Released September 24, 1991 Length 3:43 Writer(s) Kurt Cobain | Genre Grunge Label DGC Records | |
Recorded May 2, 1991–June 1991 at Sound City Studios, Van Nuys, California | ||
"Drain You" is a 1991 song by American grunge band Nirvana, written by frontman Kurt Cobain. It is the eighth track from their breakthrough album Nevermind. It was also released as a B-side on UK retail editions of the band's most successful single "Smells Like Teen Spirit". A live version recorded in 1991 appeared on the live album From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah in 1996 and was released as a promotional single.
Recording
According to Nevermind producer Butch Vig on the Classic Albums: Nirvana - Nevermind DVD, "Drain You" had more guitar overdubs than any other song on the album: one clean track and five distorted tracks; two tracks of the Mesa Boogie, two tracks of the Fender Bassman, and one that they called the "Super Grunge" track., which was a pedal on the Fender Bassman. Cobain tended to dislike heavily overdubbed songs, and so Vig had to tell Cobain lies, such as that tracks did not record right or were out of tune, in order to get him to do so many takes. The strange noises during the middle section of the song are caused by a rubber duck toy (that happened to end up on the back of Incesticide) Cobain brought into the studio that sound engineer Andy Wallace put through delays and made it sound "trippy". In his biography of Kurt Cobain Heavier Than Heaven, biographer Charles Cross wrote, "When Kurt was questioned about the song ["Drain You"] he said he had made a lot of it up on the spot but that the first line "One baby to another says I'm lucky to have met you"... was particularly important to the interpretation of the song..."
This song is also in the music video games Rock Band 2 and Rock Band Unplugged. In 2017, to mark what would have been Kurt Cobain's 50th birthday, the Phonographic Performance Limited released a list of the top twenty most played Nirvana songs on the TV and radio in the UK in which "Drain You" was ranked at number eleven.