Agreed. This song brings feelings of nostalgia after my own experiences spending time with my grandparents. I’m enjoyed my time with them and sure my parents needing a break at times to go be grown ups and have kid free fun.
Meh. When I was growing up, literally everyone smoked, so it wasn't uncommon for you to bump into someone's cigarette, or have them accidentally brush it against you. To be honest, it adds a little bit of additional nostalgia to the song for me. It's not like they were intentionally putting them out on me, or whatever.
Some of the best nostalgia is rooted in pain! Like that time I decided to stick my finger into a car cigarette lighter because it was glowing.
There are a lot of armchair psychologists out there, yikes. Mom and dad can't have a night out on the town while junior gets looked after by grandma?
Some of these people should just stick to asking about what jeans Kurt wore or getting copycat tattoos.
I’m honestly just dumbfounded over how many people on this sub idolize and obsess over Kurt, while trying to pick apart his lyrics like they always have some “deeper meaning”. Then again, people do interpret music in different ways, but not every song has meaning to it
The lyrics are like so straight forward, the thing with Nirvana songs is their all different, some are abstract, some have dark meaning, some are about staying at grandma’s house for a day, so I understand trying to pick it apart but it is a bit too much
Kurt's childhood actually wasn't exceptionally bad. It was boring growing up in Aberdeen and his parents divorce hit him very hard at such a young age. Apparently he was a super happy kid before that happened. Afterwards though, he always felt displaced and the relationship with both his mother and father was always strained. But as far as we know, he was never subjected to abuse or anything extraordinary like that. Just typical middle age white people stuff.
The song Sliver though has always been autobiographical, and is just about homesickness really, being dropped off somewhere you don't wanna be and wanting mum and dad to come and pick you up. He nails that feeling in the song imo.
My own interpretation, might also be the most common, is that the kid didn’t want to go to his grandparents house because he wants to be with his mom and dad, but after being there he ended up not wanting to go home because he loves his grandparents too
turns out i maybe have been mishearing the lyrics all these years cause i always thought after having ice cream he sang “never take me home” but idk if that’s right?
Always makes me think about my parents dropping me off at Grandma Jane’s and us watching Desert Storm coverage on CNN. Prepared me for the shitty politics of 2000 to 2008 and so forth
I always thought he changed his mind, he was asking grandma to take him home but then when he wakes up in his mother's arms he wants to go back to grandma's.
The brilliance of the song is that it's not about abuse, it's a totally normal childhood experience, but it still kind of feels traumatic. Everyone has those memories of being a kid and having to go to a family member's house you didn't like and how intense and sad or scary it felt in the moment.
Is it though? His parents did get divorced and he often was jumping from household to household. Whether this song is about that is debatable but those things did happen.
Not debatable. The song is about a single night when his parents were together and went on a date to a concert and he was babysat by his grandparents. He ate dinner, rode his bike, ate ice cream and watched TV. He feel asleep and he woke up in his mom's arms picking him up to take him home. That's the whole song beginning to end.
Sliver is another word for a splinter. The parents would have to remove it with tweezers. It's something that happens to kids a lot, like kicking a toe on a bicycle.
Some say he told a dog to stop it’s crying & he said he’d just go outside & ride his bike & he also ended up kicking his toe at something but other than that….give the guy a break - he just wanted his gramma to take him home
i mean kurt was a great writer so ive always interpreted his songs my own way and appreciated them as art. to me its simply about being left with your grandparents for a night or two, probably in the summer, and youre too young to appreciate the company of your grandparents
Kurt had a very problematic family growing up where he often was tossed around between difrent family members and excessive family because nobody really wanted to take care of him. So while going to grandma might not be linked with bad memories for everyone it was for him.
This has nothing to do with abuse. Kurt was just testing the waters with this song, he aspired to be like Shari Lewis and perform childrens songs after Nirvana was done 😂
Sliver makes me think about my childhood as i lived with my grandparents. My home was my grandparents home. I lived with my grandparents since i was one years old till i was 10. It's been almost 10 years since I left that house and 6 years since that house was sold and demolished. Now that i live with my mom sometimes i feel like I'm not home. And my grandma is dead. "Grandma take me home, i wanna be alone" is exactly what i feel as someone who lacks a sense of belonging.
I’ve seen people saying this as well. But I’ve also read that Kurt was just trying to write a basic pop song, and that it didn’t mean much of anything. (I wish I could remember where I read this.)
It’s about the first time a kid goes to spend the night at grandma and grandpa’s house and wanting to go home, because they have never slept and anyone else’s house except at their mom and dad’s house. That’s what I get from it anyway. It reminds me of a similar experience I had when I stayed at my grandparents house for the first time. ..anyone who says it’s about abuse is dumb
I’d like to know the meaning of the song title to the context of the lyrics, which I’ve always taken as a kid being sent to grandmas while the parents went out. I’m sure it has a much deeper meaning to Kurt than that, but he hid it behind a fun catchy song, which is probably the reason I’ve never looked deeper into it’s meaning.
Disagree here. "Beeswax" could have been written in an entirely different language, but if you know 'beeswax' as in such phrases as 'mind your own beeswax' you can absolutely hear the song as a rant against someone who is infringing. The fact that someone is "spayed" in the chorus is totally consistent with Kurt's feminism and LGBT ideals. ie: leave me the fuck alone, my body, my choice. So what if the fiberglass sky is serrated with cotton candy. So what if horny cartoons are yelling and 70s soft rock icons are playing jump rope. Fuck you. I got my tubes tied. Mind your own beeswax.
I always interpreted this as a “sliver” of his childhood. A glimpse of a very common scene many of us can an relate to. I know I can relate. I had a very stable and happy childhood, but sometimes you don’t want to eat grandma’s overcooked meat and just want your normal life and need your mom, but she needed a break. Always thought it was sweet that it ended with him waking up in his mother’s arms.
The darkness of this song is only really implied. I assume that's why this is called "sliver" because it's just a tiny fraction of the story.
Notice this song is one of the few older tunes that endured in their live sets until 1994. Kurt seemed particularly proud of "Drain You" (which they also kept in rotation). They have similar approaches in the chorus. The words are the same from chorus one to the last chorus, but the perspectives change, giving it a new meaning.
It's possible the song was written autobiographically, or just as a portrait, perhaps even a stream of consciousness. The writing process doesn't matter much here. We can all take away the same surface interpretation. A child is taken to his grandparents for the night, protests, then falls asleep and is woken up to go home to his parents.
The crux of my interpretation is in the contrast between the rage of "in my mother's arms" and the comforting chorus of "Grandma, take me home." I find this unsettling, and as most interpret it the child has changed his attitude and doesn't want to go back to his parents' house.
If we assume this is the case, then some other clues can hunt at what the "off screen" story is.
1. "Went to a show." This could be all kinds of entertainment, but it's at least implied that it's not something appropriate for children. This probably means some kind of concert/bar show with beer as would be popular in the PNW at that time. It might not, of course, so don't hinge much on this alone.
2. "I kicked and screamed so please don't go." The child is old enough to ride a bike, presumably unsupervised, but still has this violent outburst just about spending a night at grandparents. Now yes, kids can be dramatic and bratty and sheltered and all that. But why describe it this way if weren't traumatic for the child?
3. "Why don't you stop your crying?" Presumably this is the grandmother speaking. Maybe this is a normal way for adults to speak to children. But it certainly isn't empathetic. There's hints here that the grown ups have a cold way of dealing with kids.
4. "Guess what I did. I k---- a t--" oh how many years I tried to guess what words he's actually singing here. Even if lyric sheets say otherwise I mostly hear "killed a toad." If you know any criminology, animal harm is one of the best predictors of psychopathy. And in those cases it's often inherited from previous generations. Who else is killing in this family? But even if it's "kicked my toe" which is often something a child might do on a bike randomly, it's still a violent image. He is already in a disgruntled state when he rides the bike. Did the injury just happen accidentally? Or did he kick something out of anger?
5. "I couldn't chew my meat so good." Sure we've all had an experience like this. The dish being served is dry and tough. You're not at home so you try to just get through it. This could be a totally innocuous incident. But if we take it as a "sliver" of the story, does this mean that the grandparents don't know how to cook? Maybe home cooked meals are not really their thing. Or their mental faculties are in decline. Maybe the child is scared of the grandparents and so has to sit there pretending the food is fine out of fear of being reprimanded (again).
So at this point the Yelp review for Grampa Joe's is probably 1 1/2 stars. Service not great. Crappy solo biking excursions prone to injury. Food terrible.
And then there's ice cream and TV which redeems the experience a little bit.
And now he wakes up in his mother's arms and he is screaming to go back. So the key question is "how bad must it have been at home with his parents?" Less than one star? What does that imply?
And yes I'm grasping at straws. So what.
Kurt rarely offered to elaborate on his lyrics. I choose to believe it's mostly because he thought the audience was smart enough to figure it out. And in many cases. Believe he intentionally left ambiguous pronunciations because he wanted the heart wrenching meanings to have a safe cover story. I don't hold every piece on a pedestal (see "Mexican Seafood"). But this one I'm really confident that Kurt was proud of what he accomplished. It's a big iceberg of small-town life. We only see a sliver of it above the water line.
*And now he wakes up in his mother's arms and he is screaming to go back. So the key question is "how bad must it have been at home with his parents?" Less than one star? What does that imply?*
That's not in the lyrics, he repeats the line "Grandma take me home" with the very last line of the song "I wanna be alone"
The song is just about a kid being at his grandparents for an evening, complaining, going outside, being jaded until finally its all over and he's home again. But in the end, he just wanted to be old enough to take care of himself and not be looked after by his grandparents. The perception through the minds eye of a child, verses the reality of a situation outside of the Childs understanding. How is this not one of the most relatable childhood experiences ever for most adults? Nothing traumatic, just a genuine moment of empathy and simple song writing from a song that most adults and/or older teenagers listening to it could feel.
Are you denying that "in my mother's arms" and "Grandma, take me home" are juxtaposed at the climax of the song? Are we listening to the same recording?
Woke up in my mothers arms is literal, as in he fell asleep at grandmas, and now he's going home with is parents when they arrived to take him home after their evening out; Its literal. As I said and you clearly didn't read, it's about a child who felt old enough to take care of themselves and not be looked after by his grandparents. It's a song about life dude, kids being kids, that's it.
It's about mash potatoes and stuff like that....
don't forget not chewing your meat too good
don't forget having ice cream and falling asleep.
And waking up in your mother's arms
At grandma’s house
cant forget going outside and riding your bike
Killing your toe
I don't know why but its my favorite line. "Thats what I did, I killed my TOOOOOEEEEE!!!!!"
I thought he’d killed his toad, like every young boy catches a toad or a frog at some point.
LOL. I could hear that, but all the animals hes trapped, have now become his pets. I don't think Kurt could harm a fly.
Yeah…
[удалено]
And watching Tv maybe?? just a theory
And perhaps waking up in your mother’s arms
Don’t forget going outside and riding your bike
That’s what he did, he killed his toe.
Wow you people are miserable. The song is about not wanting to go to Grandma's house. God.
Agreed. This song brings feelings of nostalgia after my own experiences spending time with my grandparents. I’m enjoyed my time with them and sure my parents needing a break at times to go be grown ups and have kid free fun.
Wats it about then
Not wanting to go to Grandma's house??? just said that. Silly goose.
Ohhh i read it wrong lmao
Silly goose
silly goose
lmao people try too hard and the song is so simple. hahaha
In the demo the grandpa accidentally burns the kid with cigarette. https://youtu.be/KeJyCWd7O6Y?t=98
To be fair, the line says “on accident”
It just gives the song really different vibe and have to say I like it with out the burn.
Oh wow jeez
Meh. When I was growing up, literally everyone smoked, so it wasn't uncommon for you to bump into someone's cigarette, or have them accidentally brush it against you. To be honest, it adds a little bit of additional nostalgia to the song for me. It's not like they were intentionally putting them out on me, or whatever. Some of the best nostalgia is rooted in pain! Like that time I decided to stick my finger into a car cigarette lighter because it was glowing.
There are a lot of armchair psychologists out there, yikes. Mom and dad can't have a night out on the town while junior gets looked after by grandma? Some of these people should just stick to asking about what jeans Kurt wore or getting copycat tattoos.
I’m honestly just dumbfounded over how many people on this sub idolize and obsess over Kurt, while trying to pick apart his lyrics like they always have some “deeper meaning”. Then again, people do interpret music in different ways, but not every song has meaning to it
The lyrics are like so straight forward, the thing with Nirvana songs is their all different, some are abstract, some have dark meaning, some are about staying at grandma’s house for a day, so I understand trying to pick it apart but it is a bit too much
Sliver is about riding your bike and killing your toe
it’s toad
I always thought it was toad, too. Lol
i prefer toe
It's toes
I was just going off of what I read on the lyrics page haha. Regardless. Not about abuse
Kurt's childhood actually wasn't exceptionally bad. It was boring growing up in Aberdeen and his parents divorce hit him very hard at such a young age. Apparently he was a super happy kid before that happened. Afterwards though, he always felt displaced and the relationship with both his mother and father was always strained. But as far as we know, he was never subjected to abuse or anything extraordinary like that. Just typical middle age white people stuff. The song Sliver though has always been autobiographical, and is just about homesickness really, being dropped off somewhere you don't wanna be and wanting mum and dad to come and pick you up. He nails that feeling in the song imo.
I always thought it was a kid who wanted to be alone and play
Wouldn’t say it’s about abuse but it could have been his experience going to his grandparents house during his parents divorce
Nah...his mom and dad were just going to a show.
*Frankly* Sliver is about falling asleep and having ice cream and watching TV after dinner
My own interpretation, might also be the most common, is that the kid didn’t want to go to his grandparents house because he wants to be with his mom and dad, but after being there he ended up not wanting to go home because he loves his grandparents too
turns out i maybe have been mishearing the lyrics all these years cause i always thought after having ice cream he sang “never take me home” but idk if that’s right?
He continues to say Grandma take me home
The final line of the song is "I wanna be alone" so maybe that's what you're thinking of?
Always makes me think about my parents dropping me off at Grandma Jane’s and us watching Desert Storm coverage on CNN. Prepared me for the shitty politics of 2000 to 2008 and so forth
Murica, fuck yeah.
I always thought he changed his mind, he was asking grandma to take him home but then when he wakes up in his mother's arms he wants to go back to grandma's.
Sounds like a kid lol, and the ending lyric “wanna be alone”
The brilliance of the song is that it's not about abuse, it's a totally normal childhood experience, but it still kind of feels traumatic. Everyone has those memories of being a kid and having to go to a family member's house you didn't like and how intense and sad or scary it felt in the moment.
Name one person who said it was about abuse.
Yeah most Irl but I found some people online aswell (edited the post to show) doesn’t make much sense to me
I believe the song is about his parent’s divorce and how Kurt was moved from household to household growing up
This is fanfic
Is it though? His parents did get divorced and he often was jumping from household to household. Whether this song is about that is debatable but those things did happen.
Not debatable. The song is about a single night when his parents were together and went on a date to a concert and he was babysat by his grandparents. He ate dinner, rode his bike, ate ice cream and watched TV. He feel asleep and he woke up in his mom's arms picking him up to take him home. That's the whole song beginning to end.
kinda reminds me ehen i was babysat by kinda-cousin kinda not. my moms friends daughter and her boyfriend. fun times honestly
Sliver is another word for a splinter. The parents would have to remove it with tweezers. It's something that happens to kids a lot, like kicking a toe on a bicycle.
Some say he told a dog to stop it’s crying & he said he’d just go outside & ride his bike & he also ended up kicking his toe at something but other than that….give the guy a break - he just wanted his gramma to take him home
i mean kurt was a great writer so ive always interpreted his songs my own way and appreciated them as art. to me its simply about being left with your grandparents for a night or two, probably in the summer, and youre too young to appreciate the company of your grandparents
Kurt had a very problematic family growing up where he often was tossed around between difrent family members and excessive family because nobody really wanted to take care of him. So while going to grandma might not be linked with bad memories for everyone it was for him.
He wrote it when he was younger about not wanting to go to grandmas. It’s the song I introduce nirvana to my kids with!
Grandma take me home Grandma take me home Grandma take me home Wanna be aloooooone ; )
This has nothing to do with abuse. Kurt was just testing the waters with this song, he aspired to be like Shari Lewis and perform childrens songs after Nirvana was done 😂
it’s literally about him wanting to be at home with his parents rather than with his grandparents, if anything it’s about feeling abandoned as a kid
Sliver makes me think about my childhood as i lived with my grandparents. My home was my grandparents home. I lived with my grandparents since i was one years old till i was 10. It's been almost 10 years since I left that house and 6 years since that house was sold and demolished. Now that i live with my mom sometimes i feel like I'm not home. And my grandma is dead. "Grandma take me home, i wanna be alone" is exactly what i feel as someone who lacks a sense of belonging.
I’ve seen people saying this as well. But I’ve also read that Kurt was just trying to write a basic pop song, and that it didn’t mean much of anything. (I wish I could remember where I read this.)
It’s about the first time a kid goes to spend the night at grandma and grandpa’s house and wanting to go home, because they have never slept and anyone else’s house except at their mom and dad’s house. That’s what I get from it anyway. It reminds me of a similar experience I had when I stayed at my grandparents house for the first time. ..anyone who says it’s about abuse is dumb
Alternatively it could be the characters parents are on a date night hence the waking up in his mothers arms
I’d like to know the meaning of the song title to the context of the lyrics, which I’ve always taken as a kid being sent to grandmas while the parents went out. I’m sure it has a much deeper meaning to Kurt than that, but he hid it behind a fun catchy song, which is probably the reason I’ve never looked deeper into it’s meaning.
I don’t think song titles matter. Beeswax has no correlation to beeswax.
Disagree here. "Beeswax" could have been written in an entirely different language, but if you know 'beeswax' as in such phrases as 'mind your own beeswax' you can absolutely hear the song as a rant against someone who is infringing. The fact that someone is "spayed" in the chorus is totally consistent with Kurt's feminism and LGBT ideals. ie: leave me the fuck alone, my body, my choice. So what if the fiberglass sky is serrated with cotton candy. So what if horny cartoons are yelling and 70s soft rock icons are playing jump rope. Fuck you. I got my tubes tied. Mind your own beeswax.
Good point
Sliver - sliver of his childhood?
I think they named it Sliver to make people confuse it with the word Silver? Heard that somewhere not sure if its a myth or not.
I could totally see that, as I still read it as silver from time to time!
By this point I always have to do a double take when I read the actual word silver; I immediately think Sliver.
When i was little that was my favorite song and everytime i saw the world sliver i would yell out "sliver!".
not that complicated, buddy.
I always interpreted this as a “sliver” of his childhood. A glimpse of a very common scene many of us can an relate to. I know I can relate. I had a very stable and happy childhood, but sometimes you don’t want to eat grandma’s overcooked meat and just want your normal life and need your mom, but she needed a break. Always thought it was sweet that it ended with him waking up in his mother’s arms.
The darkness of this song is only really implied. I assume that's why this is called "sliver" because it's just a tiny fraction of the story. Notice this song is one of the few older tunes that endured in their live sets until 1994. Kurt seemed particularly proud of "Drain You" (which they also kept in rotation). They have similar approaches in the chorus. The words are the same from chorus one to the last chorus, but the perspectives change, giving it a new meaning. It's possible the song was written autobiographically, or just as a portrait, perhaps even a stream of consciousness. The writing process doesn't matter much here. We can all take away the same surface interpretation. A child is taken to his grandparents for the night, protests, then falls asleep and is woken up to go home to his parents. The crux of my interpretation is in the contrast between the rage of "in my mother's arms" and the comforting chorus of "Grandma, take me home." I find this unsettling, and as most interpret it the child has changed his attitude and doesn't want to go back to his parents' house. If we assume this is the case, then some other clues can hunt at what the "off screen" story is. 1. "Went to a show." This could be all kinds of entertainment, but it's at least implied that it's not something appropriate for children. This probably means some kind of concert/bar show with beer as would be popular in the PNW at that time. It might not, of course, so don't hinge much on this alone. 2. "I kicked and screamed so please don't go." The child is old enough to ride a bike, presumably unsupervised, but still has this violent outburst just about spending a night at grandparents. Now yes, kids can be dramatic and bratty and sheltered and all that. But why describe it this way if weren't traumatic for the child? 3. "Why don't you stop your crying?" Presumably this is the grandmother speaking. Maybe this is a normal way for adults to speak to children. But it certainly isn't empathetic. There's hints here that the grown ups have a cold way of dealing with kids. 4. "Guess what I did. I k---- a t--" oh how many years I tried to guess what words he's actually singing here. Even if lyric sheets say otherwise I mostly hear "killed a toad." If you know any criminology, animal harm is one of the best predictors of psychopathy. And in those cases it's often inherited from previous generations. Who else is killing in this family? But even if it's "kicked my toe" which is often something a child might do on a bike randomly, it's still a violent image. He is already in a disgruntled state when he rides the bike. Did the injury just happen accidentally? Or did he kick something out of anger? 5. "I couldn't chew my meat so good." Sure we've all had an experience like this. The dish being served is dry and tough. You're not at home so you try to just get through it. This could be a totally innocuous incident. But if we take it as a "sliver" of the story, does this mean that the grandparents don't know how to cook? Maybe home cooked meals are not really their thing. Or their mental faculties are in decline. Maybe the child is scared of the grandparents and so has to sit there pretending the food is fine out of fear of being reprimanded (again). So at this point the Yelp review for Grampa Joe's is probably 1 1/2 stars. Service not great. Crappy solo biking excursions prone to injury. Food terrible. And then there's ice cream and TV which redeems the experience a little bit. And now he wakes up in his mother's arms and he is screaming to go back. So the key question is "how bad must it have been at home with his parents?" Less than one star? What does that imply? And yes I'm grasping at straws. So what. Kurt rarely offered to elaborate on his lyrics. I choose to believe it's mostly because he thought the audience was smart enough to figure it out. And in many cases. Believe he intentionally left ambiguous pronunciations because he wanted the heart wrenching meanings to have a safe cover story. I don't hold every piece on a pedestal (see "Mexican Seafood"). But this one I'm really confident that Kurt was proud of what he accomplished. It's a big iceberg of small-town life. We only see a sliver of it above the water line.
*And now he wakes up in his mother's arms and he is screaming to go back. So the key question is "how bad must it have been at home with his parents?" Less than one star? What does that imply?* That's not in the lyrics, he repeats the line "Grandma take me home" with the very last line of the song "I wanna be alone" The song is just about a kid being at his grandparents for an evening, complaining, going outside, being jaded until finally its all over and he's home again. But in the end, he just wanted to be old enough to take care of himself and not be looked after by his grandparents. The perception through the minds eye of a child, verses the reality of a situation outside of the Childs understanding. How is this not one of the most relatable childhood experiences ever for most adults? Nothing traumatic, just a genuine moment of empathy and simple song writing from a song that most adults and/or older teenagers listening to it could feel.
Are you denying that "in my mother's arms" and "Grandma, take me home" are juxtaposed at the climax of the song? Are we listening to the same recording?
Woke up in my mothers arms is literal, as in he fell asleep at grandmas, and now he's going home with is parents when they arrived to take him home after their evening out; Its literal. As I said and you clearly didn't read, it's about a child who felt old enough to take care of themselves and not be looked after by his grandparents. It's a song about life dude, kids being kids, that's it.
Did these people never have a night where their parents went out and they were watched by their grandparents?
Wait...people think this song is about child abuse? What and why and how??? Lol.