Rape Me
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| “Rape Me” | |||||
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| Single by Nirvana from the album In Utero |
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| B-side | "Moist Vagina" | ||||
| Released | 1994 | ||||
| Format | ??? | ||||
| Recorded | at Pachyderm Studios, Cannon Falls, Minnesota, February, 1993 | ||||
| Genre | Grunge | ||||
| Length | 2:49 | ||||
| Label | DGC Records | ||||
| Producer | Steve Albini | ||||
| Nirvana singles chronology | |||||
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| In Utero track listing | |||||
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"Rape Me" is a song by the American grunge band Nirvana. It is the fourth song on, and the second single (along with "All Apologies") from their 1993 album, In Utero.
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[edit] History
"Rape Me" was written by Nirvana singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain in an apartment in Los Angeles, California in May 1991, around the time the band's second album, Nevermind, was being mixed. It was first performed live on June 18 1991, at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz, California, and subsequently played several times at Nirvana concerts during the next two years. These early live versions featured a dissonant, semi-improvised "anti-solo" (or "noise solo") after the second chorus, which was replaced by a bridge in the song's final incarnation.
The song was first recorded in the studio by Jack Endino in October 1992 in Seattle, Washington. The band had wanted to debut it (along with "Tourette's," then called "New Poopy") at the 1992 MTV Awards in Los Angeles a month earlier, but the network wanted them to play "Smells Like Teen Spirit" instead. The band eventually played their then-latest single "Lithium," but not before strumming "Rape Me"'s opening chords, which almost resulted in the performance being taken off the air.
"Rape Me" was finally recorded by Steve Albini in February 1993 for In Utero, and was released alongside "All Apologies" as the album's second single in late 1993. A music video was planned but never made, in part because the band believed MTV would be reluctant to play it. However in 1999, an MTV video was made from their live performance of the song recorded on Saturday Night Live (see "Other versions").
[edit] Controversy
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"Rape Me" drew the ire of many feminists upon its release on In Utero in 1993, but Cobain, a proclaimed feminist himself, often said in interviews that it was an "anti-rape" song. He said it was a song of poetic justice, in which a man rapes a woman, is sent to jail, and ends up being raped there himself. "Basically, I was trying to write a song that supported women and dealt with the issue of rape," Cobain explained in a 1993 Rolling Stone interview . It has also been said that Cobain offered the song for use in RAINN, a rape, abuse, and incest international helpline. However, Tori Amos, the founder of this organization, declined, stating that many victims of rape cannot deal with such blunt terms.
Still, the song's title was censored as "Waif Me" on Wal-Mart and Kmart releases of In Utero, an intentionally comical name chosen by Cobain himself (he had originally wanted to call it "Sexually Assault Me", but that name was too long). The audio of the song remains uncensored in these versions.
Cobain often pointed out that "Rape Me" was written before Nirvana's ascension to superstardom, and therefore could not have been a cynical comment on fame, as many suggested around the time of In Utero's release. However, the song's bridge, which was written later on, does seem to contain direct references to Cobain's celebrity, such as the lyric, "My favorite inside source." The line "I'm not the only one" seems to reference that it is not just him but his wife and daughter who are affected by his celebrity, but is more likely about the karmic justice of the rapist being raped in jail.
[edit] Planned music video
Kurt Cobain considered a video for the song, described in his Journals under the title "Rape Me Treatment." It was to be set in a women's prison and shot in black and white.
[edit] Other versions
A live version of "Rape Me," recorded on Saturday Night Live on September 25, 1993, appears on the compilation album, Saturday Night Live: The Musical Performances, Volume 2, and on the DVD, Saturday Night Live: 25 Years of Music, Volume 4.
Two versions of the song appear on the 2004 Nirvana box set, With the Lights Out: a solo acoustic home demo, and the 1992 studio version. Both versions also appear on the 2005 compilation album, Sliver - The Best of the Box.
Cobain's infant daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, can be heard crying in the background of the band demo version. According to Charles R. Cross' 2001 Cobain biography Heavier Than Heaven, she was sitting on his lap when he recorded the vocals.
The In Utero version was re-released in 2002 on the band's "best-of" collection, Nirvana.
In 2008, it was parodied in a way on The Simpsons episode "That 90's Show" as "Shave Me", which, in turn, is parodied by "Weird Al" Yankovic as "Brain Freeze", similar to the parody of Smells Like Teen Spirit, Smells Like Nirvana.
[edit] Covers
"Rape Me" has been covered by American cover band Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine on their 2000 album "Lounge Against the Machine", and also featured it on their 2006 album "The Sunny Side of the Moon: The Best of Richard Cheese" (both with the ironic introduction, "Here's one for the ladies!"). The song was also covered by the American rock band The Used and the South-African band Seether. "Rape Me" has also been used to make a parody, featured in the "That 90's Show" episode in The Simpsons, with the title changed to "Shave Me."
[edit] Chart positions
| Year | Single | Chart | Position |
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| 1993 | Rape Me | Hawaiian Island Charts | No. 3 |
| 1994 | Rape Me | Slovakian Airplay Charts | No. 16 |
| 1993 | All Apologies/Rape Me | Official French Singles Charts | No. 20 |
| 1993 | All Apologies/Rape Me | Official New Zealand Singles Charts | No. 20 |
| 1993 | All Apologies/Rape Me | Official Irish Singles Chart | No. 20 |
| 1993 | All Apologies/Rape Me | Official UK Singles Charts | No. 32 |
| 1993 | All Apologies/Rape Me | Official Australian Singles Charts | No. 58 |
| 1993 | All Apologies/Rape Me | Brasil Hot 100 | No. 94 |
[edit] Accolades
- Ranked #90 in Kerrang!'s "100 Greatest Rock Tracks Ever" (1999). [1]
- Ranked #10 in NME's "Top 20 Nirvana Songs" (2004).
[edit] References
- Azerrad, Michael. Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana, Doubleday, New York: 1993, ISBN 0-86369-746-1
- Cross, Charles. Heavier Than Heaven. Hyperion, 2001. ISBN 0-7868-6505-9
- Kurt Cobain by David Fricke, Rolling Stone, January 27, 1994
- ^ Kerrang! magazine, issue 746, April 17th 1999.
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