It was a moment eight years in the making. Patient Nirvana fans all over the world were given what they had been waiting for. This past Saturday at roughly 8 p.m. Eastern time, a polished, complete studio version of the Nirvana track “You Know You’re Right” was mysteriously released and ripped through the Internet at an unheralded pace. The unreleased track was Nirvana’s last recorded piece of music and was put to tape just three months before Kurt Cobain ended his life in April of 1994.
The track, which has been shrouded in mystery for years (see the September 2002 issue of MAINTAIN), surfaced one day after Courtney Love made the announcement on “The Howard Stern Radio Show” that she had reached an agreement with the surviving members of Nirvana, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl. By Christmas, a “greatest hits” compilation will be on shelves. While it is not clear if “You Know You’re Right” or any other new songs will appear on the upcoming release, one thing is for certain — “You Know You’re Right” is without a doubt one of Nirvana’s finest.
The track wobbles with quiet hesitancy at its beginning, as Cobain sings “I would never bother you / I would never promise to / I would never follow you / I would never promise to” before the track explodes into a collage of vitriol and sonic beauty that sounds as certain and as vital as any of Nirvana’s previous work did.
Cobain sustains his legendary growl through the chorus, a screamed “Pain,” followed by a repeated barrage of “You know you’re right.” Searing guitars, smooth midrange tones and the squeal of feedback supplement Novoselic’s bass and Grohl’s superb drumming.
The track ebbs and flows like much of Nirvana’s prior work, but there is something more to the track. Maybe it’s because it’s Cobain’s curtain call, maybe the fans are just happy to hear “new” Nirvana again, but the track couldn’t have come at a better time.
Last May, 49 seconds of “You Know You’re Right,” surfaced online, but the track was broken into rough pieces and interrupted by voice-overs from Access Hollywood and poor mixing jobs. The partial release of “You Know You’re Right” fueled a renewed interest in the track and aggravated fans since it was not released in its entirety. The swirling media storm around the partial release, made the song into the stuff of legends. “You Know You’re Right” quickly became the most-talked-about unreleased song in the history of rock n’ roll.
A long wait and incredible hype have done little to diminish the potency of the potentially huge hit. Radio stations all over the world are playing the track several times an hour and requests to stations are pouring in at high rates. Perhaps one last time, Cobain and Nirvana have given listeners one more reason why they were so important in the first place.
“You Know You’re Right” will be downloaded at unheard of rates and will certainly be a cornerstone of Nirvana’s musical legacy. Like all good things, it will reach a point of saturation and fade from the airwaves, but its beauty and architecture will not. The track will become a larger piece of Nirvana’s timeless catalogue, which is as important to many in the young generation as The Beatles were to their parents.
“You Know You’re Right” emanates from the speakers like a twisted lullaby. The brutal, compressed angst of the track is as melodic as the very best that rock has to offer, and like a lullaby, it helps put to rest a bitter controversy that threatened to withhold such a vital piece of music from the people who needed it the most, the fans.
