Don't Come Again

Nirvana - Come As You Are



I have some personal history with this song - it's iconic, chorusy bass intro was one of the first pieces of music I (and many of my contemporaries) learned to play on the guitar. I probably listened to this song, and the rest of the first 6 or 7 tracks on Nevermind, a million times between the ages of 13 and 15, as I traversed the dark void of being a middle class adolescent. It was never my favourite song on the album though - that honour went to Smells Like Teen Spirit or Lithium - but I know this song.

And, while listening to All Apologies recently was a pleasant suprise, re-listening to this is a little disappointing. Where All Apologies felt like a far more mature song, both musically and lyrically, Come As You Are is a little more adolescent, immature and raw, and it's not helped by that. It does a good job of furthering the definition of Cobain as a songwriter capable of stitching together immediate, catchy, punky songs from hooky riffs (or stealing the riffs from Killing Joke, as is the case of this song) with lyrics that make Bob Dylan look like a real poet.

My other issue with this song is that it doesn't really change tempo - while the dynamics of the song changes, Dave Grohl could have been replaced by a drum machine with no appreciable detraction from the song. It could even be argued that the world would be a better place if Mr AIDS-denialist Grohl was replaced by a machine (probably a discussion for when we review a Foo Fighters song in the top 500. Oh, wait, no Foo Fighters songs made it? Guess that proves who the talented one was).

On reflection (after listening 3 or 4), that assessment seems a little harsh - the tempo does change a bit, but there's nothing like the near-gleeful (this is Nirvana we're talking about, so gleeful is probably a bit excessive) tempo shifts of 'Teen Spirit or All Apologies that accompany the change in song dynamics. So let's change tack and go back to tearing the song apart for being immature. Well of course it is. Cobain recorded it for the first time when he was 24. And a junkie. And not married to Courtney Love. Clearly being married to Love was enough to turn him into a cynical old git in two short years. I'm suprised it took that long, to be honest.

All in all, this isn't the best Nirvana song. In fact, it isn't even the best song on the album. But it's still good enough to get into the list, which should be testament to how good a song it is. But it's not actually that good a song. As a piece of my youth, it's left an indelible mark, but as a song, it's a bunch of non-sequiturs draped around a riff stolen from Killing Joke and it would have had none of the impact it did if it wasn't preceded by Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Verdict: Nevermind

Tomorrow: Sonny and Cher - I Got You Babe