About This Track
'On A Plain' arrived on 'Nevermind' in 1991, a track Kurt Cobain later admitted should have been rawer. The band played it better live, he said, though the studio version was released as a promo single the following summer and became a moderate hit. The lyric is a collage of non sequiturs and self-lacerating asides, Cobain cycling through the refrain 'I love myself better than you / I know it's wrong so what should I do?' with a kind of resigned shrug. By the third verse he's explicit about the method: 'It is now time to make it unclear / To write off lines that don't make sense.' The admission feels less like apology than strategy, the song's title suggesting a state of bland equilibrium rather than crisis. The chorus lands on the phrase 'I'm on a plain / I can't complain' and repeats it until the words lose their shape, a mantra of forced contentment that doubles as a punchline. The whole thing runs just over three minutes, guitar-driven and direct, the kind of song that sits comfortably in the tracklist without demanding much attention until you notice how often it circles back.
"On A Plain" is a single by Nirvana, released 1991. The track is 3:16 long. Full lyrics are available below. Dork has published 1 article about Nirvana.
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