| "Polly" | ||||
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Promo CD for the MTV Unplugged in New York album |
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| Song by Nirvana from the album Nevermind | ||||
| Released | September 24, 1991 | |||
| Recorded | April 1990 at Smart Studios, Madison, Wisconsin | |||
| Genre | Alternative rock, acoustic rock | |||
| Length | 2:57 | |||
| Label | DGC | |||
| Writer | Kurt Cobain | |||
| Producer | Butch Vig | |||
| Nevermind track listing | ||||
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"Polly" is a song by the American grunge band Nirvana. It is the sixth song on its 1991 album, Nevermind.
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Dating back to at least 1988, "Polly" stands alongside "About a Girl" as one of singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain's earliest forays into unfiltered pop songwriting. It was originally titled "Hitchhiker", and later "Cracker", but was renamed "Polly" sometime in 1989. It was left off Nirvana's 1989 debut album, Bleach, because Cobain believed it was not consistent with the band's heavy grunge sound of the time. However, it found its way onto the band's second album, Nevermind, two years later, and remained a part of the band's regular setlist until Cobain's death (and Nirvana's dissolution) in April 1994.
It also stands as drummer Chad Channing's only contribution to Nevermind, having been asked to leave the band before the recording of the album in Los Angeles. Channing's cymbal crashes remained on the final Nevermind version of the song as it was recorded at producer Butch Vig's Wisconsin studios before Channing was replaced by Dave Grohl. The tracks from those Wisconsin sessions, which included soon to be Nirvana classics "In Bloom" and "Lithium", would be used by the band as a demo in effort to attract major label attention. Those sessions also served to make the band comfortable enough with Vig's production style that they would select him to produce Nevermind. "Polly" is a distinct song in that it is entirely acoustic (as originally recorded for Nevermind), which contrasts the more "clean-guitar-for-verses, distorted-guitar-for-choruses, quiet-loud-quiet" pattern Nirvana is famous for employing. The song has the least significant drum part of all of Nirvana's catalogue of songs; all the song has are cymbals at the start of each chorus section.
The song is not about Polly Klaas' murder, which happened two years after the song's release. In the VH1 Classic Albums documentary about Nevermind, bass player Krist Novoselic remembers Kurt Cobain writing "Polly" after reading a newspaper article about the abduction, torture, and rape of a 14-year-old girl who had just finished attending a rock show in Tacoma, Washington. In June 1987 Gerald Arthur Friend picked up a 14-year-old female friend after leaving a concert at the Tacoma Dome. Upon trying to exit the car the girl was handcuffed and held hostage at knife point. The girl was taken to a mobile home where she was tortured and raped with various objects for two days. She was also threatened with a blowtorch.[1]
Polly was recorded in the key of E minor with the chords E5-G5-D5-C5 for all verses and then the chords D5-C5-G5-B♭5 for all choruses. The song starts with Cobain playing the verse progression on an acoustic guitar and singing the vocals until the first chorus when bass enters and a cymbal crash is played this is done for all verses and choruses after the second chorus the guitar stops playing and a bass break starts. According to Butch Vig on Classic Albums: Nevermind when Cobain sang "Polly said" he came in too early but they decided to leave it in. [2]. The song ends with a final cymbal crash after the third chorus.
Apart from the acoustic rendition which appears on Nevermind, ten other versions have been officially released:
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