{"id":700812,"date":"2026-01-16T22:36:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T22:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/700812\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T22:36:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T22:36:14","slug":"the-one-nirvana-song-that-kurt-cobain-didnt-want-to-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/700812\/","title":{"rendered":"The one Nirvana song that Kurt Cobain didn’t want to release"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Kurt<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Fri 16 January 2026 20:30, UK <\/p>\n

Everybody has got to start somewhere, and there is an entire wasteland of doomed bands who have tried everything to get a foothold in the industry; even Nirvana<\/a>, the harbingers of the grunge revolution and devoted critics of the mainstream music industry, had to grit their teeth and bear it when Sub Pop demanded that their first release be a cover version. <\/p>\n

Cover songs have always been a rather divisive topic within the realm of punk rock<\/a>, viewed by many spikey-haired elitists as being akin to \u2018selling out\u2019. After all, the attitude of punk has always been concerned with authenticity, and having some important message to spread, and how can you achieve such a feat while singing words somebody else has written? At the same time, though, everybody from The Clash to Dead Kennedys has recorded a cover song at some point in their existence, so perhaps it\u2019s not such a big deal after all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was a big deal, however, in the mind of Kurt Cobain. Even in the days pre-Nirvana, the young musical obsessive was always a gifted songwriter, with an extensive arsenal of original compositions which perfectly captured the punk-infused spirit of the blossoming grunge scene. <\/p>\n

Cobain\u2019s songwriting, in fact, was the driving force behind the band\u2019s rise to mainstream success during the early 1990s. Yet, despite all of that, the band\u2019s first single back in 1988 was a cover of Shocking Blue\u2019s hippie anthem<\/a>, \u2018Love Buzz\u2019. <\/p>\n

A staple of their early live shows, thanks to Krist Novoselic stumbling upon a battered LP from the Dutch outfit, Nirvana could quite easily have gotten away with presenting \u2018Love Buzz\u2019 as an original, as there can\u2019t have been many others in the grunge scene who had ever heard it before. Nevertheless, when Jack Edino and Jonathan Poneman of Sub Pop Records suggested it be the band\u2019s first single, the band weren\u2019t overly keen. <\/p>\n

\u201cKurt wasn\u2019t thrilled about doing a cover for Nirvana\u2019s first release,\u201d Edino confirmed, per Kerrang<\/a>. Regardless of how much the band liked the track, a first single is make or break for a group like Nirvana, and to have that single revolve around somebody else\u2019s work was understandably uncomfortable for Cobain, as a songwriter. <\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Sub Pop eventually convinced them to go along and record \u2018Love Buzz\u2019, with Poneman recalling that the cover was \u201ca great vehicle for the Nirvana sound, allowing them to demonstrate everything they did so well: melody, hooks.\u201d Thankfully, for both parties, the risk seemed to pay off. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe response was ecstatic,\u201d Poneman shared. \u201cNirvana were such a powerful, out-of-nowhere phenomenon, and it started there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Love Buzz\u2019 might not have been the song that Nirvana wanted to release as their debut, but it certainly worked out in their favour. Not only did they rise to the forefront of the Sub Pop-supported grunge scene in its wake, but it introduced the airwaves to their distinctive, infectious sound. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, it appears as though the song endeared Cobain and the group towards cover versions, and they went on to record versions of songs by everybody from David Bowie to The Vaselines. In the end, then, \u2018Love Buzz\u2019 was a pretty solid debut. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Fri 16 January 2026 20:30, UK Everybody has got to start somewhere, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,12286,269,4159,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-700812","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-kurt-cobain","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-nirvana","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115907172139885264","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}