Release and Reception
"Lithium" was released as a single in July 1992. The packaging included full lyrics for all the songs on Nevermind. In the United States, the single charted at number 64 on the Billboard Hot 100 single chart. "Lithium" peaked at number 16 and 25 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock and Modern Rock Tracks airplay charts, respectively. The song was tied at number 20 with singles by Ministry, Lisa Stansfield, and Utah Saints in the 1992 Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics' poll.
Numerous acts have covered the song, including in psychedelic arrangements by The Polyphonic Spree and the original Nirvana. The latter was intended as a track for a tongue-in-cheek cover album titled Nirvana Sings Nirvana that the British Nirvana abandoned after Cobain's death.
In September 2011, to celebrate 20 years of Nevermind, Kerrang! released a version of the album with all songs (including "Endless, Nameless" and "Sliver") covered by different modern artists. "Lithium" was covered by the British rock band Francesqa.
Read more about this topic: Lithium (Nirvana Song)
Famous quotes containing the words release and, release and/or reception:
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)