Greatest Songs #6:

Nirvana -- "All Apologies" (1993, from Unplugged in New York)

Two years ago, in its full-issue necrophilia for the decade anniversary of Kurt kissing his shotgun, Spin managed one moment that was an actual testament to Nirvana's music, rather than their pop culture status and image. In an alt-history timeline of what might have happened had Cobain been too stoned to pull the trigger, the author has Nirvana reform for November 2001's Concert for New York. The opening song to their set, is, of course, "All Apologies."

When all is said and done, it's that song and the obvious one that Nirvana is going to be remembered for, and it's the one that, if they're honest, the fans will admit to being superior. If, as Matt once told me, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is our generation's "Hard Day's Night," the song that captured a moment forever in crystal, then "All Apologies" is our "Comfortably Numb," the song that everyone sings to without knowing why.

I used the version of the song from Unplugged instead of In Utero for two reasons: 1) I don't have In Utero, and 2) this allows me to get in a last slap at all the self-important swine who screamed about Nirvana "selling out". Yeah, Kurt may have thought that Nevermind sounded like a Motely Crue record, but let's not forget that Kurt's perspective was, shall we say, a touch off at times. And if if Nevermind had been Nirvana's last album, maybe the argument would have some shred of merit (though I doubt it). But it wasn't. In Utero was, and it was by collective critical opinion the harsher, less commercial work. I don't know what you call that, but it's not selling out.

Unplugged, on the other hand, the live album everyone ran out and bought because it was released but a month or so after the Awful News, features the band sitting in front of a fawning, uncritical audience, playing the blues. You know, the blues? The oldest musical form in America? The ur-genre from which all others (except country, its kissin' cousin) are descended? The genre that was old before it started? Is there a more obvious way to cement your stature as Serious Musicians than to play blues progressions with a warbly voice?

I thought not. So where were the hipsters complaining about Unplugged?

Don't get me wrong, I don't want them to start. The album's brilliant, start to finish, and sweet and haunting and beautiful and deranged. It's a short history of popular music, where the Meat Puppets and David Bowie and Leadbelly share the same space, and done so well that we hardly notice the juxtaposition. Played the right way, "All Apologies" sounds like Robert Johnson, because "All Apologies" is Robert Johnson.

They never sold out. They just sold. There's a difference.






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