the instrument, giving the track a loose feel. The song opens with bouncing guitar strums before Cobain starts singing his lines in an almost whispered manner. His voice retains a measured calm during the verses, where low, open guitar lines trace the outline of the song's melody. During the chorus, Cobain shouts "Ye-eh-eh-eh-eh" over five notes and distorted, towering riffs. Cobain's thick, surging rhythm guitar meshes with Novoselic's melodic bass and Grohl's intense, snappy drumming. Lyrics According to Cobain, "Lithium" was "one of those songs I actually did finish while trying to write it instead of taking pieces of my poetry and other things". In his 1993 biography Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, Azerrad described the song's title as "an update on Marx's description of religion as the 'opiate of the masses.'" Gillian G. Gaar described it as "a song whose sing-along melody typically masks the disturbing quality of the lyric, which touches on the solace one can find in religion or madness." As Cobain explained, "In the song, a guy’s lost his girl and his friends and he’s brooding. He’s decided to find God before he kills himself. It’s hard for me to understand the need for a vice like [religion] but I can appreciate it too. People need vices.” In Come As You Are, Cobain acknowledged that the song might have been inspired in part by the time he spent living with his friend Jesse Reed and his born-again Christian parents. Cobain told Azerrad that he wasn't necessarily anti-religion, saying that "I've always felt that some people should have religion in their lives ... That's fine. If it's going to save someone, it's okay. And the person in ['Lithium'] needed it." Release and reception "Lithium" was released as the third single from Nevermind on July 13, 1992. Featuring a cover photo by Cobain, the single contained a sonogram of the musician's then-unborn child Frances Bean Cobain, as well as full lyrics for all the songs on Nevermind. Cassette, CD, 12-inch vinyl, and British 12-inch vinyl picture disc editions included "Curmudgeon" and a live version of "Been a Son" (performed on Halloween the previous year) as B-sides. The British 7-inch and cassette featured only "Curmudgeon" as an extra track, while the UK CD release added a cover of the Wipers' "D-7" recorded for BBC Radio 1 disc jockey John Peel's program in 1990. John Sullivan for