In Bloom You Know You're Right Nirvana

In Bloom Album: Nevermind (1991)
You Know You're Right Album: Greatest Hits (2002)
by NirvanaShow more

Did Dave Grohl end Kurt? How do you get ahead in this realm? Sacrifice. Sacrifice. Sacrifice... When Cobain died, the two remaining members (Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic) formed a partnership with his widow, Courtney Love, that controlled the rights to Nirvana's songs. 1+1+1=3

Growing up in Aberdeen, Washington, Cobain encountered a lot of people with very little tolerance to anyone different. He told Melody Maker in 1992: "For ages I thought I might be homosexual, because I didn't like the cheerleader type of girl or want to hang out with the jock boys. I chose to live the life of a recluse. I didn't hang out with anyone else because I couldn't handle their stupidity."
Kurt Cobain was very much aware that many people would not get the point of his songs and simply sing along with them blindly. On this song, he wrote a very sing-a-long chorus so that people would find themselves singing about not understanding the song: "He's the one who likes all the pretty songs, and he likes to sing along, but he knows not what it means."

To further provoke the homophobic crowd this song targets, the band wore dresses in the video. The clip begins with the band appearing on a '50s-style variety show, with the clueless host hyping them but mispronouncing their name. Later on, clips with the band wearing dresses appear in contrast to their jacket and tie look they wear for most of the video.

Kevin Kerslake, who also did Nirvana's videos for "Sliver" and "Come As You Are" was the director. He says they came up with the idea from talking about The Ed Sullivan Show.

Talking about Nirvana's unlikely fame in 1992, their bassist Krist Novoselic couldn't help using a line from this song to explain. Said Krist: "'He's the one who likes pretty songs' – there you have it. Nevermind is a very safe record.

"You Know You're Right" was recorded January 30, 1994 at Robert Lang studios in Seattle just before Nirvana embarked on a European tour, which turned out to be their last. It was the last song the band recorded, as Kurt Cobain killed himself on April 5, 1994.

Kurt wrote this song as a sarcastic reference to his wife Courtney Love, at a very turbulent time in their relationship (shortly before his suicide), the title and predominant lyric: "you know your right" and also "nothing really bothers her, she just wants to love herself", both refer to Kurt's frustration with Courtney.

When Cobain died, the two remaining members (Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic) formed a partnership with his widow, Courtney Love, that controlled the rights to Nirvana's songs. Grohl and Novoselic wanted to release this sooner, but Love refused, and it was not until 2002 that they reached an agreement where she allowed a Nirvana Greatest Hits CD with this on it. As part of the agreement, the Universal Music Group, which released the CD, let Love out of her contract with the label.

Grohl went years without listening to this song. Until it was mixed for the Greatest Hits album, he didn't even have a copy of it.
Before the song was released as a single in 2002, it was called "On the Mountain" by bootleggers. The only time the song was performed live, Dave Grohl told the audience, "This is our last song, its called 'All Apologies'" without realizing Cobain had started playing "You Know You're Right." The poor audio quality left the bootleggers unable to make out exactly what Grohl had said, hence the mistaken title.

Before Nirvana released this, Courtney Love played a live acoustic version of it called "You've Got No Right" for an MTV Unplugged special with her band Hole. She sang "Hey" instead of "Pain." Here's how she introduced the song: "This is a song that Kurt wrote. We worked on it a little bit, we can't do it that well but it's Valentine's Day, and maybe he can hear it, and he'll go, 'You know, you really f---ed up my song, Courtney. Don't even try it.' But if it works, it's dedicated to my mother-in-law.

Dave Grohl recalled the sessions that produced this song during a 2014 interview with Studio Brussel. "We had some time off before a tour, and Kurt wanted to go in and demo some stuff, so I said, 'Hey, why don't we do it at this studio down the street from my house,'" he said. "And we went down there, and we had three days booked. Kurt came in the last day and we were like, 'Okay, what do you wanna do?' And Kurt said, 'Well, why don't we do that song we've been doing at soundcheck?' And so we rehearsed it, I think, once, and then recorded it. Kurt did three or four vocal takes, and that was it."
1+1+1=3