Nirvana released their final studio album, In-Utero in September of 1993. Ahead of the album’s release, the band’s label, DGC records issued “Heart-Shaped Box” as the first single.
“Heart-Shaped Box” Tops the Charts
The song topped the alternative rock charts in America and went top 10 in several countries in Europe. The video for the song was the last that Nirvana filmed with frontman Kurt Cobain before his untimely death.
The video netted the band two MTV VMA Awards the following year in 1994, including Best Alternative Video, however not everyone celebrated the success of the song.
“Heart-Shaped Box” was a song that Cobain struggled to finish. In fact, his wife Courtney Love wanted to use the track for her band Hole, telling Rolling Stone, “We had this huge closet and I heard him working up there, on ‘Heart-Shaped Box.’ He did that in five minutes.” She would recall knocking on the door, asking Kurt, “What? Do you need that riff?” and he would respond, “F you!” and would slam the door in Love’s face.
Cobain initially relied on his Nirvana bandmates to help finish the song, recalling, “I was trying to wait for bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl to come up with something, but it just turned into noise all the time.”
“Anytime I think about it, it makes me sadder than anything I can think of.” – Kurt Cobain
Cobain took one more stab at the song and was able to finally come up with a vocal melody and finish the track. Kurt reportedly wrote the song after watching a documentary about children with cancer, telling biographer Michael Azzerad, “Anytime I think about it, it makes me sadder than anything I can think of.” Azerrad would contend that despite Cobain’s explanation, he thought the song was actually about his wife and their relationship.
Former Nirvana Director Sues for Copyright Infringement
In March of 1994, one month before Cobain’s death, Variety reported that former Nirvana director Kevin Kerslake would sue the band for copyright infringement over the video for “Heart-Shaped Box”.
Kersalke previously worked with the band on their music videos for “Sliver”, “Come As You Are”, “Lithium” and “In-Bloom” and claimed that he was originally asked to direct the video for “Heart-Shaped Box”.
According to the director, the band reached out to him in the summer of 1992 to come up with a video treatment. Kerslake claimed he came up with five ideas for the music video. Right before the band was set to film the music video for “Heart-Shaped Box”, he was told the band wanted to use a different director, Dutch filmmaker Anton Corbjin.
Kerslake’s lawsuit contended that he came up with the concept of, “A young girl wearing a white robe, a flower-filled room, fields of poppies, a forest of gnarled trees, a scarecrow-like character and an old man on a cross.″
“The original concept that we were going to shoot for ‘In-Bloom’ had to do with a girl who grew up in a KKK family, and it was a lot more overt in terms of the social message in the song.” – Kevin Kerslake
Kerslake told Loudersound that some elements of the “Heart-Shaped Box” video dated back to the shoot he did for “In-Bloom”, “The original concept that we were going to shoot for ‘In-Bloom’ had to do with a girl who grew up in a KKK family, and it was a lot more overt in terms of the social message in the song. But sadly, due to time constraints we couldn’t afford to do such a lavish video, so we decided on this concept after discussing The Beatles level of fame that the band was going through at the time.”
He would add, “We were actually in the middle of the Nirvana documentary ‘Live! Tonight! Sold Out!!’ when Kurt died, but that project was complicated by the fact there was a lawsuit going on, which was rooted in the origin of the “Heart-Shaped Box” video. That sadly complicated our relationship.”
The lawsuit with the director would eventually be settled out of court. The music video for “Heart-Shaped Box” would center around the theme of disease and how it slowly destroys the human body. The video employed a colorization treatment very similar to technicolor that was frequently used by Hollywood.
Corbijn shot the original video in color, before it was transferred to black and white & then his team sent the footage to Mexico where each frame of the video was hand-painted.
Corbjin claims that by the time he was brought on to work on the video, Cobain had some pretty detailed and elaborate ideas drawn up, some of which were recurring themes in Nirvana’s music including body image and fetuses.
“It is extremely rare to encounter musicians with such well-expressed and original ideas for their own work.” – Anton Corbjin, filmmaker
Corbjin told Spin magazine, “I tend to look at a good idea for what it is, regardless of its source, so when Kurt presented his very precisely thought-out ideas, there was no way to ignore that quality and not to use them. It is extremely rare to encounter musicians with such well-expressed and original ideas for their own work. It certainly was not frustrating, and accordingly, I always attribute most of the ideas to Kurt.”
Corbjin would go on to reveal that the shoot was pretty easy and Kurt was great to collaborate with. Corbjin contributed a few of his own ideas that made it into the final video including the road through the poppies, the fake mechanical birds, the paper butterflies and Mother Earth character who shares a lot of similarities to the woman on the front cover of In-Utero.
Corbjin was supposed to work with Nirvana on their follow-up video to “Heart-Shaped Box”, revealing to the New Yorker, “Kurt asked me again for the next video, ‘Pennyroyal Tea’, but I felt I couldn’t top the ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ video and turned it down. He then said without me he would never make another video, and unfortunately he never did.”
When Nirvana won the award for best alternative video in 1994, it was several months after Cobain’s death and proved to be a bittersweet moment. Dave Grohl would say the following in his acceptance speech, “Well, I’m not the most vocal person in the world but it’d be silly to say that it doesn’t feel like there’s something missing and I think about Kurt everyday and I’d like to thank everybody for paying attention to our band. Thanks.”
Like this story? Check out Seven Mary Three: Whatever Happened To the Band Behind “Cumbersome?”
Check out our YouTube channel