No Matter How Many Times We Listen, We Cannot Make Out The Meanings of These 3 Grunge Rock Tracks

One of the several foundations of grunge music is rebellion against the norm. That being so, grunge songs rarely wrap up their lyrical meaning in a tightly tied bow. Rather, they are heavily surreal, grotesque, abstract, and sometimes, completely arbitrary. That being so, no matter how many times we listen, we cannot make out the meanings of these three grunge tracks.

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“Mexican Seafood” by Nirvana

Before the fame and the fortune, Nirvana was pushing boundaries even further than they did in the limelight. Don’t get us wrong, the grunge band always tended to ruffle feathers and subvert music industry norms, but before they had the eye of the masses, they took seemingly larger risks. The most jarring musical risk they took was on their 1987 single, “Mexican Seafood”.

There is likely not a song that has more grotesque, raunchy, and straight-up disguting lyircs in music history than this one. Vomit, UTIs, boogers, and stomach acid are just a few of the lyrics featured in this song, and what does it all mean? We don’t know, but what we can guess is that Cobain wrote this song to surprise, shock, and disgust.

“Heart-Shaped Box” by Nirvana

Alright, here we go again, but Kurt Cobain truly was one of the most surrealist lyricists of all time. Our interpretation of “Heart-Shaped Box” is that it is more of a silhouette than an actual story or connected thought. In the lyrics, Cobain seems to invoke cynical feelings and perspectives of vulnerability, romance, and decay because of them.

Many speculate that this song is about his relationship with Courtney Love, but aside from that, does this song have a clear narrative thread, or is it more aligned with the perspective we just mentioned? We can’t decide, but regardless, it certainly does outline the soul in black, as does most grunge music.

“Bugs” by Pearl Jam

Alright, before we googled what this grunge song was about, we couldn’t seem to decipher what Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam were getting on about. At first, we believed the song was a metaphor for paranoia, anxiety, and the acceptance of it, but our reading was far too deep.

In reality, “Bugs” is about a case of poison oak that Eddie Vedder experienced. Needless to say, and we surely aren’t alone, but we thought about this song too hard and for too long. Hopefully, by the time you’ve read this article, you haven’t made the same mistake.

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