In Utero (album) - Music and Lyrics

Music and Lyrics

Albini sought to produce a record that sounded nothing like Nevermind. He felt the sound of Nevermind was "sort of a standard hack recording that has been turned into a very, very controlled, compressed radio-friendly mix That is not, in my opinion, very flattering to a rock band." Instead, the intention was to capture a more natural and visceral sound. Albini refused to double-track Cobain's vocals and instead recorded him singing alone in a resonant room. The producer noted the intensity of the singer's vocals on some tracks; he said, "There's a really dry, really loud voice at the end of 'Milk It' that was also done at the end of 'Rape Me,' where wanted the sound of him screaming to just overtake the whole band." Albini achieved the album's sparse drum sound by simply placing several microphones around the room while Dave Grohl performed, picking up the natural reverberation of the room. Albini explained, "If you take a good drummer and put him in front of a drum kit that sounds good acoustically and just record it, you've done your job."

Azerrad asserted in his 1993 biography Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana that the music of In Utero showcased divergent sensibilities of abrasiveness and accessibility that reflected the upheavals Cobain experienced prior to the album's completion. He wrote, "The Beatlesque 'Dumb' happily coexists beside the all-out frenzied punk graffiti of 'Milk It,' while 'All Apologies' is worlds away from the apoplectic 'Scentless Apprentice.' It's as if has given up trying to meld his punk and pop instincts into one harmonious whole. Forget it. This is war." Cobain believed, however, that In Utero was not "any harsher or any more emotional" than any of Nirvana's previous records. Novoselic concurred with Azerrad's comments that the album's music leaned more towards the band's "arty, aggressive side"; the bassist said, "There's always been songs like 'About a Girl' and there's always been songs like 'Paper Cuts'... Nevermind came out kind of 'About a Girl'-y and this came out more 'Paper Cuts'". Cobain cited the track "Milk It" as an example of the more experimental and aggressive direction the band's music had been moving in the months prior to the sessions at Pachyderm Studio. Novoselic viewed the album's singles "Heart-Shaped Box" and "All Apologies" as "gateways" to the more abrasive sound of the rest of the album, telling journalist Jim DeRogatis that once listeners played the record they would discover "this aggressive wild sound, a true alternative record".

Several of the songs on In Utero had been written years prior to recording; some of them dated back to 1990. With tracks like "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle", Cobain favored long song titles in reaction to contemporary alternative rock bands that utilized single-word titles. Cobain continued to work on the lyrics while recording at Pachyderm Studio. Nonetheless, Cobain told Darcey Steinke in Spin in 1993 that in contrast to Bleach and Nevermind, the lyrics were "more focused, they're almost built on themes." Michael Azerrad asserted that the lyrics were less impressionistic and more straightforward than in previous Nirvana songs. Azerrad also noted that "irtually every song contains some image of sickness and disease". In a number of songs Cobain made reference to books he had read. "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle" was inspired by Shadowland, a 1978 biography of actress Frances Farmer, whom Cobain had been fascinated with ever since he read the book in high school. The song "Scentless Apprentice" was written about Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, a historical horror novel about a perfumer's apprentice born with no body odor of his own but with a highly developed sense of smell, and who attempts to create the "ultimate perfume" by killing virgin women and taking their scent.

Cobain stated in a 1993 interview with The Observer that "for the most part 's very impersonal". The songwriter also told Q that year that the abundance of infant and childbirth imagery on the album and his newfound fatherhood were coincidental. However, Azerrad argued that much of the album contains personal themes, noting that Grohl held a similar view. Grohl said, "A lot of what he has to say is related to a lot of the shit he's gone through. And it's not so much teen angst anymore. It's a whole different ball game: rock star angst." Cobain downplayed recent events ("I really haven't had that exciting a life") and told Azerrad that he didn't want to write a track that explicitly expressed his anger at the media, but the author countered that "Rape Me" seemed to deal with that very issue. While Cobain said the song was written long before his troubles with drug addiction became public, he agreed that the song could be viewed in that light. "Serve the Servants" contains comments about Cobain's life, both as a child and as an adult. The opening lines "Teenage angst has paid off well/Now I'm bored and old" were a reference to Cobain's state of mind in the wake of Nirvana's success. Cobain dismissed the media attention given to the effect his parents' divorce had on his life with the line "That legendary divorce is such a bore" from the chorus, and directly addressed his father with the lines "I tried hard to have a father/But instead I had a dad/I just want you to know that I don't hate you anymore/There is nothing I could say that I haven't thought before". Cobain said he wanted his father to know he didn't hate him, but had no desire to talk to him.