The True Meaning Behind Come As You Are
“Come as you are, as you were
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend
As an old enemy”
Grunge is a music genre that shaped the music industry in the early 90s. Grunge was born in the late 80s in the Seattle scene with bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam. However, the genre was quickly launched into superstardom when albums such as Ten by Pearl Jam or Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger were released. Grunge acted as almost a big middle finger to hair metal, which was a genre that dominated the early to mid-80s. By 1993, grunge overtook the music scene, stealing the spotlight away from the hair metal craze of the mid-80s. Rather than focusing on the usual sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll, grunge concentrated on social issues and emotions. However, in 1994 grunge died as quickly as it exploded onto the charts with the sound of a shotgun blast. Kurt Cobain, the lead singer in the band Nirvana had committed suicide in his Seattle home. Grunge didn’t last much longer than 1994 as it slowly faded away and Nu-Metal and rap took over after it.
Nevermind, Nirvana’s 1991 sophomore album was an instant hit and the track Come As You Are shows their versatility and the difference their 6th and final drummer Dave Grohl had made seeing as that was his first album playing for Nirvana. Come As You Are is a song about expectations that all people need to live with and the contradictions that this causes.
“Music, the most abstract and uncanny art, is an eternal river of sound moving through time. We can free ourselves from whatever may be holding us back, and join that flowing river”
- William Westney
Everyone interprets and relates to music in many different ways. To some, it is an escape to a different world where their issues are not the most important part of their lives. To others, it’s a way of expressing their feelings and relating to people with similar interests. This in itself means that there is no wrong way to interpret a song since it’s all subjective. To clarify, this interpretation of the song is not incorrect, however, it is certainly different to my personal interpretation of its meaning.
Reddit user HeelSpider thinks that “In the song, Kurt Cobain repeats over and over that he swears he doesn’t have a gun. He very badly wants the person he’s singing the song about to believe he doesn’t have a gun. The only person who would deny having a gun like that over and over is someone who actually has one. There’s even a whole “wink wink” kind of feel to that part of the song.”
Although the idea of singing a song from the perspective of a criminal is not a new one to Nirvana, this interpretation of the song does not feel complete. In the prior uses of this perspective, the song was used to fight against the actions that the character in the song takes. An example of this would be the song, Polly. However, there seems to be none of that in this song and Nirvana wasn’t known to write songs without any meanings.
Another popular theory has to do with Cobain’s troubled childhood. According to Musicfeeds.com,
A local resident reportedly brought to the reading an 1940s advertisement for Aberdeen’s Morck Hotel, whose motto was, “Come as you are.” “The Morck has been dilapidated for years, but it was one of the many places in Aberdeen where Kurt’s friends told me he crashed during his ‘homeless’ teenage era,” Cross said after being shown the advertisement.
“Whether Kurt directly took something from that, or whether it simply stayed in his subconscious a few years later when he wrote the song, is unknown,” said Cross. “But it’s a fascinating twist, and perhaps an explanation of the genesis of the title of one of Nirvana’s greatest songs.”
But once again, this theory doesnt seem to be complete. Although the basic idea of Kurt Cobain writing a song about his childhood is not very far-fetched, this theory does not explain the lines in the song that contradict one another. Furthermore, the song also references a campaign launched by the Seattle government to advertise the bleaching of needles in order to stop the spread of HIV. However, the song is not necesarily about that.
In actuality Come As You Are comments on the expectations that people have to live with and contradictions. According to SongFacts
“Kurt Cobain described this song as “About people, and what they’re expected to act like.”
The lyrics are intentionally contradictory and confusing, with one line rebutting the next:
“As a friend, as an old enemy”
“Take your time, hurry up”
The theme of confusing and contradicting sentences is a common theme for the rest of the song with lines like
“Come as you are, as you were
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend
As an old enemy”
The song itself also references a campaign in Seattle that encouraged heroin users to clean their needles using bleach to prevent the spread of HIV. The phrase for the campaign was actually “If doused in mud, soak in bleach.” However, Cobain referenced this campaign as
“Come doused in mud, soaked in bleach”
However, this in itself does not necessarily mean that Come As You Are is a song about heroin or commentary on how Seattle handled the AIDS pandemic.
The song itself follows a fairly common song structure to other Nirvana songs. The song starts with 4 bars of the guitar without any backup from Kirst Novoselic or Dave Grohl. However, this quickly changes once we get to the first chorus. Similar to other Nirvana songs, the verse’s are usually much calmer with a clean guitar tone. To record the guitar part Kurt used an Electro-Harmonix Small Clone Chorus pedal to create the watery tone that you hear in the verses. The watery guitar tone helps convey this mood and so do Kurt Cobain’s signature vocals. The E minor key that the song is written in, is supposed to evoke emotions like sadness and grief. This most definitely suits the feel of the entire song and is also commonly used in other Nirvana songs.
In conclusion, song’s are possibly the hardest art to put a label on since it often does not have a distinct meaning. This then means that people can relate to the music in different ways. Come As You Are is in the same boat as all these other songs, as different people had very different ideas of what the song is about. However, Kurt Cobain’s meaning behind the song must still be taken into consideration since he is the one that wrote it.
