different style, but Love demanded "this is how it should sound." The band left before midnight on November 10. Before the band left, Endino recorded the bass parts to "Beautiful Son", then Love recorded the final bass track to "20 Years In The Dakota." "Between us we had the bass done in about a half-hour," noted Endino and finally mixed the three tracks as he was getting tired and "[didn't] want to stay [t]here 'till 6am mixing three songs." Composition Due to Love's intentions to compose a song with "simple melodies," her initial guitar riff was developed further by Erlandson and Patty Schemel. The final riff consists of three main barre chords (B5-C5-A5) which is used for both the verses and choruses of the song. An underlying riff of the same chords, played in a higher tuning, is heard in the studio recording of the song. During the chorus, the riff is highly distorted as opposed to its thin-sounding lead during the verse. This alternating quiet-loud dynamic is typical of grunge music, such as Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," which Erlandson drew comparisons to during the recording sessions. During the song's bridge, the song again quiets down and uses a series of notes performed on the D and G strings (E-F-G/B-G-B-E) before a short solo by Erlandson. Love is reported to have written the lyrics of "Beautiful Son" about Cobain's crossdressing as a child. The single's front cover complements this as it features a photograph of a young Cobain, at the age of around 7, surrounded by gift bows designed by Love. The "friends" in the lyrics who "clean the mess" are usually seen as a reference to Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, other members of Nirvana. Songwriting credits controversy Although songwriting credits on the official release note all three songs featured on the single as being written collectively by Hole, according to BMI, "Beautiful Son" and "20 Years in the Dakota" were written by Love, Erlandson, and Schemel. However, the single's b-side "Old Age" was the subject of controversy in 1998 when it was revealed to be a Cobain composition by the Seattle newspaper The Stranger.<ref></ref> However, prior to the publication, Love stated in an interview that "Old Age" "is partly someone else's composition. It's something somebody had a little bit of and I said 'let me have the rest of it' and I wrote this thing in it