music Source employee Brian Nelson. The seven-song session was the band's first with Grohl, who had joined Nirvana in September 1990.

According to Montgomery, the band "would play the songs live and then Kurt would either put a vocal on it or he wouldn't. It was all first take."[3] The session tapes were later purchased by DGC, whom the band officially signed with in April 1991, and the two finished songs, "Aneurysm" and "Even in His Youth," were remixed by Andy Wallace and released as b-sides on the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" single in September 1991.

Both songs were re-released on the Australian and Japanese tour EP, Hormoaning, in January 1992.

A second studio version of "Aneurysm" was recorded by Miti Adhikari for the BBC program The Evening Session at Maida Vale Studios in London, England. This version was later released on the band's rarities compilation Incesticide in December 1992, along with versions of "Polly" and "Been a Son" from the same session.

Of the four songs recorded during the session, the band spent the longest working on "Aneurysm", using fade-ins and fade-outs on the backing vocals during the verses to give the recording an "unusual" vocal effect, as described by author Gillian G. Garr, and overall "lighter" feel than the Music Source version.[4]

Despite never being released on a studio album, "Aneurysm" was a regular part of the band's setlist in 1991 and 1992. The song's final live performance was on August 6, 1993, at the King Cat Theatre in Seattle.[5]

"Aneurysm" is a grunge song that lasts for a duration of four minutes and thirty-five seconds.[6] According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by BMG Rights Management, it is written in common time, with a moderately fast rock tempo of 132 beats per minute.[6] "Aneurysm" is composed in the key of B minor, while Kurt Cobain's vocal range spans one octave and five notes, from a low of A₄ to a high of F♯₅.[6] The song has a basic sequence of F♯₅–C–B₅–A₅ during the introduction, alternates between the chords of B₅ and D₅ in the verses and follows F♯₅–G♯₅–A₅–B♭₅–B₅–B♭₅–A₅ at the refrain as its chord progression.[6] Its arrangement begins with an extended introduction, opening with an echoed, descending guitar riff. The song's verses are structured around a simplistic, crunching two-chord sequence.[2]

According to Charles Cross in the 2002 Cobain biography Heavier Than Heaven, "Aneurysm" was the first of "a half dozen" songs written by Cobain following his break-up with American musician Tobi Vail in November 1990.[7] Cross described "Aneurysm" as an attempt to win Vail back, unlike later songs like "Drain You," which instead expressed "his deep level of hurt."[7] Throughout the number, Cobain loudly snarls parodic lyrics insisting listeners to, "Come on over, and do the twist."[2] His lyrics for the song make fun of pop conventions and drug-use rituals ("shoot the shit"), ("beat me out of me").[8] During the chorus, Cobain delivers a rousing round of catchy chants. The song concludes with enigmatic praise for an unidentified woman: "She keeps it pumpin' straight to my heart."[2]

In his AllMusic review of Incesticide, Stephen Thomas Erlewine described "Aneurysm" as "perhaps the greatest single song the group ever recorded."[10] AllMusic's Mark Deming wrote that the song "may have been [Nirvana's] final grunge masterpiece" before the release of their mainstream breakthrough Nevermind in September 1991, and described it as being characterized by "big, loud rock riffs, pop culture parody, self-conscious self-disgust, and a finale worthy of a thousand upheld Bic lighters."[2] Jenny Pelly of Pitchfork called the song "the apex of [Incesticide] and Nirvana's career," writing that it "never fails to put the stupidest grin on my face, and I cannot hear it without flailing every inch of my body to its squirming emotional upheaval, without jerking my shoulders to its torrential feedback of the heart, as if succumbing to every knot and crevice of this punk song could save my life."[11] Pitchfork's Jeremy D. Larson called it "an absolutely perfect, blood-boiling, body-moving, and still severely underrated song."[12]

In 2013, "Aneurysm" was voted the seventh best Nirvana song in a Rolling Stone's reader's poll.[13] In 2015, it was ranked at number 30 on Rolling Stone's "No Apologies: All 102 Nirvana Songs Ranked" list.[14] In 2019, The Guardian placed it at number six on their list of Nirvana's 20 greatest songs, with Alex Petridis calling it "every bit the equal of anything on Nevermind."[15]

In 2017, to mark what would have been Cobain's 50th birthday, the Phonographic Performance Limited released a list of the top 20 most played Nirvana songs on television and radio in the UK, in which "Aneurysm" was ranked at number nine.[16]

On April 10, 2014, "Aneurysm" was performed by surviving Nirvana members Grohl, Novoselic and Pat Smear, with lead vocals by Kim Gordon, vocalist and bassist of the American indie rock band Sonic Youth, at Nirvana's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at Barclays Centre in Brooklyn, New York. Rolling Stone named it one of the 10 Best Cover Songs of 2014, calling it a "fitting" end to the ceremony given Sonic Youth's role in helping Nirvana attain mainstream success, and writing that "Kurt would've approved."[17] Gordon discussed the performance in her 2015 autobiography Girl in a Band, writing that "Onstage, I was reminded that Kurt was the most intense performer I had ever seen ... I sang 'Aneurysm,' with its chorus, 'Beat me out of me,' bringing in all my own rage and hurt from the last few years - a four-minute-long explosion of grief, where I could finally let myself feel the furious sadness of Kurt's death and everything else surrounding it."[18]