Pop Song 474 of 500 'Come as you are' Nirvana 1992

Pop Song 474 of 500 'Come as you are' Nirvana 1992

Many have speculated the song to be about heroin, which Cobain was struggling with at the time of writing and recording. The lyrics "Come doused in mud, soaked in bleach" speak directly to a Seattle-area HIV prevention campaign from the time period encouraging addicts to sterilize their needles with bleach before using them with the tagline "If doused in mud, soak in bleach", and "As a friend, as a trend, as a known enemy", for some, was further allegory of addiction to the drug. After Cobain's death, Sub Pop records approached G. Alan Marlatt at the University of Washington to set up a memorial fund to establish an addiction treatment center titled the "Come as You Are" center, but the funding fell through after the record label was sold to Warner Music Group.

Cobain described the lyrics of "Come as You Are" as contradictory, and said the song was about "people and what they're expected to act like". Pointing to the line "Take your time, hurry up, choice is yours, don't be late", essayist Catherine J. Creswell writes that in Cobain's lyrics, "[p]hrases clump into strings of empty clichés whose own ostensible meaning is forced into contradictions or simple rhyme sound".[18]

In light of Cobain's suicide in 1994, AllMusic's Mark Deming suggests that hearing "Cobain sing 'and I swear that I don't have a gun' gives 'Come as You Are' an edge it was never meant to have when [Nevermind] was first released in 1991." Deming reasons that the "I don't have a gun" lyric is Cobain's "attempt to reassure listeners that ... his target is the world at large rather than the individuals in it, and that there was still room in this damaged world for everyone".[19] Others have suggested the lyrics regarding the "gun" are metaphors for escapism and turmoil found in heroin usage.

Come as you are, as you were
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend
As a known enemy
Take your time, hurry up
Choice is yours, don't be late
Take a rest, as a friend
As a known memoria
Memoria
Memoria
Memoria
Come doused in mud, soaked in bleach
As I want you to be
As a trend, as a friend
As a known memoria
Memoria
Memoria
Memoria
And I swear that I don't have a gun
No, I don't have a gun
No, I don't have a gun
Memoria
Memoria
Memoria
Memoria (and I don't have a gun)
And I swear that I don't have a gun
No, I don't have a gun
No, I don't have a gun
No, I don't have a gun
No, I don't have a gun
(Memoria)
(Memoria)