Kurt Cobain didn’t seem to have any sense of self-preservation when singing with Nirvana. As far as he was concerned, whatever came out was going to be authentic to how he was feeling in the moment, and if that meant singing in a whisper or shrieking his guts out, he was going to make sure that he gave his everything once he had a microphone in front of him. If you’re pushing that hard, it’s not hard to see why some problems come up, and ‘Lithium’ almost led to Cobain losing his voice for good.
Before becoming one of the biggest names in music, Cobain’s signature feature was his scream. While Bleach still had some melodic sensibilities and was a staple of the underground Sub Pop scene, hearing Cobain on a song like ‘Love Buzz’ was all about his ferociousness when fronting the band.
Once the band started working on the material that would turn up on Nevermind, something started to change. Cobain could still write a great song, but the songs were centred around a lot more pop melodies, which was like night and day compared to the band that had played songs like ‘Paper Cuts’ a few years before.
Everything seemed like it would be perfect for the band until they started the first sessions with Butch Vig in Madison, Wisconsin. Though ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ hadn’t even been written yet, Cobain had a pretty clear vision of what the album would sound like, only for his voice to fail him once ‘Lithium’ started.
According to Vig, Cobain’s voice was so shot after the session that they had to close up shop on the sessions, telling Classic Albums, “He sort of blew his voice out on the fourth or fifth day, he sang so hard. I think it was on ‘Lithium’. We basically just had to shut down recording”. If you listen to the version of ‘Lithium’ from those sessions, there are already a few problems.
Never mind the fact that Chad Channing was still behind the drumkit, the song is also in far too high a key for Cobain to be singing it in. Given that ‘Lithium’ is already a hard song to sing because of how many vocal leaps happen on the final track, hearing Cobain strain on some of the higher notes is enough to make a lot of vocal coaches wince just a little bit.
Although they had to tune down this song out of necessity on Nevermind, it actually works a lot better as an artistic move as well. The song is already named after a prescription drug used to treat manic depression, so hearing a more guttural version of the song is like being thrown into that drug haze and trying to find your way out of it.
That didn’t mean that Cobain didn’t try to push himself a little further when he sang live. During the In Utero tour, Nirvana played the song tuned up a half step, letting Cobain let his voice fly wherever it wanted to go. When you’ve got that kind of distinct gravel, though, you’re always playing with fire when you decide to test the limits of your range.
