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Nirvana · S5 E7
In Utero
Released September 21, 1993. Debuts at number one despite the controversy, the abrasive production, and the deliberate attempt to alienate casual fans. The critics call it a masterpiece. Kurt calls it the first Nirvana album that sounds the way the band actually sounds. It sells five million copies and proves that the audience is smarter than the label thinks
Tower Records, Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, September 21, 1993. In Utero goes on sale at midnight, and by morning it is the number one album in America.
"Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck," official HBO trailer (2015). The definitive documentary about Kurt's life, executive produced by his daughter Frances Bean Cobain. For a season about In Utero, the trailer puts the album in context: the art, the home recordings, the private footage, and the creative mind behind the most uncompromising rock record of the 1990s.
Number One
In Utero sells 180,000 copies in its first week in the US. The critics fall in line: Rolling Stone gives it four stars, calling it Nirvana's best work. The album that DGC wanted remixed, that Walmart refused to stock, that Newsweek called unreleasable, debuts at the top of the charts. Kurt's bet pays off: the audience is smarter than the label thought.
Sources
Billboard, chart history for In Utero, September 1993
Rolling Stone, In Utero review, 1993
“I would be very happy if my fingerprints weren't visible on the finished product at all. All an album should be is a representation of a band doing its thing.”
— Steve Albini, on his recording philosophy, from his pre-recording letter to Nirvana, late 1992
Pachyderm Studio, Cannon Falls
The studio where In Utero was born. Thirteen days in February 1993, three musicians in a room with Steve Albini, and an album that proved a band could reject every rule the industry offered and still reach number one.
TAP TO REVEAL: What was In Utero originally going to be called?
The Proof
In Utero eventually sells over five million copies worldwide. Not as many as Nevermind's thirty million, but that was never the point. The point was to prove that a band could make exactly the record they wanted, on their own terms, with the most abrasive engineer they could find, and still connect with millions of people. In Utero proved it.
Sources
RIAA, Gold & Platinum certification database
Charles R. Cross, "Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain," Hyperion, 2001
In Utero: The Album
Big Long Now, Nirvana (1989)
From Incesticide (1992), a slow, droning, almost shoegaze-like track that predates In Utero by four years. "Big Long Now" is five minutes of feedback and melancholy that sounds nothing like the Nirvana most people know. It proves that the atmospheric, vulnerable quality of In Utero's quieter moments was always in the band's DNA, long before Pachyderm, long before Albini, long before the world was listening.
Big Long Now, Nirvana (1989)
Kurt's lyrics are sparse and repetitive, circling the same phrases like a mantra. The song barely moves, hovering in one emotional register for five full minutes. It is the earliest evidence that Nirvana could be quiet, patient, and devastating without ever raising their voices.
How many studio albums did Nirvana release during Kurt Cobain's lifetime?
In Utero has proven that Nirvana can make exactly the album they want and still sell five million copies. Now someone at MTV suggests an Unplugged session, and Kurt fills the setlist with songs almost nobody in the audience will recognize.
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To be continued
Season 6: Unplugged
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