About a Girl

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"About a Girl"

Song by Nirvana
from the album “Bleach”
Released	June 15, 1989
Recorded	1988-9 at Reciprocal Recordings in Seattle, Washington
Genre	Grunge
Length	2:48
Label	Sub Pop
Writer(s)	Kurt Cobain
Producer(s)	Jack Endino
“Bleach” track listing
Floyd the Barber (2)	"About a Girl" (3)	School (4)

"About a Girl (live)"

Single by Nirvana
from the album MTV Unplugged in New York
B-side(s)	"Something in the Way"
Released	October 24, 1994
Format	CD
Recorded	1993
Genre	Rock
Length	3 min 37 s
Label	DGC
Producer(s)	Nirvana and Scott Litt
Chart positions
#1 (US Modern Rock) #3 (US Mainstream Rock) #4 (AUS) #8 (FIN) #13 (BEL)
Nirvana singles chronology
"Pennyroyal Tea" (1994)	"About a Girl" (live) (1994)	"Aneurysm" (1996)

"About a Girl" is a song by the American grunge band, Nirvana. It is the third song on their 1989 debut album, “Bleach”. It is also the first song on the posthumous MTV Unplugged in New York album from which it was a single in 1994.

1 History
2 Meaning
3 Other versions
4 Single
5 Chart positions
6 Accolades
7 Covers
8 Trivia
9 Sample
10 References

Dating back to at least 1988, "About a Girl" is often considered to be Kurt Cobain's first great pop song. It is also perhaps the closest he ever came to writing a traditional love song.

According to the 1993 Nirvana biography Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana by Michael Azerrad, "About a Girl" was written after Cobain spent an entire afternoon listening to Meet the Beatles! repeatedly. At the time, Cobain was trying to conceal his pop songwriting instincts, and he was reluctant to include the song on “Bleach” for fear of alienating the band's then-exclusively grunge fanbase. "To put a jangly, R.E.M. type of pop song on a grunge record, in that scene, was risky," he admitted in a 1993 Rolling Stone interview.

However, “Bleach”'s producer Jack Endino was excited about the song, and even saw it as a potential single. Years later, Butch Vig, who produced Nirvana's 1991 breakthrough album Nevermind, would cite "About a Girl" as the first hint that there was more to Nirvana than grunge. "Everyone talks about Kurt's love affair with...the whole punk scene, but he was also a huge Beatles fan, and the more time we spent together the more obvious their influence on his songwriting became," Vig told the NME in 2004.

"About a Girl" was recorded for Bleach in December 1988 by Endino in Seattle, Washington. It remained one of the few songs from “Bleach” which Cobain continued to perform live until his death in April 1994. The acoustic MTV Unplugged rendition, recorded in 1993 and released posthumously on MTV Unplugged in New York in 1994, is perhaps the most familiar reading of the song.

According to Chad Channing, Nirvana's drummer around the time of “Bleach”, Cobain didn't have a title for the song when he first brought it into the studio. When asked what it was about, Cobain replied, "It's about a girl."

The girl in question was Tracy Marander, Cobain's then-girlfriend, with whom he lived at the time. Apparently, Marander had asked Cobain why he had never written a song for her, and Cobain responded with "About a Girl." The song addresses the couple's fractured relationship, caused by Cobain's refusal to get a job, or to share cleaning duties at their apartment (which housed many of his pets). During arguments on the subject, Cobain would occasionally threaten to move into his car, at which point Marander would usually relent.

Strangely, Cobain never told Marander that he had written "About a Girl" for her. In the 1998 Nick Broomfield documentary Kurt and Courtney, Marander revealed that she only found out after reading Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana.

A live, electric version of "About a Girl," recorded in 1990, appears as a B-side on CD versions of the band's 1990 single for the song "Sliver".

Another live electric version, recorded in 1991, appears on the 1994 home video, Live! Tonight! Sold Out!!. Another live version from Nirvana's show at the Paradiso Club in Amsterdam on November 25, 1991 appears on the re-released version of Live! Tonight! Sold Out!! which was re-released on DVD in 2006.

A solo acoustic demo version appears on the 2004 Nirvana box set, With the Lights Out, and on the 2005 compilation album, Sliver: The Best of the Box. The “Bleach” version was re-released in 2002 on the band's "best-of" compilation, Nirvana.

"About a Girl" was released as MTV Unplugged in New York's only commercial single. Five thousand numbered limited edition copies were sold in Australia, while a standard single was sold in countries across Europe. The following songs appear on the single:

"About a Girl" (Cobain)
"Something in the Way" (Cobain)

Year	Single	Chart	Position
1994	About a Girl	Modern Rock Tracks (US)	No. 1
1994	About a Girl	Mainstream Rock Tracks (US)	No. 3
1994	About a Girl	Official Australian Singles Chart	No. 4
1994	About a Girl	Official Finland Singles Chart	No. 8
1994	About a Girl	Official Belgium Singles Chart	No. 13
1994	About a Girl	Official Sweden Singles Chart	No. 20
1994	About a Girl	Official Italian Singles Chart	No. 20
1994	About a Girl	Official Holland Singles Chart	No. 22
1994	About a Girl	Official French Singles Chart	No. 23
1994	About a Girl	Finland Mitä hittiä Chart	No. 7
1994	About a Girl	Tripple J Hottest 100 (Australia)	No. 7
1994	About a Girl	Latvian Airplay Charts	No. 4
1992	About a Girl	Polish Airplay Charts	No. 3
1994	About a Girl	Slovakian Airplay Charts	No. 7
1993	About a Girl	French Airplay Chart	No. 9
1994	About a Girl	Canadian National Airplay Charts	No. 9
1994	About a Girl	Top 40 Mainstream (US)	No. 29
1994	About a Girl	Hot 100 Airplay (US)	No. ?

Ranked #2 in NME's "Top 20 Nirvana Songs" (2004)
Ranked #2 in Q's "10 Greatest Nirvana Songs Ever" (2004)

"About a Girl" has been covered by the American trip-hop band, Cibo Matto.

According to music producer Barrett Jones, Dave Grohl covered "About a Girl" at The Laundry Room Studios. It has yet to be released.

Cobain was eulogized by Patti Smith in a song called "About a Boy" on her 1995 album, Gone Again. The same title was used for a 1998 novel by the British writer, Nick Hornby. The novel makes several references to Cobain and Nirvana.