Steve Albini told Nirvana he wanted to be paid like a plumber, turned down royalties worth around half a million dollars, and cut In Utero in two weeks in a snowbound Minnesota studio for a flat $100,000. A few weeks later he heard the record was "unreleasable", and by May the band had R.E.M.'s producer Scott Litt remixing the two songs most likely to get on the radio.
That tug of war, between the abrasive record Kurt Cobain wanted to make and the hit his label needed, is the story of Nirvana's third and final studio album. In Utero still went to number one on both sides of the Atlantic, sold 15 million copies and became the last album Cobain released in his lifetime. It is the sound of a band trying to bury Nevermind and very nearly managing it.
In Utero Album Facts
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Artist | Nirvana |
| Album | In Utero |
| Release Date | 13 September 1993 (UK); 21 September 1993 (US CD and cassette) |
| Label | DGC Records |
| Producer(s) | Steve Albini; Scott Litt remixed three singles |
| Studio(s) | Pachyderm Studios, Cannon Falls, Minnesota; Bad Animals, Seattle (remixes) |
| Genre / Subgenre | Grunge, noise rock, alternative rock, punk rock |
| Track Count | 12 (plus a hidden 13th on non-US CDs) |
| Total Runtime | 41:23 |
| Billboard 200 Peak | 1 (180,000 first-week copies) |
| UK Albums Chart Peak | 1 |
| Other Notable Chart Peaks | 1 Sweden; 2 Australia, France, Ireland; 3 Canada, New Zealand |
| Certifications | 6x Platinum (RIAA); 6x Platinum (Canada); 3x Platinum (BPI) |
| Estimated Sales | 15 million worldwide |
| Key Singles | Heart-Shaped Box; All Apologies / Rape Me; Pennyroyal Tea |
The World In Utero Walked Into
Grunge had won. In January 1992 Nevermind knocked Michael Jackson's Dangerous off the top of the Billboard chart, and it went on to sell more than seven million copies in the US alone.
The scrutiny was ugly. A September 1992 Vanity Fair profile by Lynn Hirschberg alleged Courtney Love had used heroin while pregnant. MTV had already refused to let Nirvana play a new song called "Rape Me" at its 1992 Video Music Awards; Cobain strummed its opening bars anyway before lurching into "Lithium".
The competition was close to home. Pearl Jam's second album, Vs., followed In Utero by a month and sold 950,378 copies in its first five days, a SoundScan-era record that stood for five years. Seattle's two biggest bands had both come back deliberately rougher.
Nirvana After Nevermind
Nirvana never liked the sound of the record that made them famous. Butch Vig produced Nevermind, but Slayer mixer Andy Wallace gave it the gleam, and the band soon complained it was too polished. Early in 1992 Cobain told Rolling Stone the next album would show "both of the extremes" of Nirvana, rawer on some songs and "more candy pop" on others. Vig later reckoned Cobain needed a different producer to "reclaim his punk ethics or cred".
Success also strained the band itself. In March 1992 Cobain asked for songwriting royalties, previously split three ways, to be reworked in his favour and backdated to Nevermind. The row nearly ended the group; he got 75 per cent, and the bad feeling lingered.
Cobain wanted to start recording in mid-1992, but Novoselic and Grohl lived in different cities and Love was expecting their daughter, Frances Bean. DGC had pencilled in a new Nirvana album for Christmas 1992 and got the rarities compilation Incesticide instead. In February 1993 they put out a split single with the Jesus Lizard on the indie label Touch & Go.
Demos, Brazil and a Letter from Albini
Much of In Utero was old. "All Apologies" began on a four-track in the Olympia flat Cobain shared with Grohl in 1990; "Pennyroyal Tea" came out of the same machine, written, Cobain said, "in about thirty seconds". "Dumb" dates from summer 1990 and once carried the title "I Think I'm Dumb". "Rape Me" was written on an acoustic guitar in Los Angeles in May 1991, while Nevermind was being mixed.
"Heart-Shaped Box" was newer. Cobain wrote it in early 1992 in the Fairfax apartment he shared with Love, working on the riff inside a closet. Its title came from the heart-shaped candy boxes Love kept in the front room; early versions sang "coffin" instead of "box", and guitar tech Ernie Bailey remembered a working title of "New Complaint". Grohl brought a riff of his own, which Cobain dismissed as "such a cliché grunge Tad riff" before building "Scentless Apprentice" on top of it.
In October 1992 the band cut mostly instrumental demos in Seattle with Jack Endino, who had produced Bleach. Endino recalled they never asked him to produce the album and spent the time debating whether to hire Albini. A three-day session at BMG Ariola in Rio de Janeiro followed in January 1993, during a Brazilian tour, with sound engineer Craig Montgomery at the desk. Montgomery heard "Heart-Shaped Box" at a São Paulo soundcheck and said "even then Kurt knew this was the single".
Cobain chose Albini because he had recorded two of his favourite albums, the Pixies' Surfer Rosa and the Breeders' Pod. Albini was less of a fan, dismissing Nirvana as "R.E.M. with a fuzzbox", but took the job because he saw a band at the mercy of its label. In November 1992 he set out his terms in a letter.
"I would like to be paid like a plumber: I do the job and you pay me what it's worth. The record company will expect me to ask for a point or a point and a half."
Steve Albini, letter to Nirvana, November 1992
He signed off with a postscript that doubled as a mission statement: "If a record takes more than a week to make, somebody's fucking up." He also sent Cobain a copy of PJ Harvey's then-unreleased Rid of Me to show how the studio sounded.
Two Weeks in the Snow: Recording In Utero at Pachyderm Studios
Albini's first choice was Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, which his letter sold on its "trout stream and 50 acres" and a residential house where the band could live. At his suggestion Nirvana paid for the sessions themselves, keeping DGC at arm's length. Studio fees came to $24,000; Albini took his flat $100,000 and refused royalties he considered "an insult to the artist".
The band arrived in February 1993 without their gear and spent much of the first three days waiting for it to turn up by mail. Recording finally began on 13 February. For most of the fortnight the only people in the building were the three musicians, Albini and his technician Bob Weston. Novoselic compared it to a gulag: "There was snow outside, we couldn't go anywhere. We just worked."
"Serve the Servants" went down first. "We had to prove ourselves to Steve," Novoselic told NPR. They played it once, the ending fell apart, Albini said "Sounds good" and they moved on. "We won Steve over after that."
"With Butch, we would do multiple takes and we would try and get things to sound the way we would like, really craft these things, whereas with Steve, I swear, we'd do one take and he'd hit stop and say, 'OK, what's next?'"
Dave Grohl, NPR All Songs Considered, 2013
The method was simple and strict:
- Cobain, Novoselic and Grohl tracked guitar, bass and drums together as a band.
- Albini ringed Grohl's kit with about 30 microphones to catch the room.
- Drums for "Very Ape" and "Tourette's" were cut in a kitchen for its natural reverb.
- "Dumb" and "Pennyroyal Tea" got a small bass drum for a "bouncy, jazzy sound".
- Cobain's vocals were never double-tracked; he reportedly sang the lot in six hours.
- Virtually every take was kept.
Only "Heart-Shaped Box" and "Pennyroyal Tea" needed more than a couple of takes. Click tracks were not cool, so to steady "Heart-Shaped Box" Cobain and Albini hit on a strobe light to suggest the tempo instead; Grohl later said he sat in front of it until he nearly had a seizure. Albini found Cobain focused and sober, and Cobain, who had heard Albini was "supposedly this sexist jerk", called it "the easiest recording we've ever done, hands down".
Downtime was less disciplined. Grohl told NPR the band poured flammable tape-head cleaner on themselves and set it alight. When a mix stalled, everyone took the day off to watch nature videos and make prank calls. The only real tension arrived a week in with Love, who, according to the studio chef, criticised Cobain's work and clashed with everyone. Mixing took five days, slow for Albini, and the sessions wrapped on 26 February.
The grown-ups don't like it
Gold Mountain management and Geffen president Ed Rosenblatt heard unmastered copies, and Cobain summed up the verdict to biographer Michael Azerrad: "The grown-ups don't like it." He was told the songwriting was "not up to par" and the sound "unlistenable". He was defiant ("they want another Nevermind, but I'd rather die than do that") but also uneasy, and the band decided the bass and vocals were buried.
Albini refused to remix. Bob Ludwig mastered the album in Portland, Maine to soften it, which pleased Novoselic but not Cobain. In April Albini told the Chicago Tribune he doubted Geffen would ever release it, and when Newsweek ran a similar story the band answered with a full-page Billboard advert and David Geffen personally phoned the magazine to complain. Novoselic later framed the outcome as "the obligations of being the No. 1 rock band": in May, Scott Litt remixed "Heart-Shaped Box" and "All Apologies" at Bad Animals in Seattle, with Cobain adding new harmonies and acoustic guitar to the former. Grohl said Albini was "kind of pissed". Albini's verdict was blunter: "The record in the stores doesn't sound all that much like the record that was made."
Personnel & Credits
| Role | Player | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Core band | ||
| Vocals, guitars | Kurt Cobain | Also art direction, design, photography |
| Bass | Krist Novoselic | |
| Drums | Dave Grohl | Wrote the Scentless Apprentice riff |
| Guest musicians | ||
| Cello | Kera Schaley | Dumb and All Apologies |
| Production & engineering | ||
| Producer, engineer, mixer | Steve Albini | Flat fee, no royalties |
| Technician | Bob Weston | Albini's electronics fixer |
| Remix | Scott Litt | Heart-Shaped Box, All Apologies; later Pennyroyal Tea |
| Second engineer to Litt | Adam Kasper | |
| Mastering | Bob Ludwig | Portland, Maine |
| Artwork | ||
| Art direction, design | Robert Fisher | Designed all Nirvana's DGC releases |
| Illustrations | Alex Grey | |
| Photography | Charles Peterson, Michael Lavine, Karen Mason, Neil Wallace | Peterson shot the back-cover collage |
The one outsider on the record got there through the producer. Kera Schaley, then in the Chicago band Doubt, was Albini's girlfriend when Cobain asked for a cello. She spent two days at Pachyderm, wrote her "Dumb" part on the spot and nailed it in about three takes, then improvised on "All Apologies" against Albini's wishes.
"The funny thing about 'All Apologies' is Steve kept trying to talk him out of putting cello on it ... But Kurt and I won in the end."
Kera Schaley, Rolling Stone, 2023
The Songs of In Utero
| # | Title | Writer(s) | Length | Single? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Serve the Servants | Cobain | 3:36 | No | First song recorded; never demoed by the full band |
| 2 | Scentless Apprentice | Cobain, Grohl, Novoselic | 3:48 | No | Working title "Chuck Chuck Fo Fuck" |
| 3 | Heart-Shaped Box | Cobain | 4:41 | Yes | Scott Litt remix; UK number five |
| 4 | Rape Me | Cobain | 2:50 | Yes | Retitled "Waif Me" for Wal-Mart and Kmart |
| 5 | Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle | Cobain | 4:09 | No | Inspired by the 1978 biography Shadowland |
| 6 | Dumb | Cobain | 2:32 | No | Kera Schaley's cello part, written in the studio |
| 7 | Very Ape | Cobain | 1:56 | No | Drums cut in the kitchen; riff borrowed by the Prodigy |
| 8 | Milk It | Cobain | 3:55 | No | Ends on a "really dry, really loud" vocal |
| 9 | Pennyroyal Tea | Cobain | 3:37 | Yes | Single recalled in April 1994 |
| 10 | Radio Friendly Unit Shifter | Cobain | 4:51 | No | Demoed at Word of Mouth, October 1992 |
| 11 | Tourette's | Cobain | 1:35 | No | Kitchen-recorded drums |
| 12 | All Apologies | Cobain | 3:51 | Yes | Recorded as "La La La"; Litt remix |
Serve the Servants opens the record by mocking it: the first line says teenage angst has "paid off well", and the chorus brushes off Cobain's parents' "legendary divorce" as a bore. David Fricke heard it as a "petulant, bludgeoning opener" that killed any hope of a second "Smells Like Teen Spirit".
Scentless Apprentice is the only one of the album's 12 listed tracks credited to all three members, built on Grohl's riff and based on Patrick Süskind's novel Perfume, about a murderous perfumer's apprentice. It was cut on day one.
Heart-Shaped Box is the album's centre of gravity. Cobain told Azerrad it was about children with cancer; almost everyone else hears his marriage. Fricke called it "the kind of song Stone Temple Pilots couldn't write even with detailed instructions".
Rape Me was written as a blunt anti-rape song from the victim's point of view, and its strummed opening echoes "Teen Spirit". Cobain later admitted the bridge also worked as a picture of his life with the press. Albini said Cobain "wanted the sound of him screaming to just overtake the whole band".
Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle came from William Arnold's 1978 biography Shadowland, which Cobain read in high school. Farmer, a Seattle actress committed to psychiatric hospitals, became a stand-in for the way Cobain and Love felt the media treated them. Its long title was itself a reaction against the one-word song titles favoured by other alternative bands.
Pennyroyal Tea, named after a herbal abortifacient, left Cobain unhappy. He told Fricke it "was not recorded right" and should have been done "like Nevermind", because he knew it was a hit.
All Apologies closes the album. Grohl heard the Olympia four-track and marvelled that someone with "such a beautiful sense of melody" screamed so much. Fricke called it a "stunning trump card".
B-sides, Outtakes & Lost Songs
The Pachyderm sessions produced more than the album, and most of it surfaced within a year:
- I Hate Myself and Want to Die: recorded 15 February as "2 Bass Kid", dropped for having one "noise" song too many, then opened The Beavis and Butt-Head Experience in November 1993. Geffen paid the band $60,000 for it.
- Marigold: Grohl's song from his 1992 Pocketwatch cassette, re-recorded at the end of the sessions with Novoselic on bass; Cobain does not play on the released take. B-side of "Heart-Shaped Box".
- Sappy: recorded three times before, cut again here and hidden on the AIDS benefit album No Alternative in October 1993.
- Moist Vagina: never played live, released only on the "All Apologies" single.
- Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through the Strip: a loose Rio jam, credited to all three members, hidden after 20 minutes of silence on non-US CDs.
The Rio track began life as "I'll Take You Down to the Pavement", a jab at Axl Rose after his row with Cobain at the 1992 VMAs. Novoselic said DGC added it to European copies so imports would not undercut the American release.
In Utero Artwork & Packaging
The cover shows a Transparent Anatomical Manikin, a see-through medical model, with angel wings superimposed. It is a female figure with the skin peeled away to reveal muscle, organs and skeleton, arms held out from the body, floating on a pale cream background textured like cracked plaster, with NIRVANA in dark red serif capitals above. Art director Robert Fisher, who designed every Nirvana DGC release, built it from Cobain's ideas; Cobain would hand him "loose odds and ends and say 'Do something with it'".
The back was Cobain's own work: a collage of model fetuses, a turtle shell, model turtles and body parts lying in orchids and lilies, laid out on his living-room floor and photographed by Charles Peterson after an unexpected phone call. Cobain described it as "Sex and woman and In Utero and vaginas and birth and death". Symbols from Barbara G. Walker's The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects ring the edge.
The title went through several drafts. Cobain's first choice was I Hate Myself and I Want to Die, a joke from his journals that Novoselic talked him out of for fear of lawsuits. Verse Chorus Verse came next, before Cobain borrowed In Utero from a poem by Courtney Love. Mannequins of the winged figure later served as stage props on tour.
Release & Reception
DGC played it quiet. Its head of marketing told Billboard the plan was to "set things up, duck, and get out of the way", pitching to alternative radio and the music press and releasing no commercial singles in America. The band expected to sell a fraction of Nevermind; Cobain told Jim DeRogatis they were "certain that we won't sell a quarter as much".
In Utero debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 180,000 copies and at number one in the UK. By the end of 1993 it had sold a million in the US and 1.3 million elsewhere. In the week after Cobain's death it jumped from 72 to 27 on a 122 per cent rise in sales.
Many critics still preferred Nevermind, but most were won over. Fricke's Rolling Stone review called it "a triumph of the will" and set the tone in its second sentence:
"Never in the history of rock & roll overnight sensations has an artist, with the possible exception of John Lennon, been so emotionally overwhelmed by his sudden good fortune, despised it with such devilish vigor and exorcised his discontent on record with such bristling, bull's-eye candor."
David Fricke, Rolling Stone, 1993
Time's Christopher John Farley thought it "may once again force the mainstream to go Nirvana". Q predicted that if this was how Cobain was developing, "the future is lighthouse-bright". The doubters included NME's John Mulvey, who gave it 8/10 but felt that as a follow-up to Nevermind "it just isn't quite there". In Utero topped the Rolling Stone critics' poll, came second in the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop and was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album at the 1994 Grammys.
Singles & Music Videos
| Single | Released | B-sides | Peaks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heart-Shaped Box | 30 August 1993 | Marigold; Milk It | UK 5; US Modern Rock 1; US Mainstream Rock 4 |
| All Apologies / Rape Me | 6 December 1993 | Moist Vagina | UK 32; US Modern Rock 1 (All Apologies) |
| Pennyroyal Tea | Recalled April 1994; issued 19 April 2014 | I Hate Myself and Want to Die (planned 1994 B-side) | Billboard Hot Singles Sales 1 (2014) |
Neither single was sold commercially in the US, where DGC argued singles cannibalised album sales, yet both topped Billboard's Modern Rock chart on airplay alone. "Heart-Shaped Box" became Nirvana's biggest UK hit.
It also got the band's last video. Kevin Kerslake, who had shot their previous four, drafted five treatments before Nirvana switched to Anton Corbijn at the end of August 1993. The shoot ran on 31 August and 1 September at Raleigh Studios in Los Angeles. Cobain wanted Technicolor; when that proved impossible, Corbijn shot in colour, converted to black and white and had every frame hand-tinted. Corbijn reckoned only "maybe 15 percent" of the ideas were his. It won Best Alternative Video and Best Art Direction at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards.
No video was made for "All Apologies"; Cobain said he had been concentrating on touring, so MTV aired the Unplugged performance instead. A "Pennyroyal Tea" video was planned with director Jeffery Plansker after Corbijn declined, and was abandoned when Cobain died. The single was recalled the same month, though a handful of German CDs and UK promos escaped.
Touring & Live
Nirvana became a four-piece for In Utero. Germs guitarist Pat Smear made his debut on Saturday Night Live on 25 September 1993, playing "Heart-Shaped Box" and "Rape Me". In October the band began their first American tour in two years, with Half Japanese and the Breeders in support, and Lori Goldston joined to play cello on "Dumb".
- 18 November 1993: MTV Unplugged, Sony Music Studios, New York
- 13 December 1993: Pier 48, Seattle, broadcast by MTV as Live and Loud
- 30 December 1993: Great Western Forum, Los Angeles
- 7 January 1994: Seattle Center Arena, their final hometown show
- 23 February 1994: final TV appearance, on RAI's Tunnel in Rome
- 1 March 1994: last ever concert, Terminal 1 at Munich's old Riem airport
The European leg, with Melora Creager on cello, began in February 1994 and was cancelled after Cobain's overdose in Rome on 4 March. He was found dead at his Seattle home on 8 April 1994.
In TV, Film & Media
- "Heart-Shaped Box" plays over the end of the season four finale of The Boys (2024).
- "All Apologies" appeared in Six Feet Under in 2005 and in Brett Morgen's documentary Montage of Heck (2015).
- A lullaby version of "All Apologies" soundtracked a T-Mobile Super Bowl advert in 2018.
- "Heart-Shaped Box" passed one billion Spotify streams in November 2025.
Controversy, Censorship & Lawsuits
Wal-Mart and Kmart refused to stock In Utero, citing demand and "merchandise mix" while really worrying about the fetus collage. In March 1994 DGC shipped them an edited version with altered back art, "Rape Me" listed as "Waif Me" and the Litt remix of "Pennyroyal Tea". Cobain defended the climbdown: "One of the main reasons I signed to a major label was so people would be able to buy our records at Kmart."
Kerslake sued over the "Heart-Shaped Box" video on 9 March 1994, claiming Cobain had approved one of his treatments. After Cobain's death the surviving members settled out of court.
Covers, Samples & Tributes
- The Prodigy built "Voodoo People" (1994) on the "Very Ape" riff, replayed by Lance Riddler.
- Sinéad O'Connor covered "All Apologies" on Universal Mother (1994); it later turned up in Big Little Lies and Luca Guadagnino's Queer.
- Herbie Hancock recorded "All Apologies" for The New Standard (1996).
- Lorde sang "All Apologies" with Grohl, Novoselic and Smear at Nirvana's 2014 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.
- Lana Del Rey covered "Heart-Shaped Box" live in Sydney in 2012.
Robotic Empire's tribute, In Utero, in Tribute, in Entirety, took more than seven years to clear and arrived in April 2014, by which time contributors Jay Reatard had died and Thursday and These Arms Are Snakes had split.
Reissues, Remasters & Anniversaries
The 20th anniversary edition of 24 September 2013 finally let Albini have his say. Novoselic and Grohl went back to Albini at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago for a full "2013 album mix", inspired by a Doors remix project, alongside the original album remastered at Abbey Road. The 70-song Super Deluxe set added Albini's original mixes of "Heart-Shaped Box" and "All Apologies", the era's B-sides, demos of eight album songs, the newly found instrumental "Forgotten Tune" and the Live and Loud concert.
The 30th anniversary edition of 27 October 2023 went live-heavy: 53 previously unreleased tracks, including the complete Los Angeles Forum and Seattle Center Arena shows, rebuilt from soundboard tapes by Jack Endino, while Bob Weston remastered the album from the original analogue tapes. It came as an 8LP or 5CD Super Deluxe box.
The Legacy of In Utero
In Utero was Nirvana's last studio album. MTV Unplugged in New York followed in November 1994 and won the Grammy that In Utero had only been nominated for. Grohl formed Foo Fighters that year, and Marigold remains the only song released by both his bands.
Its reputation has grown steadily. Cobain biographer Charles R. Cross called it "a far better record" than Nevermind in 2003, an album that was somehow both a multimillion-seller and a "lost pearl". Rolling Stone ranked it 435th in its original 500 Greatest Albums and lifted it to 173rd in the 2020 revision. Pitchfork placed it 13th among the best albums of the 1990s and NME put it at 35 in its 2013 list. In 2023 the Official Charts Company named it the fifth most-streamed 1990s album in the UK.
Albini said In Utero made him unpopular with major labels and that work was hard to find the following year. He founded Electrical Audio in 1997 and kept to his principles, working fee-only, until his death in May 2024.
Things You Might Not Know About In Utero
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| The Back in Black desk | Albini's pitch letter claimed Pachyderm had the same Neve console that AC/DC's Back in Black was recorded and mixed on. |
| The mashed-potato sock | Albini stuffed a sock with mashed potato at dinner; it bounced between pillow and drum stool until Grohl found it in his suitcase at home. |
| Dumb drummer | After Grohl set his own leg alight, he nailed his burnt hat to the wall labelled "dumb". Albini changed the label to "drummer". |
| The cellist's pay | Kera Schaley received a cheque for about $275 for two and a half hours of studio time, though royalties have since followed. |
| A baby on the demo | On the October 1992 demo of "Rape Me", Cobain sang with the infant Frances Bean on his lap, and she can be heard crying. |
| The fish on the tape box | "I Hate Myself and Want to Die" was marked on the album's tape box by a fish symbol. |
| A purchase incentive | The packaging for non-US copies listed the hidden Rio jam as a "Devalued American Dollar Purchase Incentive Track". |
| The unreturned call | Shadowland author William Arnold had "Return the call of K.C. - the Nirvana guy!" on his to-do list for 8 April 1994, the day Cobain was found. |
| The girl in the video | Kelsey Rohr played the young girl in "Heart-Shaped Box" aged six and reunited with Grohl in 2016. |
| A pricey recall | The UK promo CD of the cancelled "Pennyroyal Tea" single has been offered for as much as $2,597. |
Listen to the Riffology Podcast
In Utero was the very first record Riffology covered, back in episode one, and the Albini saga makes for a great listen. The Riffology podcast is available on all major podcast platforms.
Comments