Nirvana released three official studio albums. Those three albums contain 37 songs and one secret semi-song. Surreally, those 38 songs are only the tip of the iceberg of work that upholds their reputation as one of the most inspiring creative forces in rock and independent music. The band wrote and recorded scores of additional songs, but most of that material remained unreleased at the time of Kurt Cobain's death. Most of it is raw, chaotic, ugly, and of no quality to be released in any other form than the copious box sets that have become Nirvana's legacy. But if you are a Nirvana fan, you are intimately familiar with this mess, a grungy attic of noise and howls.
Nirvana are the only major musicians I can think of whose best song is nowhere to be found on a studio album. Instead, to hear it, you have to climb up into that attic, inadvertently tip over some clattering old tins, and sit down under some cobwebs next to paintings of dolls and spiders. The song is called "Aneurysm."
The song could not be allowed onto a studio album. It is too disruptive. It is not a team player. Truly, it doesn't fit within a repeatable formula. Each Nirvana album is a kind of concept album, with a specific sound and attitude consistent across every song. "Aneurysm" calls too much attention to itself.
It's the noise.
The song doesn't just open with a build - the guitar squeals up a scale until it dissolves into jagged sound. Other Nirvana album songs use some delicious, pure noise, but not in combination with...
The aggression.
At the peak of that jagged building sound, the drums stampede through the most classic fill Dave Grohl ever devised, and the song propels into the unbridled pummeling of four excellently complimentary power chords. Some Nirvana songs are bursts of aggression, but these are usually short exercises. They don't challenge you with...
The changes.
Coming through this opening attack, the song drops into a more muted, marching verse. The verse hits a series of blasts that finally spill into a chorus. The chorus is the kind of bouncing, blaring mosh fodder that makes me consider grunge music to be more a dance craze than anything. Soon we are back into a squealing build like what started the song. Only this time, out from this noise the bass drops into a melody - until the build peaks, and the band enters a raging coda, with a final vocal screamed in two-part harmony. The song ends by disintegrating.
"Aneurysm," with all these moments, is the closest thing to an epic the band wrote.
It would be nothing - Cobain's voice be damned - without the drumming of Dave Grohl. Part of Nirvana's fortune was having a gifted drummer who never played a conventional pattern in a single song. And this song is definitive Grohl. I love his ability to cascade down the tom drums in a chain of sound. I think "Aneurysm" was the beginning of his truly letting loose, which culminated soon after on the In Utero album. And maybe that's another reason the song didn't fit on any Nirvana album. Instead it was the bridge between the pop of Nevermind and the uncompromising, mature artistry of In Utero.
What is the song about?
Seems like obsession over a girl. Hard drugs. A near-death experience. Hindsight is inevitable. It comes with the territory. It's not for everybody.
It's one of my all-time favorite songs.