in Los Angeles. Cobain had wanted to play the unreleased song "Rape Me" instead, but this was met with resistance from MTV, who wanted the band to play their breakthrough single, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and were possibly wary of the newer song's controversial title and lyrics. Cobain agreed to play "Lithium" as a compromise, over concerns that not playing the show might lead to MTV boycotting other acts on their label, Gold Mountain, or firing their friend at the station, Amy Finnerty. "We didn't want to fuck everything up for everyone so we decided to play 'Lithium,'" Cobain explained in the 1993 Nirvana biography, Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana. "Instead of bowing out and keeping our dignity, we decided to get fucked in the ass." The performance, which featured Cobain playing a short part of "Rape Me" at the beginning "just to give [MTV] a little heart palpitation," ended with Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic being struck by his bass after throwing it into the air and attempting to catch it unsuccessfully. The final live version of "Lithium" was at Nirvana's last show, on March 1, 1994, at Terminal Einz in Munich, Germany. Composition Music "Lithium" is an alternative rock song that runs for a duration of four minutes and sixteen seconds. According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by BMG Rights Management, it is written in the time signature of common time, with a moderate tempo of 124 beats per minute. "Lithium" is composed in the key of D major, with guitars tuned down a whole tone, and chord shapes resembling chords in the key of E major, while Kurt Cobain's vocal range spans one octave and three notes, from the low-note of C4 to the high-note of F5. The intro, verses and chorus have a basic chord sequence of D5–F5–B5–G5–Bb5–C5–A5–C5 and alternates between the chords G5 and Bb5 during the bridge. A transition from the bridge to the main chord sequence consists of a bar of C5 and a bar of A5. The sheet music makes no reference to the lowered tuning of the guitars and (inaccurately) shows the E major key signature. The arrangement is representative of the musical style Nirvana had developed during work on Nevermind, alternating between quiet and loud sections. In the song, Cobain fingers chord shapes on his guitar but varies between playing single notes and double stops on