The Greatest Song or is it?

How often do you get asked, “what’s your favourite song ever?”

When I get asked this, I shudder and think what a pointless question, music can’t be held to a singular champion, one song to rule them all. Of course, like most I have my favourites, some are contemporary and of this era and others are your traditional classics that most of your peers would also hold up as a great song. Then there’s that thought provoking side-question of what even makes a great song. Many years ago, I wrote a passage about what music meant to me, that passage concluded:

“Music be a gift, be a weapon, but be real and plentiful. Release your hold on this place and be free from its movements, Be Nothing more than everything to me, music be my life, music be my death, but be something more than music itself”

For me, like for many, music can never be filtered down to just one or even a handful of great songs, they each encapsulate different codes that unlock areas of our brain. Have you ever been amazed (I know I have) that you can hear an old song for the first time in decades and yet remember almost all the words, catapulting you right back to a time in your life that is so distant and alien from you now, but somehow that music makes you feel as if you were still back there.

I don’t feel I could ever say what my greatest song of all time is, but I have found one song which I truly believe solely and comprehensively epitomises the genre in which it resides. A song that has the hallmarking’s of a flagship, a beacon that will unlock the mysteries of what that genre is all about and what the performer was trying to convey, it could be found in this single record.

The style of music is not particularly commonly played on mainstream media these days, and it’s one of those styles of music that can be pinpointed to a short window of time, very much like punk was in the late 1970’s. In fact, the punk scene is a direct relation to this style. Imagine that punk was a young gritty lad who flirts with and hooks up with an older lady, a woman who was in her prime during the 1960’s, a woman with a curvaceous body, smooth melodies and catchy hooks. The product of this frantic one night of passion would produce the lovechild of punk and the British sixties swinging pop, and there you have the flash in a pan genre they named grunge.

Anyone familiar with my other writings will know I often write about things from the 1990’s, this is for many reasons, but mainly due to the impact that decade had on my life. Therefore, it is of no surprise that the genre I write about is firmly rooted and expired in that decade. It’s not the grunge movement itself that I will expand on, although I probably could if someone prompted me. It’s that I feel there is one song that sums up what that style of music was all about and that song is by Nirvana. No surprises there I hear you say, as there is probably only a handful of musical artists that many would associate with this small genre, along with the likes of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains to name a few – but the expanded list probably wouldn’t include many more names.

Grunge only existed for a short time, I feel that it is mainly due to the impact that Kurt Cobain’s suicide had on the other bands around them. However, grunge in its nature is about how teenagers and young adults felt disconnected, just like those who aligned themselves to the punk movement 13 years earlier. Despite how isolated some can feel in their youth, and despite how at the time we are resolute that those feelings will stay us forever, this simple reality is we all too often grow out of them. Even if Nirvana’s singer-songwriter hadn’t ended his life so short, I suspect that the grit, anger, mood-swinging swagger of his music would have evolved, it would have grown up. I’m in my forties now, I don’t feel the way I did when I first discovered grunge, or did grunge discover me? Nevertheless, my views and rationale matured. I know some of my friends question how I can still listen to that music today, but why not? Of course, I don’t feel like a 15 year old anymore, but I can still appreciate the soundtrack of my youth.

“Will you stop rambling on and tell us what this song is already!” I can hear you exclaiming. Ok, I’ll get there. If like me, you found this genre in the moment, you didn’t find it on a digital service, so you most likely had the CD. Back then we had to memorise which track number was our chosen song and the song I’m describing is Track 8 of the Nevermind album. I won’t be mean and make you reach for your dusty music collection (not that many of us even have our CDs these days), and so Track 8 was called Drain You.

Anyone who knows the song well, perhaps anyone who understands the lyrics behind the track might wonder why this of all the grunge songs. Unlike many others, it’s not the meaning of the words behind this song. Many people believe that the lyrics to Drain You are about Kurt Cobain’s addiction to heroin. Lines like “you are my vitamins” hint that the drug gave him energy, but that the deadly narcotic consumes, directs and drains you. I’ve never taken drugs, so I cannot preach about what it does or doesn’t do to your physical, spiritual or mental state. I do not hold this song up there for the words or the interpreted meaning behind it, but for the entity that is the song and not any of its components. We often zone in on words or a guitar riff or bassline, but those are the ingredients and not the final product. And so it is only fitting that it’s the complete song that explains the complete genre.

The song has jagged edges that appear to smooth themselves out, the song has a catchy melody you often don’t find with rugged rock songs – but that is part of the allure of grunge, as I outlined earlier it has the roughness of punk with the caress of swinging bands like the Beatles or The Kinks. Listen to Drain You, you need to hear the first half to appreciate the flavours and tones, like a fully bodied wine. But it’s not until you reach the instrumental break that the true genius and beauty of the track presents itself. From one minute forty seconds onwards you hear short guitar riffs, with a bassline that builds and then it is abruptly halted, only to start over a moment later. When I hear this, it conjures a visual image of being trapped in a box, with each bass appearing to be the banging against the sides, a knocking sound trying to alert the world that you’re stuck in that cage. Each bass riff getting slightly louder and harder as to portray the panic setting in as you feel more scare that this box will forever hold you. As the song reaches around 2 minutes 20 seconds those three musical instruments (guitar, bass and drums) are joined by a fourth and ever so powerful new instrument. That new addition is the soft and rapidly increasing scream of Kurt’s voice. That scream accompanied by that bang in the box as it reaches the expected conclusion that you will not be trapped for much longer. Sure enough, these four musical components weald so much power you’re released from your prison and here is the amazing fluid outpouring of magic and adrenaline. If you’ve been listening correctly, if you’ve been feeling trapped and caged, then here within that song you are launched into a frenzy of flight, soaring into a melodic freedom. As the box is smashed open, the scream transitions to the lyrics, but here unlike the first half you don’t hear words, his voice is now the massive all-consuming instrument, it’s replaced your passive music listening into something altogether different. You are free, the music is pumping through your veins, reaching every organ of the body, your frustration of not being heard whilst you were trapped in that jail cell just moments earlier has transformed into aggression and anger towards the world. How dare they incarcerate you in the first place, how dare they make you feel helpless. But now you can all hear me, now that I’m free you will never forget me and you will know that I endured such pain. I will now fly, not because of you, but in spite of you.

I do realise that this is my personal interpretation of this song and my relationship with the genre. I’m not naïve to know that others may experience this song differently, they may have different images and they may strongly disagree with me – this is of course perfectly acceptable.

But the feeling I have in hearing track 8, the visuals of being trapped, unrelatable, and misunderstood is what the grunge message was all about. I once read a musical journalist describe Nirvana as the band that told America how unhappy its kids were. They were correct, the children were unhappy because they felt underappreciated and unheard. The funny thing is, that every generation has felt that way at times. Every generation has its alternative characters, for every mainstream there is, and has to be a counter-culture. For me, this was Grunge. Drain You reminds me and educates me that those feelings existed in the first place. It gave me reassurance that it was ok to be slightly different to the person next to you. This has resonated more loudly now as I am a parent to a child who has autism and high anxiety, where differences must be embraced and understood. I crave for her to find the music attachment I did when I was younger. The comfort in listening to sad songs when you yourself are feeling low, remembering that you’re not alone. And the drug like feeling when a song or sound can enter your inner-psyche and transport you to another place. I hope that she finds her own comfort in music like I did, I hope both my children enjoy music for what it is and what it can be.