Complete Nirvana - Nevermind Song Meanings

Smells like Teen spirit

About teenagers. In Bloom
Attacks elements of Nirvana's potential audience. It could also be about Kurt's best friend Dylan Carlsson.

Come as you are

Explores the contradictions in what we say and think. How we act and how we think we should really act. What we may want opposed to what we really need. How the established social etiquette governs the way individuals comply, conform and consume, even against their own will. Breed
Attacks the class system and what it is like to be trapped in a white, middle-class, American upbringing along with all its conflicting values and morals. Lithium
Uses the analogy of a nervous breakdown of an individual to comment on the mass breakdown of society. Polly
Polly is an account of a true story Kurt read in a newspaper about a girl who was kidnapped and repeatedly tortured. Territorial Pissings
An attack on the bull-headed macho male stereotype. Drain you
About sexual relationships. Lounge act
Is about how sometimes, a personal aspiration is thwarted by a relationship. How it can be difficult to build a way of seeing without being smothered by another's. Stay away
Confronts conformity and attacks people who form cliques to cover up their own inadequacies and fears. On a Plain
A poetic attempt to express inexpressible emotions, to make tangible feelings that are hard to define. Something in the way
Deals with many aspects of being lonely, of being an outsider. It also contains a biographical episode based around the time Kurt spent living under the North Aberdeen Bridge as a youth, when he was homeless for a while. Endless nameless
A noise jam that offers some deep insight on Cobain's psyche. this was originally a complete song called the end of music but then broke up into endless, nameless and even in his youth after the band forgot how to play the song.