Nirvana - Nevermind (1991)

 

Side A:
1. Smells Like Teen Spirit
2. Even in His Youth
3. Come As You Are
4. Aneurysm
5. Verse Chorus Verse

Side B:
6. Territorial Pissings
7. Drain You
8. Lounge Act
9. On a Plain
10. Something in the Way
11. Old Age
Bonus Track - Endless, Nameless

An internet blogger known for reconstructing famously unreleased albums once did a project where he did "a reconstruction of the unreleased 1990 Nirvana album Sheep, which is essentially the precursor to what would eventually be released as Nevermind in 1991." It made me wonder what it would have been like if Nirvana still released Nevermind in 1991. For this we'll need With the Lights Out again, but not Incesticide. The Sheep album only took out five songs, using the Smart Studios session demos from April 1990 instead: "In Bloom", "Breed", calling it by its original working title: "Imodium", "Lithium", "Polly" (whose album version originated from these sessions anyway), and the original version of "Stay Away", "Pay to Play". The rest mostly came from either Incesticide or With the Lights Out. This means we have five spots and have to pick what to use.

"Verse Chorus Verse" and "Token Eastern Song" were originally going to be on the Nevermind album, according to some track listing prototypes from Kurt Cobain's Journals. The version of Token Eastern Song from With the Lights Out came from 1989 but an unreleased demo came from January 1991 whereas all the songs from Nevermind came from May 1991. The unreleased demo is instrumental and thus unfinished, but we can use other songs from the same session. "Verse Chorus Verse" and "Old Age" were the only songs from the Sound City Studios sessions that didn't end up on the album, so we're gonna need more songs anyway. I tacked the drumless intro from the demo of Old Age onto the Sound City Studios session version. "Dumb" was also included in the track listing prototypes, and "Radio-Friendly Unit Shifter" and "All Apologies" were also from the same January 1991 sessions, but they were the only songs from In Utero that were gonna be on Nevermind, so it would be unnecessary for me to have to make a new In Utero too. The 1991 demo of "Radio-Friendly Unit Shifter" was also instrumental anyway. 

Also from the January 1991 sessions were demos for "On a Plain", the versions of "Aneurysm" and "Even in His Youth" from the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" single, and a song from With the Lights Out, "Oh, the Guilt". But the version of "Oh, the Guilt" from With the Lights Out is from 1992, so we won't include it. "Aneurysm" and "Even in His Youth" were the best Nevermind era B-sides anyways and the B-side to the first and most famous song on the band's most famous album (which is also the most famous song by the band), so we'll include that. The only other Nevermind era B-side was "Curmudgeon", but that was from 1992 too, so we won't include that.

As for track listing restructure, the only new song that I definitely wanted to be on the B-side was "Old Age" because Kurt was so dissatisfied with the song that he gave to his wife Courtney so she can use it for her band Hole, so it probably wouldn't have gotten its own single. "Old Age" ended up being the closer, after "Something in the Way", the album's original closer. All the other new songs were put on side A to make up for the fact that most of the songs taken out were from side A. All the songs that had their own non-promotional single were on side A. The only other change to side B besides "Old Age" being the new closer was that "Stay Away" was taken out, but that was the only way the songs weren't changed around because they sounded so good together already, maybe even better with "Stay Away" taken out. Might I note that Nevermind received positive criticism for its coincidentally natural flow since Cobain nervously rattled off the final track listing from the top of his head! 

A song and minute shorter than the real Nevermind, but I think we're good to go! Man was that easy! I'll have to find something else to do now. Next, I'll work on a new Incesticide, because Sheep and Ashamed to Be Human took so much from Incesticide. What will remain and what new stuff should we add?