It’s hard to figure out what Kurt Cobain was saying at the best of times in Nirvana. Even though he may have been able to release his demons every time he stepped in front of a microphone, it was anyone’s guess whether he was going to say something unintelligible or consciously make up new lyrics just to mess with the audience. While Cobain may have had personal reasons behind writing many of his songs, he admitted that there were multiple interpretations behind the song ‘Drain You’.
After recording their debut album, Bleach, the band was already built for something bigger once Dave Grohl joined their ranks. Head and shoulders above any other drummer the band had worked with, Grohl brought the perfect amount of muscle to every one of their songs, making the track ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ take off from the opening drum fill.
While most of the songs that would turn up in Nevermind were taken from sessions that the band had worked on at Smart Studios, ‘Drain You’ already saw their sound coming into sharper focus. Picking up where tracks like ‘About a Girl’ left off, the song is practically a nursery rhyme with heavy chords behind it, having the same kind of sing-song melody that is impossible to get out of your head.
But what does the story behind it actually mean? Well, when looking at what Cobain was going through in the leadup to the album’s release, many have speculated that the song is about his relationship with Bikini Kill singer Tobi Vale. Having worked with her in the past and had an on-again, off-again romantic fling, Vale is said to have broken up with Cobain, using the phrase “It is now my duty to completely drain you” during the split.
At the same time, Cobain was also going through his first major bout with heroin when recording Nevermind. Given the fact that the drug was known to mellow him out and make his ongoing stomach problems go away, it’s easy to imagine Cobain wanting to be drained of all emotion when performing the song, with the final line, “I like you” being a sad love letter to his new favourite narcotic.
That love affair with heroin would only grow stronger as the years went on. Having to rely on it more for his pain, Cobain would get strung out throughout the tour for In Utero and even be discovered with heroin in his system when he was found dead of a self-inflicted shotgun wound.
While Cobain never revealed what most of his songs were about, it’s more likely that the song’s genesis began with Vale. Since Cobain had also based the song ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ on a quote that was taken from a piece of graffiti Vale spray-painted on his wall, it’s much more plausible that he would have taken that phrase that stuck in his head and turned it into his own personal way of memorialising his relationship.
Although the song could technically qualify as a breakup song, it was never about trying to have some malicious meaning thrown back in Vale’s face. Every Nirvana song was more about describing a feeling than anything concrete, and once you listen to a song like ‘Drain You’, you feel everything that Cobain intended you to feel.