Those Certain Songs: ‘About A Girl’ – Nirvana (1989)

There are certain songs that just resonate with you. Whether that song recreates a moment in time or is just one that you really like, these songs are the songs that helped create the person you are and were a constant companion in the journey called life.

Today we continue exploring those songs in my life and what they mean to me.   This is Those Certain Songs.

The Song:

Title: About A Girl

Artist: Nirvana

Album: Bleach

The Lyrics:

What it means to me:

Nirvana was the band that changed music for me forever and led me to many of my other favorite bands.  Until sometime in 1991, I was listening to pretty much whatever my parents liked.  I had formed the naive opinion that there was nothing really good in modern music (save everything I had discovered in the 80’s like REM, B-52’s, Bad Religion, etc etc) and had relegated myself to the music I had grown accustomed to.  In many ways that preteen self was already heading in to old age but then, something happened.

My good friend Grayson handed me a small Black and Silver cassette tape and said, ‘check this out’.  I did, and man my world was blown away. The first two songs were great sludgy grunge but it was track three, About A Girl, that really did it for me.  Here was a tune that touched on the familial sounds of my parents music in it’s construction but also broke those boundaries introducing me to sounds I had never really heard before.  For the next several years I was addicted to this sound. Every new release, every hidden track, every single, I had to have them all.  With every new song I found, I felt that there were dozens more floating in the ether waiting to be discovered.  You have to keep in mind, this was the early days of the internet so it was extremely difficult to find what you wanted. Napster didn’t exist yet and sharing sites were limited to colleges and I had no access to those.  Nevertheless, I persevered.

Why today’s song means so much to me is not the meaning of the song itself, even though I do find an odd personal connection to the lyrics.  It is more that this song represents the entry into a whole world of music that I had not known existed at the time. One single cassette, that’s literally all it took to change my world and it was this song that sealed the deal. Years later, I would cover this song in my short lived band.  The band lasted all of a couple years but, at one point, even Grayson joined us for a few songs.  I can’t say we did it as well as Kurt, but I imagine he would have approved.

Sadly, that cassette tape, with it’s two missing tracks, was lost early on.  Falling out of my cheap Walkman one night, I never found where it went.  Somewhere I have the old cassette case and it’s liner notes but that first tape is still laying on the asphalt somewhere back in the late 90’s.  I can only hope that some kid found that tape and it changed their world as much as it did mine.

Late to the Game 7/25/2020

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed  Those Certain Songs.  If you would like to read more about music you can find my Music Reviews Here.

Additionally, I have a weekly series called Key Movies Of My Life that comes out every Thursday and also check out some retro tv goodness with the ongoing series Retro TV Reviews. 

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