Composition
Since it is a compilation album, the composition of the songs spans across a period of six years. The opening tracks on the album, which are from the band's first recording session, exhibit the band's earliest style, noted for its abrasive guitar work (heavily influenced by noise rock and no wave music) and literate, aggressive lyrics, many of which mix derogatory language with cryptic and religious themes.
In particular, "Retard Girl" is a narrative of a girl being abused and made fun of on a playground, which is likely metaphorical. "Turpentine", as well as "Retard Girl", feature historical and religious references as well; "Turpentine" features lyrics alluding to Christianity ("I know all you devils by your Christian names / And I know all you bitches by your Christian names", "Bless my body and bless my soul / Wrap it in turpentine"), while a line from "Retard Girl", which reads: "As shines the moon among the lesser fires", is directly pulled from a book of Latin poems by Roman poet Horace.
"Burn Black" and "Dicknail" also feature aggressive language and themes alluding to rape, incest, and female competition. "Beautiful Son", written and recorded in 1992, features a more mellow guitar riff than the previous tracks on the album, and its lyrics make references to Kurt Cobain's cross-dressing as a child. Love said the song-writing process was an attempt to "be a little dumber" and that she "was always trying to write a very complex song without ever having learned to write an easy Beatles song." "It just had a riff," Love said. "It wasn't super smart but it sounded good and that's when I started learning things don't have to have lots and lots of notes. That the best songs are carried by simple lines and simple melodies." This illustrates the band's turning point from their noise rock beginnings to more mellow, accessible sounds.
The latter half of the album features demos and live recordings of songs, including a demo for "Miss World" and live versions of "Softer, Softest" (recorded on MTV Unplugged) and "Asking For It", all three of which were featured on the band's second album, Live Through This (1994). The track "Old Age", whose intro was featured on the band's cover of "Credit In The Straight World" from Live Through This, was controversial due to it having been originally written by Kurt Cobain. Love stated in an interview that "Old Age" was "partly someone else's composition. It's something somebody had a little bit of and I said 'let me have the rest of it' and I wrote this thing in it and tried to make it goth. I found it, wrote it, and recorded it the same night." It was later revealed that a version of the song was recorded by Nirvana during the Nevermind recording sessions, but Cobain threw the song out and gave it to Love, who rearranged musical pieces and rewrote the lyrics.
My Body, The Hand Grenade also featured two cover songs, "Season of the Witch" by Donovan, and "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)", which was written by Carole King and recorded by The Crystals in the 1960s. Love referred to it as a "feminist anthem" after performing it during MTV Unplugged in 1995.
Read more about this topic: My Body, The Hand Grenade
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