Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle
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| "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle" | ||
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| Song by Nirvana | ||
| from the album In Utero | ||
| Released | September 21, 1993 | |
| Recorded | March 1993 at Pachyderm Studios, Cannon Falls, Minnesota | |
| Genre | Grunge rock | |
| Length | 4:07 | |
| Label | Geffen | |
| Producer(s) | Steve Albini | |
| In Utero track listing | ||
| Rape Me (4) |
"Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle" (5) |
Dumb (6) |
"Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle" is a song by the influential American grunge band Nirvana. It was released on their third studio album, In Utero. The title of the song refers to the Seattle-born actress Frances Farmer who, among other things, was accused of being a Communist and an atheist, struggled with alcoholism, was declared "legally insane" due to paranoid schizophrenia and manic depression in 1944, and was kept in a psychiatric ward, where according to her sensationalized autobiography, she was raped, and according to the fictionalized biography Shadowland, had an illegal lobotomy performed on her (a claim its author admitted was fictionalized in a court proceeding).
Cobain's nature as an atheist radical led to himself being compared and comparing himself to Frances Farmer (hence many believe that he named his daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, after her, although he and Courtney Love have denied this, and in fact Frances Bean was named for Frances McKee of The Vaselines) and therefore her revenge on Seattle could be interpreted as his own. Considering Cobain's distaste for much of anything related to the title of "Seattle icon" and as a celebrity rather than a "starving artist", the comparison theory has often been reinforced by a number of music analysts.
The choice of Frances Farmer as a subject for a song might have been considered lurid by some bands; however, on In Utero Nirvana had included explicit topics for their songs throughout the album, including murder, rape, divorce, abortion and cancer (q.v. "Heart Shaped Box").
