of 3,000 copies was pressed on black, marbled blue, or clear pink vinyl. It was released on CD single, 7-inch vinyl and 12-inch vinyl in the UK in 1991 on the Tupelo record label, and peaked at number 90 on the UK Singles Chart. Noted music photographer Charles Peterson provided black and white photography. The single charted at number 23 in Ireland in 1992, due to the success of the band's second album, Nevermind, released in September 1991. Following its re-release on Incesticide in December 1992, the song was sent to radio and reached number 19 on the US Modern Rock Tracks chart in early 1993. The "Sliver" single re-charted at number 77 on the UK Singles Chart in December 1992, due to the release of Incesticide. The Incesticide and CD single versions omitted a phone conversation between a hungover Novoselic and Sub Pop co-founder Jonathan Poneman that appears at the end of the song in the vinyl single. The exchange, which ended with a confused-sounding Novoselic advising Poneman to call back later that day, was accidentally recorded on Novoselic's answering machine. The single was re-released on silver 7-inch vinyl on 26 March 2021 by Jackpot Records and it is limited to 1,000 copies. Critical reception Reviewing the single in a 1990 issue of Melody Maker, Everett True wrote, "Sure, the vocals are lazily throat splitting, the guitars belligerently grungy, the bass up and out of place . . . but check the melodies, damn fools, check the melodies. The only reason this isn't 'Single Of The Week' is because three even mightier singles were released this week." Legacy In a July 2018 retrospective review of Incesticide, Jenny Pelly of Pitchfork wrote that "Sliver" was "a hilarious caricature" of a pop song that featured "the exaggerated naivete and cool simplicity of Olympia bands that Cobain loved, like Beat Happening and the Go Team. In 2011, NME ranked the song at number nine on their list of the 10 best Nirvana songs. In 2015, Rolling Stone placed it at number three on their ranking of 102 Nirvana songs. In 2020, it was ranked at number one on Kerrang!'s The 20 Greatest Nirvana Songs - Ranked list, with Sam Law calling it "a finely-balanced moment in time, powered by the frontman’s tortured intelligence but not yet corrupted by the anguish and addiction that would eventually spell his demise." Rivers Cuomo, of the