History
"You Know You're Right" was written in 1993, making it one of the last known Kurt Cobain compositions. For years, it was known from only a bootlegged live version, recorded on October 23, 1993 at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, Illinois, and from a performance of the song by the American grunge band Hole (fronted by Cobain's widow, Courtney Love) during the band's MTV Unplugged set in 1995.
A studio version of the song was recorded at Nirvana's final session, on January 30, 1994 at Robert Lang Studios in Seattle, Washington, but remained locked away from fans for years following Cobain's death. This recording became the object of much legal wrangling between Love and surviving Nirvana bandmates Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic. Grohl and Novoselic had wanted the song for a planned Nirvana box set, but Love blocked its release, and a battle over Nirvana's legacy ensued.
Love maintained that "You Know You're Right" would have been "wasted" on a box set, and would be better-suited to a single-disc collection similar to The Beatles' 1. Her lawsuit called the song a "potential 'hit' of extraordinary artistic and commercial value," and her manager asserted that a release with the song could sell 15 million copies. Novoselic revealed that he did not necessarily disagree with Love: "I've always considered everything she said. We've considered it and agreed and said, 'Hey, that's a great idea, Courtney.' I tried to get along with Courtney as best I could, but there's only so much you can do."
In September 2002, the lawsuit between Love and the surviving Nirvana members was settled, and it was announced that "You Know You're Right" would arrive on "a one-CD history of the band" called Nirvana later that year. An unmastered MP3 of the song was leaked on the Internet almost two months prior to its official release, and the song was put in rotation by a number of alternative rock radio stations, even after being sent cease and desist letters from Nirvana's record label.
"You Know You're Right" was eventually released as a promo single, and a Chris Hafner-directed music video was made. The video used various footage of band performances pieced together to give the effect of the song actually being performed, including brief clips of Cobain singing. The song was the band's first to top Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks chart and its fifth Modern Rock Tracks number-one. The song was re-released on the band's second greatest hits compilation, Icon, in 2010.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“They are a sort of post-house,where the Fates
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Then spur away o’er empires and o’er states,
Leaving at last not much besides chronology,
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—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)