"Heart-Shaped Box" – Песня Nirvana и книга Джо Хилла

1993 song by Nirvana
the 2007 book by Joe Hill

"Heart Shaped Box" is a song by the American grunge band Nirvana, written by vocalist and guitarist Kurt Cobain. It appears as the third track on the band's third and final studio album, In Utero, released by DGC Records in September 1993. It was one of two songs on In Utero remixed by Scott Litt prior to the album's release, due to the band's dissatisfaction with the original mixing by producer Steve Albini. The Litt remix also featured additional vocal harmonies and guitar by Cobain, which were the only elements on the album's 12 main tracks not recorded during the original sessions with Albini in February 1993. "Heart Shaped Box" was released as the In Utero's first single on August 30, 1993. Although the single was not released in the United States, to avoid competing with album sales, the song generated considerable American radio airplay, reaching number one on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. The physical single reached the top 10 in several countries, including Portugal, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Finland, and New Zealand. It also reached to Top 40 in numerous other countries. It was the final song performed at Nirvana's last concert, on March 1, 1994, in Munich, Germany. "Heart Shaped Box" was also the final Nirvana song to receive a music video before the suicide of Cobain in April 1994. The video, directed by Anton Corbijn, won two awards, including Best Alternative Video, at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards.

The guitar effect was eventually removed when the song was remixed, along with second single "All Apologies", by Scott Litt at Bad Animal Studios in Seattle in May 1993, several months before the album's release. Cobain and Novoselic had agreed that the vocals and bass were too quiet in Albini's original mix of the album, and elected to have the two future singles remixed. Litt's remix of "Heart Shaped Box" also featured newly recorded vocal harmonies and acoustic guitar by Cobain.

On September 25, 1993, the band performed "Heart Shaped Box", along with "Rape Me", on Saturday Night Live at NBC Studios in New York City. It was their first show with second guitarist Pat Smear. "Heart Shaped Box" was the final song played at Nirvana's last show, on March 1, 1994, at Terminal 1 of Munich Riem Airport in Munich, Germany.

"Heart Shaped Box" is an alternative rock song that lasts for a duration of four minutes and thirty nine seconds. According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes. com by BMG Rights Management, it is written in a 4/4 time signature, with a moderate tempo of 100 beats per minute. Garr wrote that "while the song does reference [cancer], the lyrics appear more to address the physical and emotional dependencies inherent in relationships." Cobain's unused liner notes for In Utero, first described in Heavier Than Heaven and published in Journals the following year, featured an explanation for "Heart Shaped Box" that "fell completely apart", according to Cross, "but touched on The Wizard of Oz, I Claudius, Leonardo da Vinci, male seahorses (who carry their young), racism in the Old West, and Camille Paglia". In a 1993 interview with Circus, Cobain explained that the chorus lyrics "Hey/ Wait/ I've got a new complaint" were a reference to how he believed he was often perceived by the media. In 2012, Love wrote on Twitter that "Heart Shaped Box" was about her vagina. Tweeting to the American musician Lana Del Rey, who had covered the song at a concert in Sydney, Australia, the previous week, Love wrote, "You do know the song is about my Vagina right? 'Throw down your umbilical noose so i can climb right back,' umm  On top of which some of the lyrics about my vagina I contributed." The tweets were deleted shortly after.

"Heart Shaped Box" was released as In Utero's first commercial single on August 30, 1993, on CD, cassette tape, and 7 inch, and 12 inch vinyl record formats. The single was released in Europe only and peaked at number five on the UK Singles Chart. All copies of the single featured the Grohl composed "Marigold" as a B side, while 12 inch vinyl and CD editions also included the In Utero track, "Milk It". In the United States, DGC sent promo copies of the song to American college, modern rock, and album oriented rock radio stations in early September. The label did not actively court Top 40 radio, with Geffen Records' head of marketing explaining that "Nirvana didn't sell nearly 5 million [records] because of a hit single. They sold that many albums because of who they are". However, the single was available in the US in limited numbers as an import release. "Heart Shaped Box" entered the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart at number seven, and eventually peaked at number one on the chart. The song also reached number four on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.

Reviewing In Utero for Rolling Stone, Fricke called "Heart Shaped Box" "the kind of song Stone Temple Pilots couldn't write even with detailed instructions", and cited it as evidence, along with "Dumb", that if Generation X "is ever going to have its own Lennon — someone who genuinely believes in rock & roll salvation but doesn't confuse mere catharsis with true deliverance — Cobain is damn near it". Phil Alexander of Kerrang! wrote that "on the current single Heart Shaped Box, the sublime All Apologies  and the convalescent croon of Penny Royal Tea, [Cobain] re stakes his claim as one of his generation's most absorbing songsmiths." John Mulvey of the NME called the song "a strangulated, semi f ed up anthem of sorts for a generation who fell in love to 'Teen Spirit' and are now as disturbed as Kurt by a growing sense of maturity".

In his review of Nirvana's eponymous greatest hits album in 2002, Will Bryant of Pitchfork wrote, "I've always considered 'Heart Shaped Box', with its elliptical guitar figure and explosive choruses, to be one of Cobain's most accomplished compositions. For all its heavy handed symbolism, the song strikes deepest to Cobain's preoccupation with birth, the menstrual cycle, and female anatomy, wound tightly with primal tension in the verses and released with sublime catharsis in the choruses." Andrew Romano of The Daily Beast called it "as close as Cobain ever got to a perfect song", with "a perfect music video to match". In 1999, the song was voted number 10 in Kerrang! magazine's "100 Greatest Rock Tracks Ever!" The Guardian and Kerrang! ranked the song number one and number two, respectively, on their lists of the 20 greatest Nirvana songs. In 2022, Pitchfork readers voted it the 30th best song of the 1990s.

A second "Heart Shaped Box" single was released in September 2013, to promote the 20th anniversary re release of In Utero. The three track promo CD single was included with the first 2000 copies of the "Super Deluxe" edition of the re issue, and featured Albini's original mix of the song and a remix prepared by Albini in 2013 as B sides.

The "Heart Shaped Box" video was the only music video made for In Utero, and the last video released by the band. Cobain had originally approached American filmmaker Kevin Kerslake, who had directed the band's last four music videos, for the songs "Come as You Are", "Lithium", "In Bloom", and "Sliver", to direct it. Five treatments were prepared by Kerslake between July 14 and August 12, and included scenes of Cobain kissing American author William S. Burroughs, whom Cobain had wanted in the video, and the band hanging by their necks from tree branches. However, no shoot arrangements were made, and by the end of August, the group had elected to work with Dutch photographer and video director Anton Corbijn instead. Corbijn believes he was chosen to work on the video on the recommendation of Love, and cited his connection to Echo & the Bunnymen, a rock band from Liverpool, England where Love briefly lived and whom Love admired. According to Corbijn, Cobain had asked to be sent the music videos he had directed for Echo & the Bunnymen shortly before receiving a fax from Novoselic with drawings and ideas about a Nirvana video. As Corbijn recalled, Cobain's proposed treatment for the video was "incredibly precise. More precise than I've ever had for a video. I loved it, but initially I was a bit taken aback that somebody came up with so many ideas, because generally my videos are my own ideas  But then I looked at it and I thought that actually it was pretty good. I was very amazed by somebody writing a song and having those ideas as precise as he did." According to Novoselic, Cobain's original treatment was two pages long; Novoselic recalled typing it on his new laptop while Cobain dictated. In a 2013 interview with Andrew Romano of Daily Beast, Corbijn recalled "a really eerie moment" where the actor playing the video's elderly man, "fell down while walking, on the set. He had some kind of bowel cancer, which he didn't know. Something broke open. There was blood everywhere. We had to get the ambulance, and he had to go to the hospital straight off. It was really severe." According to Corbijn, the old man was the most difficult to cast because finding "an old man who looked like an old man in L. A. was not so easy  In the end we found this fantastic man who had a jazz club or a jazz station on the radio, something like that."

The "Heart Shaped Box" video begins and ends with the band watching the elderly man on a hospital bed being administered medication through an IV drip. Most of the video takes place in what Garr called "a surreal 'outdoor' setting; a field of bright red poppies with a large cross standing in the middle, adjacent to a wood of creepy old trees (both elements in key scenes in The Wizard of Oz)." During the song's first verse, the elderly man, wearing a Santa Claus hat and loincloth, climbs onto the cross, which is covered by crows. The second verse introduces the young girl in what appears to be a Ku Klux Klan robe and peaked hat reaching for human fetuses in a tree, and the overweight woman in a human organ body suit with angel wings affixed to her back, similar to the winged anatomical model on the cover of In Utero. At one point during the second verse, the girl attempts to chase the three crows from the cross while the old man, now wearing a mitre, is tied to it. During the song's guitar solo, the girl's hat is blown off her head and falls into a puddle in the poppy field, where it turns black. A brief shot during the solo reveals a fetus in the IV drip. The third verse features Cobain singing directly into the camera without his guitar, while Grohl and Novoselic stand behind him in a room with stars on the walls. The room is actually a box designed by Corbjin with a large heart on top, but the band initially disapproved of the way it looked, and Novoselic asked that it not be filmed from a distance. A brief shot of the box, with the heart above, appears at the start of the final chorus. The band is featured performing with their instruments during the first two choruses, and without their instruments in what appears to be the same star decorated box, zoomed out to reveal a bed, nightstand with a lamp on it, and rocking chair, during the final chorus. Both the sky and the walls of the box are blue during the quieter verses, and red during their heavier choruses and the solo. During the video Cobain repeatedly charges the camera, and his face moves in and out of focus. In his interview with The Daily Beast, Corbjin estimated that he came up with "maybe 15 percent" of the video's ideas, with the rest being Cobain's. "The big woman, for instance, was my idea", he explained. "For me that was Mother Earth. There were a few other things, like the mechanical birds and the fake butterflies and stuff." According to Garr, Cobain had originally wanted to use real animals. Both the "Original" and "Director's Cut" versions of the video appeared as bonus footage in 2013 on the Live and Loud DVD, which was issued as a standalone release as well as part of the 20th anniversary In Utero "Super Deluxe" package.

On March 9, 1994, Kerslake sued Nirvana over the "Heart Shaped Box" video, alleging copyright infringement. According to Nirvana: A Day by Day Eyewitness Chronicle by Carrie Borzillo, Kerslake discovered that he would no longer be directing the video on August 28, 1993, and sent a letter to Corbjin to ensure that none of the images in his five treatments would appear in the final video. Kerslake's lawsuit stated that both Cobain and Nirvana's record company had approved Kerslake's third treatment for the video, with Cobain describing it as "Perfect". On September 1, 1993, Cobain called Kerslake and invited him to the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards the following day, where Kerslake's video for "In Bloom" was nominated for Best Alternative Video. Kerslake accepted the invitation, and joined the band onstage after they won the award. Soon after Kerslake wrote Cobain a letter, addressed to "kurdt", thanking him for the invitation but expressing his unhappiness over reports that his alleged ideas had been used in Corbijn's shoot. Cobain did not respond, but a meeting was set up between attorneys and the record label to discuss the video. The case did not affect the video's distribution, and was ultimately settled out of court. In 2019, Cobain's former manager Danny Goldberg discussed the lawsuit in his Cobain biography Serving the Servant, writing that "after the video was aired, Kerslake sued Kurt, claiming, absurdly in my opinion, that he was responsible for the idea of 'Heart Shaped Box.' Kurt was deeply offended. After he died the remaining members of Nirvana settled with Kerslake."

A live version, from the band's performance for MTV at Pier 48 in Seattle on December 13, 1993, appeared on the Live and Loud DVD, released in September 2013. A live version, recorded at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, California on December 30, 1993, appeared on the live compilation, From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah, released in October 1996. The full concert will be released on the 30th anniversary "Super Deluxe" edition of In Utero in October 2023. The 30th anniversary "Super Deluxe" In Utero reissue will also include the band's concert at the Seattle Center Arena in Seattle on January 7, 1994, which also featured a version of "Heart Shaped Box."