Nirvana — Heart-shaped box

Like this video, share it on your social media and feel free to tell me your impressions in comments, or what else you’d like to hear in my performance.

And here are a few facts about the song:

The song was born when Kurt was sitting inside his huge closet, strumming his guitar — that’s how the famous riff appeared. Courtney walked by, knocked, and asked if he needed that riff, and got a typically Kurt response: “F*** you!”
The vocal line appeared much later — during a soundcheck, he started playing the riff and singing random nonsense just so the sound engineer could balance the guitar and voice. But the rest of the band loved it so much that they joined in, ruining the soundcheck but giving birth to the real sound of the song.
The lyrics came even later — incredibly complex, layered, and hard to understand unless you dive into the context of Kurt and Courtney.

Let’s start with the title. A heart-shaped box was the very first gift Courtney gave Kurt. Inside were random little things: a porcelain doll, three dried roses, a tiny teacup, and shellacked seashells. Kurt especially loved the doll — he used different dolls in his art projects. But here’s a twist: the early demo was called Heart-shaped coffin, which changes both the meanings of the gift and the song.

The phrase “Angel’s hair” refers to a song by Babes in Toyland, the band where Courtney played bass.
“Baby’s breath” is the flower gypsophila — small white blossoms.
“Cancer” is Courtney’s zodiac sign.

Kurt claimed the song was inspired by a TV program about kids with cancer — but considering everything else, it’s hard to believe.

Especially if you google Courtney’s tweet to Lana Del Rey, after Lana performed the song without asking at a concert in Sydney:
“You do know the song is about my vagina, right? Throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back, umm.”

And finally — this was Kurt’s last music video. And the story behind the shoot explains a lot. Courtney kept interrupting, criticizing his appearance, repeating how important the video was. She annoyed him so much that at some point he snapped and extinguished a cigarette on his own forehead, saying: “Happy now? I look better like this, right?”

They had to use all kinds of tricks to finish filming. They covered the burn with lots of makeup and even glued a strand of hair over the center of his forehead. And although the video was shot on color film, it was fully desaturated and then hand-colored — that’s why the colors look so strange.

#cellistyuri

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