Rape Me

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For the novel and film, see Baise-moi.

“Rape Me”
Single by Nirvana from the album In Utero
B-side	"Moist Vagina"
Released	December 1993
Format	CD
Recorded	Pachyderm Studios, Cannon Falls, Minnesota, February, 1993
Genre	Grunge
Length	2:49
Label	DGC Records
Writer(s)	Kurt Cobain
Producer	Steve Albini
Nirvana singles chronology
"Heart-Shaped Box" (1993) "All Apologies"/"Rape Me" (1993) "Pennyroyal Tea" (1994)
In Utero track listing
"Heart-Shaped Box" (3) "Rape Me" (4) "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle" (5)

"Rape Me" is a song by the American grunge band Nirvana. The song was released as the second single from Nirvana's 1993 album In Utero, packaged as a double a-side along with "All Apologies."

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 (1991), 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" after the second chorus, which was replaced by a bridge in the song's final incarnation.

The band had wanted to debut it at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles on September 9, but MTV insisted on them playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" instead. According to the Cobain biography Heavier Than Heaven, the network's reasoning was not so much due to the controversial usage of the word "rape," but rather because they assumed Cobain was using the song to jab at the media (and MTV) for their abuse of his celebrity status. (Only weeks earlier, a Vanity Fair article depicting Cobain and his wife Courtney Love as unfit parents nearly resulted in the removal of their newborn child Frances Bean Cobain from their custody. MTV News was one of the media sources who reported this story.) Nirvana ultimately settled on playing their then-latest single "Lithium." However, to show their disapproval of MTV's insistance, "Lithium" was preceeded by the first 5 seconds of "Rape Me." The opening chords and the song's title lyrics were sung twice, and MTV was seconds away from pulling their performance off the air and going to a commercial when the band abruptly stopped the song and went into the intro of "Lithium."

The song was first recorded in the studio by Jack Endino in October 1992 in Seattle, Washington.

The studio version of "Rape Me" that appears on In Utero was recorded by Steve Albini in February 1993. In December of that year, it was released alongside "All Apologies" as the album's second single. A music video was considered but never made.

Music and lyrics

Kurt Cobain conceived "Rape Me" as a life-affirming rape song. He told Spin, "It's like she's saying, 'Rape me, go ahead, rape me, beat me. You'll never kill me. I'll survive this and I'm gonna fucking rape you one of these days and you won't even know it."^[1] The song's guitar intro features a strong resemblance to that of Smells Like Teen Spirit.

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. There is no date attached to this journal entry, and so the brainstorming for this video may have begun as early as 1991. "Heart Shaped Box" was ultimately chosen as the first and only official video filmed to promote In Utero. Due to touring and promotional obligations, a video for "Rape Me" was never planned or filmed, and instead, DGC chose an MTV Unplugged performance of "All Apologies" as the second and final video for promoting In Utero.

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.

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.

In the Simpsons episode "That 90's Show," Homer Simpson's band Sadgasm wrote a song called "Shave Me" which was similar to "Rape Me." Later in the episode, "Weird Al" Yankovic wrote a parody of "Shave Me" called "Brain Freeze." This is a reference to Yankovic's actual parody of Nirvana's hit single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" called "Smells Like Nirvana."^[2]

Chart positions

Accolades

• Ranked #90 in Kerrang!'s "100 Greatest Rock Tracks Ever" (1999). ^[3]
• Ranked #10 in NME's "Top 20 Nirvana Songs" (2004).

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

Notes