Aren't you glad that new Nirvana song "You Know You're Right" doesn't suck?

I sure am. And yes, I'll say it now, I was really afraid that it was going to. Something about the phrase "unreleased material" just makes me squirm.

Call them the "Free As A Bird" shudders.

Anyway, "You Know You're Right" was recorded by the world's most famous grunge band in January of 1994, just four months before singer/songwriter Kurt Cobain suicide. Eight damn years ago. Time flies when you have the Foo Fighters around.

The song was supposed to be the featured bonus track on the proposed Nirvana retrospective set due last Christmas, before legal battles of epic proportions between Cobain's former bandmates and widow, Courtney Love, stopped that idea.

But somehow amazingly the court case has been settled, and apparently Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic have made up with that freaky, freaky Courtney Love. Bam, an mp3 of "You Know You're Right" was available online at every Napster-wannabe. Radio stations starting playing the song ASAP.

Now, something about a band sitting on a song for seven years is just weird to me. True, Nirvana has released two posthumous discs, November 1994's "Unplugged in New York" and "From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah" in October of 1996. But those are both live, featuring mostly heard before songs. And Nirvana wasn't a Tupac or a Jimi Hendrix who recorded tons of studio sessions for later release. Sure, they had all of those little compilations that came out, but pretty much that was it.

So "unreleased material" sounded way sketchy to me. But not only does it not-suck, it actually kinda rocks. When I first heard the drum riff on the radio last weekend, I thought it was the new Foo Fighters song. Rockin' drums from Dave Grohl, true, but just in his former band.

Some people think that this justifies that Kurt Cobain only could write screwed up songs about pain and angst and suffering. Well, duh. I mean, I'm not expecting him to write the next Disney soundtrack. But to say that his songwriting was "limited" in any way, well, they're just wrong. Who knows what could have happened if Cobain got some happy-drugs or found a woman who actually loved him and wasn't just in a relationship with him to catapult her career to the likes of, say, "The People vs. Larry Flynt" or "The Man on the Moon"? Besides, plenty of acts stick to only one genre for life! C'mon! Give the brotha a break!

Regardless, I'm pretty psyched that number A) there's a new Nirvana song and B) it doesn't suck. Kurt Cobain's memory remains unsullied.

Now as long as Francis Bean doesn't turn out to be like her Mom, we're good to go.

- Josh Edwards