Nirvana: Heart Shaped Box Meaning
Song Released: 1998
Heart Shaped Box Lyrics
I've been locked inside your Heart Shaped box for a weeks
I've been drawn into your magnet tar pit trap
I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black
Hey!
Wait!
I've got a new...
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I can understand the meanings of every nirvana song!!!..and albums as concept albums!
This song is about...the media, MTV, television, and the work world. Truely. The nevermind album is about persuing sex, losing innosence, and finding frustration in really never being happy. Like, Lithium he does, but then gets fed up toward the end. And then wants to trap and manipulate him/her in the song Polly (which was inspired by a newspaper article...but captures the appropriate feeling. It cycles over and over..in and out...just like teen depression, sex, and relationships in general. Guns are dicks...everybody...in reference to his likenings.
On the cover of Nevermind it shows a baby chasing a dollar bill...like "Okay, now you're alive, follow the dollar and die.
And THATS WHAT HEART SHAPED BOX IS ABOUT. It moves from the teen depression to adult depression. It's more in reference to Kurt being under the microscope of the media. So is Rape Me. They may have been inspired by acual events, but no ARTIST JUST REPORTS THE NEWS. THEY TELL THE TRUTH. THE TRUTH. THE TRUTH!!!! In this case, the heart shaped box is our television. It is also a settled marriage. "I wish I could eat your cancer" like "I would die for and with you." And you really do kill your self in a marriage...sad and touching, which is the contrast of it ...CONTRAST IS ART...Courtney and Kurt were both really smart, and she understood the challenges of marriage and defeating the self and succuming to selfishness.
The "She" in the song is the media. Looking at him when he's weak and focusing on his errors. Posing as an Orchid and hurting him. Reprters that come from a good child hood and make Kurt look black and bad. (Dave Chapelle's "Black Sheep" joke alludes to this also.) Him wishing that he could be there to exloit their struggles and faults (cancer) when they are bad. The Heart Shaped Box is the Meida's Eye. Our Television. Heart Shaped Box is our Television.
THE VIDEO- The beginning room where they wait is a quaint model of America's representation...or lack there of..of truth. A dead man being sustained by the economic stability of rasing and creating new children...making people get jobs where the rich are richer..also forcing people to go to church, not literally force, but it is usual for a parent to go when they have a new child and want to raise them in a perfect world. Anyways, There's a curtain with a little light being let in. The light represents... Truth...or Truth. (The concept, or the Grand Hidden Truth of society. Which krist opens at the end, and floods the room with light. Kurt told Krist to do this, probably because he was the most innocent out of them. and to show that nirvana was really telling the truth about things, which like I said, is the role of the artist. One can't preech it,as jehovah's whitness, but as Emily Dickinson says "Speack truth in slant". Kurt says "What do I think I think? Hate your enemies. Save Your Friends. Find Your Place. Speak the Truth." SPEAK THE TRUTH!!!)
Jesus in the video walking around is Kurt. Notice he's picking Poppies...heroine reference. And he is crucified by society. Who paid attention so much to his bads and not his goods. (Tupac makes the same allusion on his Makeveli album...where he says the crusifixion on the album cover is a reference to him being cucified by the media. Which is just what our world does to someone who speaks the truth. As Jesus, or the beatles, or John Lenon, or Tupac, or Nirvana...or even JFK, but later it serves to show how society should check itself and change.)
The KKK kid represents children who inherit the hates of their parents. You know, people who write great music are those who don't have a very good child hood to reflect on..only one of pain. Like Kurt, or Beethoven.
Notice when the kid is on the grass (off the path)and the angel notices her and stands upset...and the child gets scared. This is accurately showing what happens to people who are confused about upbringing and contemplate things a lot instead of being productive. ("The lunatic is on the grass...Remembering games, and daisy chains and laughs. GOT TO KEEP THE LUNIES ON THE PATH"-Roger waters, Pink Floyd...Kurt's showing the same idea, essentially.) Also, too much thinking makes one go insane and question reality...insanity is sometimes brilliance though, especially in Art. The angel is this economy with the name of God we set up. Fat as ever. Operating in a false reality. A set, if you will. Which it very much does look like a phony, small, repetitious set. And we are all suppose to be actors and hide ourselves in script. The angel reaches to embrace the birth of children...to keep Jesus alive.
The Kid also represents Kurt. I think Kurt was just really sensitive and wished he was never born. And let's be honest, most great artists are a bit girly and sensitive. That's how they write great songs. The child reaches to the cross to get help. (Kurt did accept Jesus at one time) Reaches to the children tree for power and innosence.(Probably why he had Francis...and Kurt wished he could just be Kid again or not be born.)
As her outfit becomes black ("I'm left black.") the room is shown again with no light and just her in black. CONTRAST!! And then Kurt takes her place to show they are the same.
When her heart begins bleeding, she is being looked up at...almost glorified...and inside that heart is nirvana. And the heart is a box that keeps them trapped. And they are constantly contrasting their postitions with each other. Emotions and representations of them. And differing ones from scene to scene in the box...deifferent stances and emotions of each person...down and up...shot to shot ART! All in a box. And He is staring right at us!!!!!!!!!!!! Go to Youtube.com and watch the video. Pause and just think. Let it play all the way through. And notice that when you are watching his percing look at the camera.. and he yells!!, he's yelling at you through the TV. He's in the TV yelling! In the Heart Shaped Box yelling. Like "Hey DO YOU FUCKING GET IT YET IDIOTS!!! MTV obviously doesn't!"
Notice how the whole video is on a soundstage set. This is commenting on the phony society we have set up. Believe me, it's the meaning! And How it is distracting and dilluding by hiding behind dead Jesus. A dead Jesus in everyone's face... and Truth, though available through the slight light in the curtains...is really covered up and nullified by dead Jesus and curtains...the set of reality.
We all can pull the curtains...just give it a chance. "Imagine"...by John Lennon...is basically the same Idea as heart Shaped Box.
And also, the songs melody is similar to "Paint it Black" by the rolling stones. Slower, more surreal, romanitc, and better recorded...but along the same lines as the stones song.
Please, I hope someone reads this and thinks about it. I know the other statements are right. The box and everything is true. And I think kourtney actually helped him right the song...lyrics and melody...vocal melody.
P.S. The Dollar on the hook on the cover of never mind is the umbilical noose. And look at the cover of In Utero. He's crawled back in the Unterus. (Of the woman, of the world, of the job, of society?) and then he killed himself. He hated his parents fighting so much that he made himself unborn. And killed popular music with him!
God DAMN IT!
-Danny
GildedGatsby@aol.com -
This song was origanilly called 'Heart-Shaped Coffin' but dude who up there that says Courtney has nothing to do with it your wrong. The whole damn album is called In Utero which was one of Courtney's poems. Heart-Shaped Box/Coffin was written for her
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A song Kurt wrote for Courtney. About the Heart-Shaped Box she sent him with a doll in it. She also sent him a poem that ended up being Doll Parts by Hole.
Doll Parts and Heart-Shaped Box go hand in hand. -
i heard it was about living in the uterus.
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I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black
This refers to cancer patients on chemo therapy whose skin turns a blackish color during treatment. -
This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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This song, in my oppinion is about courtny, heroin, and his love for them both. "magnet tar pit trap" reffers to heroin. For those of you who know how heroin is made, it is first a tar substance, and magnet tar pit trap means his attraction to something that he knows, will enevitably kill or destroy him/his life.
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This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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The truth is NO ONE realy knows what any Nirvana songs mean except Kurt himself. My interpretations are what I belive. I have no idea if it is anything like what Kurt thought but I is my way of seeing them. So we can all have our own Interpretation and we can't dismiss anyone elses.
P.S NIRVANA RULE -
The opening part of the song is plain and simple: Kurt was a Pisces. The song title Heart Shaped Box refers to how Courtney gave him a box she had scented with her perfume. Kurt loved to smell it. The magnet tar pit trap probably referred to how Kurt felt, so helplessly in love with Courtney. The line cut myself on angel hair and babys breath refers to the pain of marriage the regret and love that goes with it.
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This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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The song Heart-Shaped Box speaks fairly simply about one's self-hate for compulsive attraction to female sexuality!
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