Opinion aka "Opinions" (found demo version of Nirvana song; 1990)

Poster of the biopic that the demo resurfaced from.

Status: Found

Date found: 23 Apr 2024

Found by: Unknown

In 1990, Kurt Cobain, frontman of the then-unknown band Nirvana, premiered a new song for a local radio station in Olympia called "Opinion." Not much is known about the song other than it was a "diatribe against sensationalistic media" and that Cobain "supposedly performed the song on the night that he wrote it.", as accounted by Jim DeRogatis.^[1] The song wasn't re-recorded for Nirvana's upcoming album "Nevermind" and didn't surface until the release of the "With The Lights Out" boxset in 2004. It was rumored that a full-band demo does exist.

In 2015, with the release of the biopic "Montage Of Heck," an unsurfaced version of the track was used as the soundtrack for the end card of the film. However, only the first twelve seconds were used.

The "Montage of Heck" version of the track sounds much cleaner than the original radio performance, which led some to speculate it may have been a studio demo. However, it is unknown exactly what date this audio was recorded, let alone whether it was recorded in studio or as a home demo (though an interruption at the end indicates that it is a home demo). Almost no one with official connections to Nirvana has made a public statement about the demo's origins. Courtney Love said of the song:

"There are three completed, finished songs. And there are 10 others, and then there’s all the riffing. There’s one song called “Opinions” that was a couple of years old. It was from the era when he was in Olympia, Washington, between Bleach and Nevermind."^[2]

Availability

The remainder of the demo only came to surface in April 23rd, 2024 which was uploaded on YouTube that was posted by a fan from Facebook on an unofficial fan group page for Nirvana. Subsequent reuploads of this demo by fans are posted on various social media sites.

The authenticity of the home demo was confirmed by Gillian G. Gaar, an author of various well-known and accredited books about the band, whom have heard this demo years before from a compilation cassette featuring other Nirvana songs and demos, marking the 1-minute and 26-second audio as the official home demo and found. The home demo does have a better quality on its audio rather than the radio edit posted beforehand, but is unfortunately cut short due to an unknown person defecating in the toilet at the same place where Cobain was recording the song which induced an unpleasant odor around the area.