Nirvana recorded "Lake of Fire" for the 1994 MTV Unplugged in New York album. The song was originally written and released by the Meat Puppets in 1984.
"Lake of Fire" was written by Meat Puppets lead singer, Curt Kirkwood, about how the the Christian church uses hell to scare people into believing what they preach. He didn't set out to write a song loaded with religious imagery, he said in an interview with Songfacts, "A lot of times I don't remember writing songs, I can't remember anything about like, how did I come up with that? But 'Lake of Fire,' we were all living together and everybody decided to go to a Halloween party, and they were all getting in costumes. And I thought, 'Man, this is one of the stupidest things - adults getting dressed up like we did when we were little kids.'
I had actually got pretty wasted on something and told everybody, 'No, I'm not going.' And then once I was alone, I just started messing around. I wrote a couple of songs that night. I wrote 'Magic Toy Missing' and 'Lake of Fire,' maybe one more. But I was just really trying to make fun of my friends for going out to a Halloween party."
Meat Puppets "Lake of Fire" 1984
Nirvana performed the "Lake of Fire" at their MTV Unplugged appearance in 1993 and were joined by Curt and Cris Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets.
Nirvana's cover of the song is much slower than the original.
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