In Bloom - Composition

Composition

Like many Nirvana songs, "In Bloom" shifts back and forth between quiet verses and loud choruses. Cobain uses a Mesa Boogie guitar amplifier for the verses, and during the chorus he switches to a Fender Bassman amp (suggested by Vig) for a heavier, double-tracked fuzztone sound. The rhythm section of Novoselic and Grohl kept its parts simple; Grohl stated it was "an unspoken rule" to avoid unnecessary drum fills, while Novoselic said he felt his role was about "serving the song". During the choruses, vocalist Cobain and drummer Grohl harmonize while singing "He's the one/Who likes all our pretty songs/And he likes to sing along/And he likes to shoot his gun/But he knows not what it means". The song's intro reappears at the end of each chorus.

Cobain's lyrics address the people outside of the underground music scene that began showing up at Nirvana shows after the release of the group's debut album Bleach. Nirvana biographer Michael Azerrad wrote, "But remarkably, translated even better to the mass popularity the band enjoyed." Regarding the song's chorus, Azerrad commented, "The brilliant irony is that the tune is so catchy that millions of people actually do sing along to it." In his biography of Cobain, Heavier Than Heaven, Charles R. Cross asserted that the song was a "thinly disguised portrait" of Cobain's friend Dylan Carlson.