"Sliver" is a song by the American rock band Nirvana, written by vocalist and guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic. The song was released as a non-album single by the band's then record label, Sub Pop, in September 1990. The same recording was re-released on the compilation album Incesticide by DGC in December 1992, and a new music video directed by Kevin Kerslake was released to promote the album. Origin and recording Early history "Sliver" was written in 1990. According to the 1993 biography Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana by Michael Azerrad, the song was written during a rehearsal with Dan Peters, who briefly played the drums with Nirvana while the future of his band, Mudhoney, was uncertain. According to Azerrad, the lyrics to "Sliver" were written shortly before they were recorded, although an acoustic demo of the song, first released on Nirvana box set With the Lights Out in November 2004, suggests that Cobain had written some of the lyrics before entering the studio to record the vocals. "I decided I wanted to write the most ridiculous pop song I had ever written," Cobain explained to Azerrad, in order "to prepare people for the next album," which became their 1991 release, Nevermind. "Sliver" single Most of the song's instruments were recorded by Jack Endino at Reciprocal Recording in Seattle, Washington on July 11, 1990, during a studio break by the Sub Pop band, TAD "We called Tad up and asked if we could come over and record the song," Cobain recalled in a Melody Maker interview with journalist Push in December 1990. "We used their instruments while they sat around eating. But that's nothing new...the key to a successful album is to get the fuck out of the studio before you're sick of the songs." With Peters on drums, the band recorded the song's music in less than an hour. Two weeks later, on July 24, Cobain returned to the studio and recorded his vocals as well as an additional guitar with Endino, who then mixed the track. Cobain was pleased with the recording, telling Azerrad, "It has a massive naïveté to it. It was done so fast and raw and perfect that I don't think we could capture that again if we decided to rerecord it. It's just one of those recordings that happened and you can't try to reproduce it. Unlike most Nirvana