Nirvana – Rape Me

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  My Interpretation:to me this song is written in a sort of sarcastic way.. very blunt. cobain said that it was actually an anti-rape song. he also said "It's like she's saying, 'Rape me, go ahead, rape me, beat me. You'll never kill me. I'll survive this and I'm gonna fucking rape you one of these days and you won't even know it.''

  Flag katekavon May 21, 2013   Link

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  General Comment:guys it's not about rape. yes he's a feminist and all and while i don't doubt your quotes kurt often contradicted himself to the press sometimes i think just to fuck with them by telling them what they already thought to be true. back in the early 90's after inutero came out i read a rolling stones interview about how that whole album was a f u to their label for trying to get them to be a certain way mainly like nevermind. that is why they had songs like tourrettes. it was designed to turn posers off of their music. in cobain style the song itself says more than the lyrics. what i mean is he purposely made it sound like teen spririt which was the bain of his existence. the rape me refers to the label raping his creativity by wanting more songs like teen spirit and albums like nevermind.

  Flag minty33on May 11, 2013   Link

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  General Comment:Kurt has said in more than one interview that this song should be taken at face value. If you read Kurt's journals he was actually a feminist. This song is about rape culture and the way rape is normalized in our society through that.
  
  It's basically the conclusion to a trilogy that started with "About a Girl" and continued with "Polly".

  Flag jimmy_pageon April 08, 2013   Link

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  Song Meaning:A quote from an interview in 1993:
  "You're very concerned about sexism. I like that; that's good. So how do you make people aware of that problem?"
  "By writing songs as blunt as 'Rape Me.' Having to resort to doing something like that is almost embarrassing because people didn't understand when we wrote about a song like 'About a Girl' or 'Polly,' and having to explain that and having misunderstandings about it, I decided to write 'Rape Me' in a way that was so blunt and obvious that no one could deny it; no one could read into it any other way, although some people have."

  Flag alyssadon April 08, 2013   Link

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  Song Meaning:I like to think of it as being about rape.

  Flagged rapemenowon March 26, 2013   Link

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• -1
  General Comment:this song is about the record company. they told nirana that they need to write songs like smells like teen spirit again so if u llisten closely the guitar is the same chords as smeels like teen spirit just in reerse.

  Flag goodshizon September 15, 2012   Link

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• +2
  Song Meaning:I was watching a video on youtube, and he was talking about the song meaning for this song. He said that this song was an anti-rape message. He was tired of people asking him what his songs meant but it's pointless because he made no sense. He once said melody first, lyrics second.

  Flag daBigCheezon March 24, 2012   Link

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• -1
  General Comment:I always thought this song was about his heroin addiction and how heroin just rapes you and wastes you but you let it rape you and you let it rape because you're an addict. And the 'I'm not the only one' is probably just referring to the large amount of heroin addicts in the U.S and the world. Perhaps the whole 'stink and burn' thing (or that whole verse) is referring to the way heroin is taken e.g. snorted (stink) or smoked (burn).
  Anyway that's always how I've interpreted it, i hope you found it interesting

  Flagged mulefa1on February 12, 2012   Link

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  General Comment:I think its against the Vanity Fair Aricle that Courtney was using while pregnant and Frances bean was born addicted. None was true but the first months they took their baby away from them.

  Flag LayneCobain1980on January 30, 2012   Link

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  General Comment:The 1992 Demo version features a baby prominantly crying during portions of the song. Presumably the baby crying is Kurt Cobain's daughter who was born in 1992. The implication is that the song is referring to the way that some aspect of the music industry is harmful to Kurt and his family. One can presume it's the negative media attention and invasions of personal privacy. Alternately, it is conceivable that Kurt is referring to himself as a "baby" for complaining about his own success.

  Flag asortofdreamon November 18, 2011   Link

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