Listen to Kurt Cobain’s Never-Before-Heard Grunge Cover of the Beatles’ “And I Love Her”

The Fab Four’s love-rock has never sounded so sad.

Ben Keeshin

Apr 21, 2015

Listening to the Beatles’ sixties original “And I Love Her” again, we’re thinking that Seattle’s Prince of Sadness was exactly the guy to cover it. Because, while the lyrics are typical, early-Beatles sunshine (I give her all my love/That’s all I do/If you saw her/You’d love her too), the melody and chords are suffused with a minor-key melancholia. Cobain slows down the changes just a bit more, and tunes the guitar down, making what was a sweetly sad love song into complex and angry ballad. For pop culture nerds, this audio recording (which will appear in the forthcoming documentary, “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck”) is a treat: one of late rock’s icons covering early rock’s biggest stars, with the bonus aural thrill of the guitar sounds from “Smells Like Teen Spirit” brushing up against Paul McCartney’s words. Great artists, like Cobain, make others’ songs their own through the sheer individuality of their sound and emotional pull — we’re in awe.

Photos by Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns/Getty Images