"Heart-Shaped Box" is a song by the American rock 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 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.
Early history
"Heart-Shaped Box" was written by Cobain in early 1992 at the apartment in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles, California he shared with his wife, the American musician Courtney Love. In a 1994 Rolling Stone interview with David Fricke, Love recalled hearing Cobain work on the guitar riff for the first time:
The only time I asked him for a riff for one of my songs, he was in the closet. We had this huge closet, and I heard him in there working on 'Heart-Shaped Box.' He did that in five minutes. Knock, knock, knock. 'What?' 'Do you need that riff?' 'Fuck you!' Slam. [Laughs] He was trying to be so sneaky. I could hear that one from downstairs.
Cobain briefly set the song aside, then resumed work on it after he and Love moved to an apartment in Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles. Nirvana's first attempts to work on it were unsuccessful; Cobain said he waited for bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl "to come up with something but it just turned into noise all the time". Eventually, during one jam session, Cobain said he "came up with the vocal style instantly and it just all flowed out real fast. We finally realized that it was a good song."
"Heart-Shaped Box" was first performed live on January 16, 1993, at the Hollywood Rock Festival in São Paulo, Brazil. It was first recorded in the studio a few days later, at BMG Ariola studios in Rio de Janeiro. Producer Craig Montgomery recalled hearing the song during the band's soundcheck in São Paulo, saying that "even then Kurt knew this was the single ... All the other [new] stuff they had was way more noisy and abrasive than this. Even the other sound guys that were out there on the platform with me were going, 'Yeah, this is a good song. The band's guitar tech, Ernie Bailey, also had a positive initial reaction to the song in Brazil, saying that "you could tell this was an important song, in a lot of ways. You knew that it just had a lot of weight to it, even the first time you heard it."
Two versions of the song were recorded at BMG Ariola, with the initial take being done to test the studio's equipment. The second take was posthumously released on the band's rarities box set, With the Lights Out, in November 2004, and on the compilation album Sliver: The Best of the Box in November 2005. On January 23, the band again performed "Heart-Shaped Box" live, at the Hollywood Rock Festival in Rio de Janeiro. These early versions of the song featured unfinished lyrics and what music journalist Gillian G. Gaar called "a far more experimental solo, more akin to the group's improvs".
In Utero
The final studio version of "Heart-Shaped Box" was recorded in February 1993 by Steve Albini at Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, for the band's third studio album, In Utero. Work on the song began on February 14, the second day of recording. According to Albini in a 2013 interview for the audio series Spotify Landmark, "Heart-Shaped Box" was the only song recorded during the sessions that required "more than a couple of takes", along with eventual fourth single, "Pennyroyal Tea".