Tom Forster

For the purposes of my list, this is just the Top 5 Nirvana songs. This could be a top 20 and it would still consist only of Nirvana songs, the fact that Pearl Jam are mentioned in the same sentence as Nirvana saddens me somewhat.

5. Serve The Servants – Nirvana

The opening track from Nirvana’s final and, in my opinion, greatest album. In Utero signaled a change in the sound that had lead them to success on Nevermind. A great introduction to a great record.

4. Drain You - Nirvana

Not only one of my favourite songs on Nevermind, “Drain You” is also my favourite song from the legendary performance at Reading Festival 1992. it comes across brilliantly live.

3. Blew - Nirvana

I wanted to include a song from debut album Bleach in my Top 5, and I think “Blew” captures the sound best. Cobain supposedly hated Bleach, but for me it’s right up there with the other two studio albums.

2. Lounge Act – Nirvana

I love this song so much I have been known to pay grungy-looking buskers to cover it.

1. Heart Shaped Box – Nirvana

The first single from In Utero, and christ it’s a good one. Best accompanied with it’s bizarre video, “Heart Shaped Box” is, in my mind, the best song Nirvana ever made.

Adam McCartney 

5. Last Kiss – Pearl Jam

It might be a cover of an old Wayne Cochran number but it doesn’t stop this being a great PJ song. Its simplicity is key, just 4 chords and Eddie’s heartfelt warble, singing about a girlfriend who didn’t make it out of a car crash.

4. The Man Who Sold the World – Nirvana

Another cover, this time Nirvana doing Bowie, from their MTV Unplugged in NY album. There’s enough of the Bowie original in there with enough Nirvana for them to make it their own too. As with Pearl Jam’s Cochran cover at 5 simplicity is at its heart. Acoustic, no highs and lows, no loud and quiet, just perfectly performed.

3. Do the Evolution – Pearl Jam

Eddie’s howl in the opening ten seconds should prepare you for this one. This is the sound of Pearl Jam off the chain, playing with a rage and swagger that they usually contain to a degree. And the video’s not too bad either, a bleak animation showing the worst history of mankind. Also, reputably Vedder’s favourite track from their Yield album.

2. Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana

Grunge’s biggest anthem that 20 years on still speaks to and on behalf of teens that were not even a twinkle in their fathers’ eyes in 1991. It took the well worn 4 chord structure of ‘More Than A Feeling’, hit it with a cattle prod and threw it into the middle of a sweaty school gymnasium.

1. Heart-Shaped Box – Nirvana

Slow, brooding and building before Kurt unleashes it all at the first chorus in distorted guitars and bile spewing vocals, for me, it best exemplifies the quiet-loud-quiet template that Nirvana did better than most. It’s the jewel in the crown of the heartfelt and angst ridden In Utero album.

Kyle Prangnell 

5. Even Flow – Pearl Jam


Even Flow is the first song I heard by Pearl Jam from Ten, which has probably become their quintessential album. The song has more or less everything you could ask for in a rock song, from the simplistic, but frankly brilliant guitar riff, to the mini guitar solos that get thrown in after many of the lines.

4. Breed – Nirvana

After I had heard Smells Like Teen Spirit, this was the first Nirvana song that really caught my attention. It takes a great grunge riff and makes it feel almost mainstream, which is one of the things that instantly hooked me on Nevermind.

3. Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana

There’s no way I could really exclude this from the list. It’s the song that is no doubt the most important song Nirvana wrote, and one of the most important songs to come out of the 90’s. With one of the most recognisable guitar riffs around, it is not only one of the most important songs to come out of the era, but also one of the best.

2. Negative Creep – Nirvana

Nirvana’s first album didn’t get anywhere near the heights of it’s follower, Nevermind; it was low budget (recording costing just $600) and sold just 40,000 upon release. But there is something about the low budget that really shines, especially in the likes of Negative Creep.

1. Scentless Apprentice – Nirvana

This is probably the heaviest song that Nirvana released, and is probably the reason why I’ve got it at my number one. Not only is it an incredible song, but it’s on In Utero, which followed up Nevermind. This is after the band had achieved serious mainstream success, but still stuck to their guns and brought out some almost perfect songs such as this one.

Siobhan Gallagher 

5. In Bloom – Nirvana

The last single released from the band’s seminal album, Nevermind, Kurt Cobain addresses people from outside the underground music scene who came to their shows and didn’t understand their message, “he likes to sing-along, but he know not what it means.”

4. Even Flow – Pearl Jam

Released in 1992 from the debut Ten, critics said this cemented Pearl Jam’s position as “more than just one hit grunge wonders,” while Rolling Stone placed it as the 77th “greatest guitar song” of all time. It tells the story of a homeless man being rejected by society, but manages to keep it’s intensity for over 5 minutes.

3. All Apologies – Nirvana 

The song was most famous for their MTV Unplugged  performance, but also appeared on their final studio album In Utero. The song lyrically is read as a goodbye and apology from Kurt Cobain to his family and was a great way for the band to depart. It was ranked 455 on Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time.”

2. Yellow Ledbetter – Pearl Jam 

This rock ballad was left off their first album Ten, before becoming a B-Side to single ‘Jeremy’. However, despite this, it has become known as one of the band’s most popular songs and is usually the set closer whenever Pearl Jam play live.

1. Alive – Pearl Jam

Arguably Pearl Jam’s most recognizable song, it was also the band’s first release and the one that catapulted them to stardom. The music was originally written by guitarist Stone Gossard, before Eddie Vedder wrote the lyrics and mailed the tape back to the band in Seattle. It is also noted for Mike McCready ‘s extended guitar solo after the third chorus, which Guitar World ranked at 26 on their “100 Hottest Guitar Solos.”

David Hayter

I can’t believe it, I went into this list earnestly intending to pick a mix of Pearl Jam and Nirvana tracks and I couldn’t, Nirvana have too many amazing tracks and they simply drowned Pearl Jam out.

5. Breed – Nirvana

Taking the “Negative Creep” formula and blowing up to stadium sized proportions “Breed” is a roller coaster off kilter sea sawing riffage and thundering percussion. It’s a brilliant arrangement, so immediate, and so fantastically dizzying, your centre of balance is knocked for a loop from the word go, allowing Kurt’s impulsive, scatterbrained and scathing lyrics to take a effect. A see sawing masterpiece.

4. Sliver – Nirvana

Ah “Sliver” is one of my favourite tracks of all time, it has a wonderfully dour primitivism to it. It’s all crooked stares, sardonic snipes and pleading fragility, it’s a wonderful mess, and it’s so simple, and so punk. Proof that sometimes, the raw D-I-Y approach can create the most earnest and lasting sentiments.

3. All Apologies – Nirvana

Some tracks just reach out and grab you by the scruff of the neck, but rather than a blustering tour de force, “All Apologies” is like the final gasp of a defeated man, who is bitterly accepting responsibility for everything. It’s a wonderful scapegoats anthem, a song for anyone and everyone’s who has ever had someone else’s bitterness and scorn arbitrarily poured upon them. It’s discordant and perfect, summed up succinctly by the eternally astute line: “Everyone is Gay”.

I couldn’t do a Nirvana Top 5 without picking something truly feral, theirs a primal untamed brilliance the straining ammeuterism of “Aneurysm” that makes it both a Nirvana classic and a fearsome live proposition. Part of the fun, is in the tracks self important introduction, as if a grandiose statement is about to be made. Instead, Kurt dementedly twists his neck and cries: “Come On Over, Do The Twist!”. Delicious, and demented.

1. Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle – Nirvana

Excluding live recordings this is my absolute favourite Nirvana track. The way the verses are laid out is just fantastic, the punch lines are divinely sinister, and the opening couplet is so pointed and scathing it’s just delicious: “It’s So Relieveing, To Know That You’re Leaving, As Soon As You Get Paid”.

The chorus is the real show stealer of course, the eternally heartbreaking sentiment “I Miss The Comfort In Being Sad”, you can almost feel the track and it’s narrator coming apart at the seams, retreating from society and being consumed by a bizarrely level headed sense of gloom and distrust.