Lithium

Cobain wrote it in 1990, and Nirvana first played it at a video session at Evergreen State College in Olympia on 20 March 1990. Butch Vig recorded a version at Smart Studios in April 1990 and redid it at Sound City in May 1991. The first attempts failed because the band kept speeding up. After one failed take a frustrated Cobain began playing Endless, Nameless instead, which became the album's hidden track. Grohl then played to a metronome on Vig's advice, making Lithium the only track on Nevermind recorded to a click track.

Cobain told the fanzine Flipside in 1992 that it was a fictional account of a man who turned to religion as a last resort to keep himself alive after his girlfriend's death. Azerrad heard in the title an update of Marx's description of religion as the opiate of the masses. The third single, with a cover photo by Cobain, carried a sonogram of his unborn child and the lyrics to all of Nevermind. It reached 64 on the Billboard Hot 100, 11 in the UK and number one in Finland. Kevin Kerslake's video cuts together footage of the 31 October 1991 show at the Paramount Theatre in Seattle with footage from the film 1991: The Year Punk Broke.

Live

At the MTV Video Music Awards on 9 September 1992 Cobain played a bit of Rape Me first and then Lithium. At Reading on 30 August 1992 the crowd sang along, and Novoselic wrote that it was a very cool moment in the history of the band. The last live performance was at the final show in Munich on 1 March 1994. At the 2014 Hall of Fame ceremony St. Vincent sang it. AllMusic's Mark Deming judged it the strongest and most affecting song on Nevermind, and one of the quietest.