Nirvana: Something In the Way Meaning

Song Released: 1991

Something In the Way Lyrics

Underneath the bridge
The tarp has sprung a leak
And the animals I’ve trapped
Have all become my pets
And I’m living off of grass
And the drippings from the ceiling
It’s okay to eat fish
’cause they don’t have any...

1. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Jun 12th 2007 !⃝

   Doogle I read that the only thing that was keeping him alive was the heroin, which ironically kills you, due to kurts intense stomach pains the heroin was taking the pain away, I also read and think that the song was written on the basis of when he was forced to move out his house, Where there was a bridge he "allegedly" stayed under for a while, but critics have said that there was no way he could have stayed under the bridge due to the tide coming in and out and the immensely muddy conditions the name of the river is called the Wishkah River, its on all on wiki if you wish to look at it for yourself :)
2. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Apr 29th 2007 !⃝

   I think that the line underneath the bridge is symbolic because usually bridges represent a connection between two things and he feels like he's not apart of connecting he's beneath it. When he said 'its ok to eat fish because they don't have any feelings' its ironic because Curt Cobain was a picses and they are the most sensitive sign. I think he's trying to make himself insignificant to the world he's below the world where all the little animals are. I Love this song Curt Cobain was a genius.
3. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Apr 12th 2007 !⃝

   blah blah blah... yes he was kicked out of his mom's house because he didn't get a job... yes he spent a lot of time under that bridge but did not sleep there more than a cuople of times, he almost always had friend's houses to sleep at... etc..
   
   but my friends and I took a road trip to Aberdeen, and to the Young Street bridge last summer... Since it was warm, we slept under it for a couple nights.. and it's muddy near the water,, and the tides go up and down fast... It's really hard to sleep there because cars are kinda loud when they go over it.. and people come to smoke weed all the time (which was fun) and though noone came to shoot up heroin,, there were a couple syringes there.. we cleaned up a big space of spraypaint with the concrete gray paint, and put our names and some of the lurics (my friend's a sweet artist so he painted kurt's face,, it looks awesome) but all the spraypaint basically said R.I.P. Kurt, and had messages to kurt, etc... The part we cleared was an illegible portion..
   
   t sum it up,, if you go there DO NOT speak of Kurt if your not under that bridge... because they'll know immediately you don't belong there... The people you meet at that bridge (and the cops because they come there sometimes) are the ONLY people you should speak to at all..
   
   we made some home movies while under that bridge,, though the camera is sometimes messed up because we were high... I'd post them but they show (and incriminate) a lot of kids who live in aberdeen who come there to get high...
   
   good times
4. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Apr 11th 2007 !⃝

   Ok, everyone just shut up and if you really care go read the book, Heavier than Heaven: a biography of Kurt Cobain.
   
   this song IS about him being homeless for a few months. but he never lived under that bridge. That bride is too small for anyone to live there. "something in the way", the something is him. Talking about his mom and dad, because by that time in his like 16/17 neither of them nor his friends wanted him to live with them.....the following is just me, the "living off of grass" maybe he's talking about weed. and living off of rain form the ceiling and eating fish, maybe he exagurated this. because he was a comulsive lier because of his deep depression.
5. alive313

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Jan 25th 2007 !⃝

   I'm a huge Nirvana fan. as we all are. I've listened to Nirvana for about 10 years now, and I'm 18 years old. Pointless information, yes, but this is my proof of being a fan. The song isn't about Kurt or anyone else in the band for that matter, living under a bridge. I recently bought the Nevermind dvd, it is actually explained by the producer. In the early to mid 90's there was a drastic amount of homeless adolescence. Kurt was simply singing about the era of homeless youth. Kids living under bridges, surviving off of every resource available to them, rather being fish, drippings, or grass. I wouldn't reccomend grass though,:P we don't have the acid's to break it down as well as other species. Buy the dvd, and you will know what I am talking about. They've basically got interpretations for every song. Including the famous "Polly". Well, didn't mean to belittle anyone's interps. I just simply wanted to clear that up, I don't claim to know more than anyone else here. Thanks. Alive313
6. Kurt_will_return

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Dec 9th 2006 !⃝

   Its about Kurt's time in being homeless he never really lived under the bridge because Krist has said that that particular bridge is unlivable.
7. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Oct 25th 2006 !⃝

   I think some of his songs he just wrote whatever just to make people think. He is probably looking at us just laughing.
8. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Jul 23rd 2006 !⃝

   Mm, kids, stop thinking about this so much, Kurt once said "don't look into my lyrics, you won't find the meaning." so that's that.
9. anonymous

   • 1
   • 2
   • 3
   • 4
   • 5

   click a star to vote

   Jul 21st 2006 !⃝

   Try looking at the chorus, "something in the way" does this mean that there is something in the way of something, or that there is something in the way of the life Kurt describes in the verse, as in something admirable. Kurt is well known for wanting a simple, minimalist life and I think he found the notion of living under a bridge romantic.
10. anonymous

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    click a star to vote

    Jun 20th 2006 !⃝

    Well, as Charles R. Cross pointed out in his 2001 biography of Kurt Cobain, Kurt couldn't possibly have lived under the Young Street Bridge, simply because the tide would have carried him out in the morning. I think Krist Novoselic said something to that extent as well, but I'm not sure...
11. Zaq

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    click a star to vote

    Feb 19th 2006 !⃝

    Let's face it...
    NONE of you knew Kurt, so stop saying "He started hating his life when..." and "He lived under a bridge... I can prove it!" Just shut your mouths about him and submit your own interpretation of the lyrics.
    By the way he was neither a martyr nor a god. Just wanted to let you guys know that.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
12. anonymous

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    click a star to vote

    Jan 4th 2006 !⃝

    This song is about Kurt's life and he never had a real home where he stayed in for a long time. So for awhile he had to live under a bridge and really it doesn't matter what you do or eat under there, if that's what keeps you alive so then who cares. I like this song very much because he talks about his experience.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
13. anonymous

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    click a star to vote

    Dec 28th 2005 !⃝

    Well when Kurt was 7 his parents divorced. That's when he started hating his life. He lived with many relatives he was even homeless for a while he lived under a bridge "Underneath the bridge" "The tarp has sprung a leak" well that's probly the most he got a crappy leaking tarp, he's homeless remember "And the animals I’ve trapped/Have all become my pets" Kurt once had a love for animals(exspecialy Birds) "And I’m living off of grass" he's homelss remember "And the drippings from the ceiling" he lved under a bridge ever been under one after it rains it leaks "It’s okay to eat fish/’cause they don’t have any feelings" well he was a starving person and he had to eat something he mostly lived on fish when he was under that bridge "Something in the way" he felt unloved when he parents divorced and from that point on he thought something was in the way of his life.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
14. anonymous

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    click a star to vote

    Dec 18th 2005 !⃝

    Something in the Way which can be interpreted in three levels. On the surface the simplest and consequently least correct explanation is as a jumble of stream of consciousness ramblings or a hallucinogenic drug trip.
    
    The second level of interpretation reveals the lyrics to be a mockery of liberal justifications in general, expressing the errors and contradictions inherent in any set of justifications. Lyrics such as "And the animals I've trapped/Have all become my pets" seem to speak of the transparent justifications from the perspective of animal rights supporters who own pets yet vociferously declare that all animals should be free of human exploitation. Later the lyrics mock the justification of vegetarians who eat fish with "But it's ok to eat fish/Cause they don't have any feelings". There lyrics here take the voice of a pretentious teen who is explaining his incoherence to others without any awareness of what he is admitting.
    
    Finally, the third and most interesting level of interpretation is that of using liberalism as pure metaphor. Here "And the animals I've trapped/Have all become my pets" refers to mutually needy relationships ("trapped") between mostly thoughtless, directionless, unrefined humans ("animals") in which the attention and care required to shield them from life means they live in a sheltered reality much like pets. Similarly abstract, the interpretation of "And I'm living off of grass/ And the drippings from the ceiling/But it's ok to eat fish/Cause they don't have any feelings" becomes a general unconscious confession of how a person's needs can cause them to justify anything that compromises reason and integrity.
15. anonymous

    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

    click a star to vote

    Nov 16th 2005 !⃝

    I can't really say much about the song, but I do know that the recording was done with a 5 string guitar (missing the high E string) and it's the same guitar as used in "Polly" on the same album (Listen carefully, There's no high e string)
    
    Anyway, I've read that he spent either an afternoon or an evening or something, but it was about one day under that bridge, and then he went home crying (I'm overexagerating, but still..) Kurt was a story teller. The story about selling his fathers guns to buy a guitar? False. He sold ~A~ (singular) gun of his father's and apparently bought an amp to go with his guitar. The stories are fabrications and extensions of the truth. I believe this is what made him so interesting. I wouldn't call him a liar. I would call him a daydreamer or a storyteller.

Latest Articles

• 
  A new era for Millennial favorite, Linkin Park
• 
  Anime to watch for the soundtracks… and other reasons you’re undateable
• 
  Dolly, we need you
• 
  The Stranger Things Effect: How new media is drawing Gen Z and Alpha's attention to aging media
• 
  The most underrated soundtrack of the early 2000s
• 
  Buy the Soundtrack, Skip the Movie: Brainscan (1994)