75. "Drain You" by Nirvana

I've said it before: Drum creativity is song creativity. If Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl had decided to live his life as a cowardly number, a spiritual bust, he would have plopped his forgettable ass down on the drum stool and played a rock 4-beat on this song, lending nothing, asking nothing, then called it a night and headed back home for the latest in a lifetime stream of must-see TV. And he would not have embarked on the journey he did. 

Luckily Grohl came to the party lathered up and ready to break this band out of obscurity. His verse beat is a rolling tank of eighth notes alternating between snare and kick and unlocking the great strum pattern and creative chord choices of the guitar. The drums interpret the guitar rather than just act as the metronome.

The short transition out of the verse is another crafty unison of guitar and drum ideas, and the pounding drum fill is so satisfying to play on a tuned-up kit.

The choruses really kick, with Grohl smashing the cymbal and snare down on the quarter notes, the kick drum holding the eighth notes with alternating stresses. The guitars use the heaviness principle of two chords with the root notes at wide intervals. 

The middle section is overproduced on the album recording. Because of this odd digression, Dave Grohl jokingly referred to "Drain You" as Nirvana's "Bohemian Rhapsody." Played live, this section became more about a quiet pulse exploding into aggressive noise, falling off, and exploding again. It is where they really began to explore the expressiveness of pure noise. Before familiarity took over, the final build into the third verse would give me chills.

The vocal melodies for Nirvana were so unique always. Like Grohl on the drums, Kurt Cobain never wanted to sing a phrase that sounded rehashed. He was militantly original. So we have a verse melody that screams through these high notes, jumping intervals, varying its rhythm, and ending on a great resolution downward on a major chord. We have choruses of weird, moany long notes singing about something gross, but hitting an essential, catchy half step that finishes each phrase. It's sharp, pop Nirvana in the verses and weird, indy Nirvana in the choruses. 

My favorite song on the Nevermind album? Hmmm. Just may be.

59. "Curmudgeon" by Nirvana

Why are so many of these Nirvana songs I picked not on official albums? I'm not trying to be a snob!

This song is fantastic to me. 

Maybe you're not interested in slurring anti-functional vocals and lyrics. Perhaps a guitar part that sounds like a lawnmower being thrown into a jet engine isn't on your list of things to help you unwind tonight. There is a chance that a radical lack of logical connection between chords would diminish your appreciation of any song. You could even prefer that a song's guitar solo sound something like what you would commonly term music.

You'd be forgiven for having these dainty tastes. 

But there is a chance you are missing out on the caustic yet intelligent catharsis of a song like this. 

A song "like" this? Is there another song like this?

Even more than "Aneurysm," "Curmudgeon" points the way from Nirvana's Nevermind sound to their In Utero endgame. The huge pounding drums of Dave Grohl are finding their voice here, especially in the savage eighth note onslaughts leading out of the choruses.

Nirvana, I must keep reminding you, was a weird band. They were weird people making music that was by and large weird sounding. Only a few songs were slightly more composed, cool, radio-friendly numbers. The band was put on this planet not just to end the conservative '80s reign of Guns N' Roses but to utterly confound the minds of those macho musical meatheads. Axl Rose wasn't just consigned to irrelevance by Kurt Cobain's undeniable gravitas; worse, as Rose trudged into exile, he had to watch Cobain send him off with a limp-wristed wave, an unblinking stare, and frozen, creepy smile. Delicious.

33. "Blew" by Nirvana

The first song on a first album has a tendency to be a mission statement. 

The Beatles led off with "I Saw Her Standing There" and just continued creating hits from there. 

Nirvana stormed in with "Blew," a de-tuned rumbler of some kind of hard rock, and things only got weirder. The solo sucks enough that you maybe think, "I want to listen to a whole album of this?" And the solo truly is saying, "You want to listen to a whole album of this?"

The really funny thing about "terrible" Kurt Cobain guitar solos is that he reproduced them note-perfect live. He composed those slop-bags of sounds, and must have rehearsed them devotedly.

26. "Big Cheese" by Nirvana

One of the high points of songcraft in early, unpolished independent Nirvana:

It has a legit beginning of feedback half-steps, not just the beginning of the guitar riff. Simple but passionate verses. Groovy choruses with neat harmonies that sound more like alternate verses. Soundgarden-esque instrumentals after the choruses. A tuneful guitar solo by Nirvana standards. A true ending and not just the song being over.

With all those passages, it's the closest thing to a Nevermind song from before they made that leap. 

It's kind of a cousin to "Aneurysm," actually. It wasn't originally on the Bleach album, where it can be found now, but was a B-side on their "Love Buzz" single. It was only added to Bleach as a bonus track for the CD release after the band found popularity. Instead, like "Aneurysm," it was a more epic song that stood on its own, a breakthrough bridging two eras. "Aneurysm" bridged Nevermind and In Utero. But before that, "Big Cheese" bridged Bleach and Nevermind. Interestingly, Krist Novoselic has rare writing credits on both.

Chad Channing's drumming, aside from some basic flair in the verses, is boring. Dave Grohl's creativity would be the final missing piece for this group. "Big Cheese" shows us a time when Kurt's singing and songwriting carried the whole show. Dave Grohl's addition was like the great runningback coming in to compliment a gifted young quarterback with a 4,000-yard season already under his belt.

The thing that has always intrigued me about songs from the Bleach period is the huskiness of Kurt Cobain's voice. He sounds more like a raving, constipated lunatic than a rock star. He doesn't get enough credit for redefining his singing style as much as his songwriting for subsequent albums.

I noticed that Rolling Stone had this song ranked #58 of all Nirvana songs. Come on, Rolling Stone, get it together.

19. "Aneurysm" by Nirvana

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.