In Utero is the third and final studio album by the American grunge band Nirvana, released on September 21, 1993 through DGC Records. The album's abrasive and aggressive sound was a departure from the polished production of the band's breakthrough second album, Nevermind (1991), due in part to the selection of recording engineer Steve Albini.
"Heart-Shaped Box" was the first single released from the album, followed by "All Apologies/Rape Me", which was released as a double A-side single due to the explicit nature of the latter song. Both singles topped the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in the United States. "Pennyroyal Tea" was intended to be released as the third single in April 1994, but was cancelled after the death of the band's frontman, Kurt Cobain.
While In Utero did not sell as well as Nevermind, it was a commercial and critical success. The album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America by the end of 1993; it was most recently certified 5x platinum, and now ranks in the top 100 bestselling albums in the US.
Album title:
The original title for In Utero was to be I Hate Myself And Want to Die, sharing its title with a song that was planned for the album. The phrase had originated in mid-1992 from one of Cobain's journal entries, and was meant as humor. It was Cobain's response whenever someone would ask him "how are you?". The tentative album title would be changed after Novoselic convinced Cobain that I Hate Myself And Want to Die could potentially result in a lawsuit. The band considered the title Verse Chorus Verse, a title shared with "Verse Chorus Verse" and an earlier working title of "Sappy". The final title was taken from one of Courtney Love's poems, and is a Latin term meaning "in the uterus".
Music & lyrics:
In Utero was the first Nirvana album that included lyrics in its liner notes, partly because Cobain wanted to be taken more seriously as a songwriter, and partly because Cobain's singing style often made it difficult to understand his lyrics.
Though Cobain himself stated that "for the most part [In Utero]'s very impersonal," much of the album is related to his personal life. "Serve the Servants" references Cobain's personal experiences, both recent and past. The opening line "Teenage angst has paid off well / Now I'm bored and old" references Nirvana's unexpected success and acclaim. The song also references the treatment of Courtney Love in the press through a metaphor about witch-hunts ("If she floats then she is not a witch like we thought"), and belittles the impact of his parents' divorce ("That legendary divorce is such a bore"). However, most of the song is about Cobain's father; in a rough draft of the album's liner notes, he wrote that "I guess this song is for my father, who is incapable of communicating at the level of affection in which I have always expected."
Similarly, "Rape Me" contains a reference to a Vanity Fair article about Courtney Love, that accused her of taking heroin while pregnant and included an anonymous quote from a close friend of the band. The article was so hurtful to Cobain that he contemplated a double suicide with Love the day after their child, Frances Bean Cobain, was born. The line "my favorite inside source" from the bridge of "Rape Me" reflects Cobain's feelings of betrayal at the anonymous source in the article.
Other songs contain thinly-veiled attacks on the media. "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle" was inspired by actress Frances Farmer, with whom Cobain was fascinated, particularly the fictionalized account of her life presented in the novel Shadowland. Although inspired by an outside influence, Cobain draws a parallel to his own life, and compares the unfair treatment of Farmer to the treatment he received in the press. The song "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter" is an attack on the music industry. In the music industry, the term "radio friendly" refers to a song which radio stations consider "airable", while the term "unit shifter" refers to a song that can sell an album.
Although Cobain had flirted with medical themes in the past, it had never been to the extent as on In Utero. In addition to the medical-themed artwork, many of the songs contain mentions of or references to semen,hymens, open sores, parasites and abortion. "Milk It" and "Pennyroyal Tea" are perhaps the most medical-oriented songs on the album.
The song "Scentless Apprentice" was written about Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, a historical horror novel about a perfumer's apprentice born with no body odor of his own but with a highly developed sense of smell, and who attempts to create the "ultimate perfume" for himself by killing virgin women and taking their scent.
Recording:
Nirvana chose Steve Albini, known as former frontman of the noise rock band Big Black and producer for various indie releases, to record its much-anticipated follow-up toNevermind. Albini had a reputation as a principled and opinionated individual in the American independent music scene. While there was speculation that Albini was chosen to record the album due to his underground credentials, Cobain told Request magazine in 1993, "For the most part I wanted to work with him because he happened to produce two of my favorite records, which were Surfer Rosa [by the Pixies] and Pod [by the Breeders]." Inspired by those albums, Cobain wanted to utilize Albini's technique of capturing the natural ambiance of a room via the usage and placement of several microphones, something previous Nirvana producers had been averse to trying. Months before the band had even approached Albini about the recording, rumors had been circulating that he was slated to record the next Nirvana album. Albini eventually sent a disclaimer to the British music press refuting the allegations, only to get the call from Nirvana's management a few days later. Although Albini considered Nirvana to be "R.E.M. with a fuzzbox" and "an unremarkable version of the Seattle sound," he told Nirvana biographer Michael Azerrad he accepted because he felt sorry for the band, whom he perceived to be "the same sort of people as all the small-fry bands I deal with" at the mercy of their record company.
Nirvana, under the guise "The Simon Ritchie Bluegrass Ensemble", entered Pachyderm Studio in February 1993 to record In Utero. Albini did not meet the band until the first day of recording, though he had spoken to the band beforehand about the type of album they wanted to make. Albini observed that "they wanted to make precisely the sort of record that I'm comfortable doing." Before embarking on the sessions, Albini was sent a tape of demos the band had cut in Brazil in January 1993. The only others present for the duration of the session were Robert S Weston IV (studio maintenance technician), Carter Nicole Launt (chef) and her dog, Z. During the sessions Albini instituted a strict policy of ignoring everyone except for the band in order to prevent the band's managers and label from interfering.
The band recorded the tracks live and kept virtually everything they recorded. Albini and Weston estimate that it took four or maybe five days to record the basic tracks, a couple of days for overdubbing and a final few days mixing. They finished slightly ahead of the two-week deadline, and the album was mixed in under a week; Cobain added additional guitar tracks to about half the songs, then added guitar solos, and finally vocals. The total recording costs for In Utero were $24,000, and on top of that, Albini took a flat fee of $100,000. Albini refused points on record sales since he considers the practice to be immoral.
Albini commented that, "On a couple of songs [Cobain] used this broken guitar amplifier that had a really brutal sound and he was talking about how he had to keep it away from the technicians that they toured with because he was afraid that they were going fix it and then the sound would go away."[citation needed] Cobain is believed to have employed his Sunburst Univox Custom on most of the guitar parts. On one song he played a rare all-aluminium guitar called a Veleno, which Albini had brought along specifically. According to Albini the "strained, distorted guitar sounds" came from the use of a Fender Twin Reverb amp, with three of its four power tubes broken or missing. Everything was recorded on a vintage 24-track analog board (Neve console). For the most part there was no studio trickery utilized during recording; the only "special effect" Albini could recall was a vocal effect on "Milk It" and "Rape Me", "There's a really dry, really loud voice at the end of 'Milk It' [. . .] that was also done at the end of 'Rape Me,' where [Cobain] wanted the sound of him screaming to just overtake the whole band."
Cobain later claimed in Ooz magazine that lyrics finished for only half the songs and the rest came from messing around in the studio. Yet in the biography, Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana, he claimed he again finished writing most of the lyrics within days of recording the vocals, culling most of them from notebooks full of poetry.
Tracklisting:
All songs by Kurt Cobain except where noted.
- "Serve the Servants" – 3:36
- "Scentless Apprentice" (Cobain, Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic) – 3:48
- "Heart-Shaped Box" – 4:41
- "Rape Me" – 2:50
- "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle" – 4:09
- "Dumb" – 2:32
- "Very Ape" – 1:56
- "Milk It" – 3:55
- "Pennyroyal Tea" – 3:37
- "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter" – 4:51
- "Tourette's" – 1:35
- "All Apologies" – 3:51
- Kurt Cobain – guitar, Vocals, art direction, design, photography
- Krist Novoselic – bass
- Dave Grohl – drums, backing vocals
- Kera Schaley – cello
- Steve Albini – engineer
- Adam Kasper – assistant engineer
- Bob Weston – technician
- Scott Litt – mixing
- Bob Ludwig – audio mastering
- Robert Fisher – art direction, design, photography
- Karen Mason – photography
- Charles Peterson – photography
- Michael Lavine – photography
- Neil Wallace – photography
- Alex Grey – illustrations
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