“I’m so tired I can’t sleep” The most perfect lyric in rock history.

The solo performance on Unplugged was one of the most profound performances I ever saw when I first seen it. It's still one of the most iconic performances I've ever seen.

I had the p.royal tea CD single. Ended up in my storage unit. Became addicted to heroin/phentanyl for 8 years after being started on pain meds for congenital birth defects. Storage unit gone, along with everything else in my life. But I'm still here. Clean for over a year. Tender age in bloom.)

The 1990 demo version he did with Dave is on the internet to listen to. Safe to say he didn't write it with Courtney unless it was some lyrics.

you can also hear it as "penny royalty" as in royalties from a song or album, lots of wordplay and puns in his songs it seems like

2:18 - I Believe (in my humble opinion) Kurt and Courtney probably didn’t write Pennyroyal Tea together. This is because Kurt Likely met Courtney in September/October, 1991. However, the song was debuted live 6 months earlier, on April 17th, 1991 at the “O.K. Hotel”.

The song seems to express personal pain and suffering. Letting out your pain through song can be therapeutic. Too bad the pain was too overwhelming for the guy.

He used to sing "Give me, a Leonard Nimoy afterworld" on some live shows

This and "Serve the Servants" are definitely my favorite Nirvana tracks these days. As someone with a long history of Stomach trouble I have always been able to relate. I think it's a combination of the last thing you said about Kurt constantly feeling his insecurities much like his idol JOL. Sure Kurt and Dave seemed to get into it a lot, but nothing like John who constantly felt the need to tear his loved ones down. Secondly I really believe Kurt wanted to be free from his addictions and "Start Over" in every way, but he felt weak never being able to fully "Kick the Habit."

Weird it might have two meanings, eh? Pennyroyal Tea and Penny Royalty? This was pretty much what we understood back in the 90s... Poetry is... creative. Not literal... and maybe to put it in terms that are easy to understand, as Robert Plant said "...you know sometimes words have two meanings".

Such a shame we didn’t get the Pennyroyal Tea single and video, would have been even more of a masterpiece!

In the 90s l, I recall having a bootleg cassette of a '90/'91 show, with Kurt introducing the song as "Household Drugs".

Such a brilliant song, thanks for the video!

Fantastic video. Loved it. ❤ “I’m a liar and a thief” “I’m on my time with everyone” very good lines and very introspective. But the “I’m on my time” line seems like it could have dual or multiple meaning. Does he mean he’s never alone? Or is it a reference to him being notoriously late and flaky to events? Or it could even mean he feels pushy or bossy. Maybe all of those or none of them. That’s what I love about Kurt’s music. It could just rhyme. It could just fit and serve the song and not be related to him in any way.

Great video, brought me such detailed explanation of a song for a first time. Thanks.

back in 2014 when i was a kid my uncles favorite album was nevermind and he always play "come as you are" which for me as a kid it was like the coolest guitar riff and then right after that hed play "penny royal tea" which i think it has the coolest sound for a song

MTV Unplugged is, and always will be, the most prolific thing that ever happened for music. Especially Grunge. Nirvana proved that.

Hmmm the point about royalty is funny to bring up because once upon a time Hank Harrison mentioned in a interview that Kurt was from a royal bloodline

Great breakdown video! Thanks

Any reference to "Royalty" in the song just refers to the name of the tea. "Penny-royal". Kurt probably loved this word composition especially as it has a strong reference to grunge itself.

This would have nade a great single! Such a fantastic song! In utero is great, its half black flag and sonic youth and half indie rock dreaminess!

Beautiful, highly personal song by a very talented, complex man.

Ya know, some songs tell a very clear story. And some are crazily deep and actually do have hidden meanings and layers of depth, but (and some people don't like to admit it) it is true that a lot of song lyrics are what they are, simply because they sound cool. People don't like accepting this because a lot of these kinds of songs have deep meaning for them personally, but the original writer was just looking for some words that sounded awesome or edgy or whatever together and might vaguely make some kind of sense. Many songwriters allude to this in not so many words. A lot of songs are based around a hook, a phrase, a concept or a rhythm and the words really don't mean anything at all. Now, is that the case for Pennyroyal? Maybe, maybe not. I say though, that whatever meaning you personally find in a song is the right one, and you shouldn't try to find a definitive answer to what it means because you might not like the answer to that one.

and today penny royalties is the reality of millions of artists on spotify

Sometimes lyrics don’t have to make sense or have a specific meaning or purpose. Simply put, I think KC was putting together some references and emotions at the time. Regardless, we miss you Kurt 💙

Kurt loved to play with words, at his best when phonic interpretation changes the meaning of the lyric to show the duality of a situation. It's no coincidence that "Distill the life inside of me" is nearly indistinguishable from "Steal the life that's inside of me" by him barely vocalizing the first syllable and moving the voicing of the i towards a long e sound rather than a a short i. We get this conflict of whether he's trying to rid himself of some core matter (steal) or get rid of some extraneous material to focus on something more pure (distill). In both cases, we're not sure if what he's losing is good or bad, or for better or worse. It's an absolutely masterful lyric.

Cool video - I love the song but I'd always found some of the lyrics quite opaque, I had no idea what anaemic royalty meant. Cheers.

The beauty of music is that there's a story behind making it. Today's music is just noise, with no story.

love the cover photo on this video of kurt with a cappacino cup- never seen it before- good video!

I think the single was pulled in 1994, because of the b-side I Hate Myself and Want to Die

I really belive if Kurt had slowly stop using drugs, and eating as healthy as possible(whatever that means to you) plus exercise and ironically Chamomile Tea, his whole depression would've be gone. This is comming from someone who always had stomach pain since can remember, and 10 year plus addict to Narcotics

Love learning abut thess songs I've been singing for 30 years.

The mood of the Unplugged performance wasn’t really set until Pennyroyal Tea. You can kind of hear the band is playing very true, but there’s a nervous energy in the first four songs. I feel like Kurt let go doing this song alone, bare bones, and fragile, and found the real power in his voice and playing in this format, and the show went to legendary status after that.

Depressed, Sad, & Wants a new life…. That about sums up how I feel too.

I always think of the Boston Tea Party when I hear this one.

the song is about how you feel depressed and suicidal.

6:13 you can hear dave grohl say this at the end of the MTV unplugged the man who sold the world nirvana cover

It's so sad Pat didn't sing with Kurt because I think the dissonance in the harmony was pretty beautiful.

7:16 "distill the life inside of me"; and 7:30 "warm milk and laxatives" plus the "cherry flavored antacids" are all about his heroin addiction which he could not kick

This song, as you pointed out, has many layers of interpretation, each line meaning more than just one thing at once, and it would be very naive to think that it has only one meaning overall.

These statements can both be true. Songs developed over long periods of time can go through stages. It's possible that the song was initially born in 1990 and Love was there during a later stage of its writing. I have songs with verses that were written years apart.

The song means to me that Courtney Love had no part in any way of writing it or any pieces of it.

Excellent song from an excellent album

I always understood the song to be an affirmation of life, as a small victory against his significant ailments, but honestly i never did do any research on it. I remember an interview where he explained that, of which this video meantions.

Great song and I do love the unplugged version a lot...that's for everyone's perspective and or opinions.

What is the music played at the extreme end of the video, please; the guitar playing with the phaser/chorus effect?

To me when I first heard it, I thought it was about a sick dying man who wants to drink pennyroyal tea to cleanse his soul of his demons

I can’t wait to hear what kind of music Kurt Cobain and Mark Lanegan are cooking up in the spirit world

No matter how it happened, Kurt was a musical genius! The grunge and late 80s and 90s+ music will mainly be attributed to Nirvana's talent! FOREVER!

The MTV Live and Loud is the best version of this great song.

About his ex girlfriend from the 80’s

pennyroyal is one of my favorites

I used to change the lyrics when i play it live to “I'm so tired of making money”.. 😂

"I hate myself and want to die", if people write lyrics like these, they meant it, and we ALL relate to it, I dont care what you say, Lil Peep, Amy Winehouse etc...they lie about how they died in fear of copycat suicides, but they literally wrote what was going to happen and made videos, mental health one of top killers of all time.

Thought my tinnitus was acting up watching this video!

Kurt was a jokester. He liked to pick and choose what to put into his music and laugh at us trying to figure it out. Key words are from memoires. The rest is just words that flowed with the melody.❤

He had written the song when he was living with Dave, so no, Courtney had nothing to do with the song. There’s also version from 1991 where he sings it by himself on stage

>Courtney didnt help write it, it was written in 1990, even before they met.

He sits and drinks... penny royalties... while the music industry/mass media distills the life inside of him... ? 🤔

Worst Nirvana song with a bullet. Desperately needs a bridge.

His unplugged version is up there with Noel Gallagher's slide away solo chiacago performance

he shouldve called it penny royalty

Penny royalty

Kurt Cobain I think was mainly on this kick writing music about depression his life struggles women's anatomy don't get me wrong it made him a unique short-lived artist him and his band were in the right place at the right time

Royal tea royalty. Missed that in plain sight

💜

When did he ever say he hated the Albini mix?!?!!!!!

LMAO I just realized that I’ve heard about junkies being constipated and stomach pain when they don’t have it. And here we all felt such sympathy.

himself....obviously.

Never understood the popularity of the song. 🤷

I've never liked this song on either In Utero or Unplugged and skip it nearly every time I listen to the albums

What’s that theme from your outro

Love the album but for some reason, this song never worked for me…

" Hippie, left-wing facist propaganda" wow the guy was truly ahead of his time! I love it!

Kurt is probably the least reliable source. He’d admitted at multiples times his propensity to tell (and the usefulness of) “rock star lies”, for lack of a better term. He knew how big of a star he wanted to be, and he was fully aware of the romanticizing that comes with that. The story behind Something In The Way, him stealing his stepdads guns and throwing them in the river, etc are all examples of his willing to bend the truth to improve the story.

I disagree with the sentiments that conclude this otherwise masterful piece of documantarian content in that it's not about any one person's truth concerning how the song came to be or what it means. It came to me one way and meant one thing to its author. To capture that is to solve the puzzle, which is paramount to understanding what the composer intended to convey through the means of the song.

What’s the credit to the song we hear at 8:45 ?

7:05 "hippie left-wing fascist propaganda" this is so beautiful

He's talking to a foster parent

He didn't write the song it was a bootleg illegally copyrighted. Listen to Teen Spirit closely it's about the paparazzi recording crew and Kurt Cobain's ghost songwriter. Here we are now entertain us..

Did nevermind overtook hotel California,

1:37 well Courtney’s dad was a verified FBI Informant who manages Grateful Dead so the hippie he’s talking about is Courtney 😂😂

was to be the 3rd single off in utero i thought

7:23- 7:24 its layne?

What haunts me is the pedo stuff in his journals. Read them.

whats with the ai slop

Courtney Love didn't even write her own songs

He was anemic

Nevermind is an album not a song

Was debi mazar to blame for Kurt Cobain's death,

I thought it was abt being bored...

"[...] is a tea from an herb [...]" 🤔 If you're going to pronounce "herb" the *English* way (starting with a consonant) then "an" becomes grammatically incorrect ... and sounds very weird.

Of course curt wrote hole’s music 😂😂

It's funny how Kurt reincarnates 13 years later... He walks among us

himself

Cool video man, subd

I guess both versions of the story can be true, he recorded the song with Dave but polished it with Courtney. As for the song, is my least favorite song of Nirvana, In fact, it not would be a good single, I think In Utero only has Heart-Shaped Box as a good single, the rest of the album doesn't have that commercial appeal.

00:37 Good stuff!

the 2013 albini mix is light years better