“Come As You Are” by Nirvana

"Come As You Are" is the third track on Nirvana's Nevermind, the 1991 album on Geffen, and the second single pulled from it, and it's Kurt Cobain at his most seductive and most unsettling. He wrote the words and the music, sings lead and plays guitar, and that riff is the whole hook: a murky, wobbling figure that sounds like it's being played at the bottom of a swimming pool, circling until it gets under your skin. Krist Novoselic's bass shadows it, Dave Grohl holds back on the drums until the chorus lets him lean in, and both add backing vocals to the hazy harmonies. Butch Vig produced and engineered it with the band, and Andy Wallace mixed it.

Once "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had blown the doors off, the band and its management argued over whether this or "In Bloom" should come next, because Cobain worried it sat too close to "Eighties", the 1984 song by Killing Joke. Management talked him round on its commercial potential.

It reached number 32 on the Billboard Hot 100, the band's second and last American Top 40 hit, and went to number 9 in the UK. Kevin Kerslake directed the video, taking his cue from the Nevermind cover art.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.