Modern Rock Tracks No. 1s - Nirvana and "Heart-Shaped Box"
"Heart-Shaped Box" provides a Gen X-infused, angsty, poetically unique view of love, a perfect counterpoint to mainstream pop's views on the subject at that time
Nirvana - “Heart-Shaped Box”
Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart: 3 total weeks (October 16 to 30, 1993)
Previous Modern Rock #1 hit: Blind Melon - “No Rain”
Next Modern Rock #1 hit: The Lemonheads - “Into Your Arms”
Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:
Mariah Carey - “Dreamlover” (8 total weeks, 9/11/93 to 10/30/93)
Talk about two different visions of love!
The juxtaposition of chart-topping tracks, both presumably about love, is rarely as neatly contrasted as it is here. Mariah Carey, completing an eight-week run atop the Billboard Hot 100 with “Dreamlover,” going head to head with Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box,” is an amazing battle between the sweet sappiness of a dreamy romance free of the strictures of mental games, and the metaphorical connection of love vis-a-vis a heart-shaped box, interpreted by many to be a literal vagina.
Carey, for her part, is pretty straightforward in her request for love:
Dreamlover, come rescue me
Take me up, take me down
Take me anywhere you want to, baby, now
I need you so desperately
Won't you please come around?
'Cause I wanna share forever with you, baby
Kurt Cobain, on the other hand, paints a different picture of love:
She eyes me like a Pisces when I am weak
I've been locked inside your heart-shaped box for weeks
I've been drawn into your magnet tar pit trap
I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black
Indeed, Gen X poetry in popular music clearly diverges here, and as the grunge scene becomes fully embraced by the mainstream in 1993, it’s not surprising that Nirvana’s follow-up to the mega-successful Nevermind album would immediate hit the top of the Modern Rock Tracks chart in the form of “Heart-Shaped Box,” the first single off the album In Utero.
It’s inarguable that “Heart-Shaped Box” is one of the best tracks in Nirvana’s catalog; I’d be doing a disservice to the band and this song if I came into this writeup and told you otherwise. For a band to be able to follow up one of the seminal records of a generation — an album that spawned the band’s first MRT chart #1 hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit” — with a song as decently good as “Heart-Shaped Box” speaks to the unique and special musical oeuvre Nirvana tapped into during this transformative period of music.
I do have to admit, though, that I’m unsure if the song works for me on the same level as it does for those who remember Nirvana before April 5, 1994.
Cobain’s suicide was a seminal moment for many older Gen Xers who cut their teeth on underground alternative rock and punk from the ‘70s and ‘80s, the kind of people who’d be waiting their entire lives for music like Nirvana’s to become mainstream relevant. His passing affected people deeply, on a level that likely led to a deification of a lot of Nirvana’s catalog. Cobain inadvertently and unintentionally led the push to zeitgeist-relevant alt-rock music, and while he didn’t revel in his role as the spotlight figure in this movement, the amount of reverence placed in his ability to continue pushing forward meant that his death became a national event.
It’s not hard, then, to imagine that Gen Xers and even Baby Boomers hip to the Seattle grunge sound wanted to codify this sense of importance into every possible writeup about In Utero and “Heart-Shaped Box.” To these folks, the song belongs on every top-10 list of ‘90s songs, and the album belongs near the top of the discussion of the greatest examples of rock and roll in the history of all things rock and roll.
For me, however, April 5, 1994, preceded my Musical Awakening™️, and thus, dear reader, my memories of In Utero and all of Nirvana’s catalog to that point all happened after Cobain’s untimely passing. And I was *so close* to being able to live it on my own, to remember the before and after of this watershed moment, but I just missed it.
So I look at “Heart-Shaped Box” from a different lens, the one where Nirvana was overplayed ad nauseum for years and years and years after the fact, to the point where “Teen Spirit” and “Heart-Shaped Box” became constants on every rock radio station I listened to through the 2010s. To put it another way, I’m kinda sick of “Heart-Shaped Box” at this point.
The song is fine, but it exists to me more as a time capsule of a particular moment in rock history rather than an enjoyable, necessary listen 30 years after the fact. The brooding, low-key guitar intro gives way to occasional flourishes of Cobain lashing out lyrically, with loud guitar and percussive interludes by Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl recapturing that passionate, unintelligible garble that made songs like “Teen Spirit” infectious and omnipresent at the time. You can have Mariah Carey sing sweet nothings in a clear, smooth cadence, but when it comes to howling “HEY! WAIT!” at the top of your lungs, no one’s got a better grip on that than Cobain and Nirvana. It’s what made alternative a literal “alternative” to the mainstream: for every dream lover or reggae-infused love song, there’s a young group of angsty 20-somethings ready to thrash, scream, and yell at the top of their lungs.
All of this is to say that I do like the song, and while it was being overplayed over the course of decades, I rarely switched the channel when it was on. But I do wonder if the overhyping of In Utero and “Heart-Shaped Box” is a consequence of Cobain’s suicide, or if the same level of reverence would exist for the song if he hadn’t died. Or, it could just be that I appreciate Nevermind a lot more, and In Utero just never lived up to the love I had of that album.
Not that my unique perspective takes anything away from the success of In Utero or its place in rock history. Indeed, it’s the 173rd best album of all time according to Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 best albums from 2020. It went 5x platinum in the U.S., hit #1 on the Billboard 200 album charts, and remains a timeless classic. “Heart-Shaped Box” now has more than 800 million streams on Spotify, the most of any song off In Utero and third behind “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Come As You Are” from the Nevermind album.
We’re far from over with our discussions about Nirvana, as they’ll take center stage here at least three more times over the course of my chronological review of #1 MRT chart hits. The next single of theirs that tops the chart will be the last before Cobain’s passing, with two more posthumous hits leading the way, across two different decades. I suspect the reverence factor will play a larger role in the songs to come than it did for “Heart-Shaped Box,” but it still has to be top of mind whenever Nirvana’s legacy is discussed.
Rating: 8/10
Chart Check
Other notable MRT chart songs from this time period
Whenever possible, I like to take a moment to give “Beavis and Butthead” a shot at discussing the song of the week, which they get to do below. During Nirvana’s run at the top, several songs hit their chart peak, including the last Pablo Honey single from Radiohead, the first Vs. single from Pearl Jam, the only MRT chart hit from Buffalo Tom, the last top-10 hit from The Ocean Blue, and whatever the hell U2 was thinking when they made Zooropa. Also, I think I’m going to buck tradition and spend a little more time with a track that peaked inexplicably at #2 and absolutely should have been a #1. More to come on that…
“Heart-Shaped Box” by Nirvana - from “Beavis and Butthead”: I couldn’t resist, and probably should consider this the litmus test for how cool “Heart-Shaped Box” was for music fans in 1993-1994.
Butthead: “Check this out. It’s like, he pulls his hair out of his eyes, but then it just falls back in his eyes.”
Beavis: “Yeah. So what? You gotta problem with that?”
Butthead: “Yeah.”
*both laugh*
“Cannonball” by The Breeders (#2): More to come on this. I think this song needs its own article, to be honest…
“Sublime” by The Ocean Blue (#3): The Ocean Blue is an unsung alternative rock mainstay from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. They hit the top 3 on three different occasions during the first five years of the Modern Rock Tracks chart, and the last of those songs, “Sublime,” peaked at #3 behind Nirvana. Though the band never charted again after this track, they still maintain a sizable following and continue to tour. Their concert dates for the rest of 2024 and into 2025 can be found here, if you dig their straightforward, downright pleasant alt-pop-rock and want to see it in the flesh.
“Lemon” by U2 (#3): There will come a point in this Substack where I will make claims about U2 that will seem downright insane, but today’s not going to be one of those days. I’m not really sure what happened with Zooropa, but I’m just going to agree to disagree with you all who think that album is some artistic feat of brilliance. Kudos to U2 for continuing to find new ways to expand their sound, but I do not dig “Lemon.” I’m apparently the only one, as this track peaked at #3 behind Nirvana.
“Sodajerk” by Buffalo Tom (#7): To the best of my knowledge, this is Buffalo Tom’s only charting single on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, but if that’s true, it’s a shame, because this is a decent song. “Sodajerk” topped out at #7 on the chart behind “Heart-Shaped Box,” and although their never reached the same heights on the charts, they continue to put out new music through the present day. Buffalo Tom is still touring as of November 2024, with opportunities to hear about future shows at the link here. Pretty cool stuff from these guys!
“Go” by Pearl Jam (#8): Officially the first single off Pearl Jam’s Vs. album, “Go” finished at a relatively low #8 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart behind Nirvana. I have few memories of this track, probably because the release window for this track was relatively small, and because the second single off that album was pretty much everywhere for what felt like years. We’ll chat about that one when it comes up in the very, very near future.
“Stop Whispering” by Radiohead (#23): It’s always unusual listening to Pablo Honey tracks in the scope of everything that would follow from Radiohead, because it feels like Pablo Honey was a compromise the band was willing to make to get themselves into a record deal. Once they had it, they were able to take off and do more interesting and inventive things that fit their particular artistic vision. “Stop Whispering” is a fine-enough track, don’t get me wrong, but it feels like it belongs to a completely different band. Regardless, it peaked at #23 behind Nirvana and would be the last time we’d hear from the band until it unleashed The Bends and began changing everything about their trajectory.