Released September 13, 1993 | Length 2:29 | |
Recorded | ||
"Dumb" is a song by American rock band Nirvana. It is the sixth song on the band's third studio album In Utero, released in 1993.
Contents
Composition and critical reception
Kurt Cobain wrote "Dumb" in the summer of 1990 after he had begun to follow some of his own poppier instincts. Cobain debuted the song on September 25, 1990, when he performed a solo acoustic version on the Boy Meets Girl show on KAOS (FM) in Olympia, Washington. The first live version featuring the full band was at the Off Ramp Café in Seattle, Washington on November 25, 1990.
The song was first officially released in September, 1993 on the band's third and final studio album, In Utero. The album was recorded by Steve Albini at Pachyderm Studio in Cannon Falls, Minnesota in February, 1993, and features Kera Schaley on cello on "Dumb" and "All Apologies." Cobain cited both as examples of the type of song he wished he had put on previous Nirvana albums, and explained that the use of the word "happy" in "Dumb" was "a nice twist" on the negative stuff that they had done before.
Michael Azerrad in his Story of Nirvana described the song as "Beatlesque". Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic called it "a beautiful song. That's a really good one. I like the BBC version of the song. It's real raw, but still the beauty is strong. A sweet pop song."
Release and impact
"Dumb" was ranked at number 39 on WHFS's top 100 played songs of 1994, number 41 on KROQ-FM’s top 100 played songs of 1994, number 56 on Q101's top 100 played songs of 1994, and number 82 on 91X's top 100 played songs of 1994. "Dumb" was also ranked at number 381 on Live 105's Top 500 songs in 1994, as well as at number 266 on Live 105's Top 300 Revolutionary songs in 1995, and also at number 220 on WHFS's Top 500 songs of the 90's in 1999. The song was subsequently released on Nirvana’s two greatest hits albums, Nirvana in 2002 and Icon in 2010. 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 "Dumb" was ranked at number nineteen.