"Sliver" is a song by the American rock band Nirvana, written by vocalist and guitarist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic.

It was first released as a non-album single by the band's then record label, Sub Pop, in the United States in September 1990, and by Tupelo in Britain in January 1991.

Described as featuring some of Cobain's most straightforward lyrics,[4] "Sliver" is a semi-autobiographical, first-person account of a child who is forced to spend a day at his grandparents' house, insists on being taken home, falls asleep, and finally wakes up in his "mother's arms."

"I decided I wanted to write the most ridiculous pop song I had ever written," Cobain explained to Azerrad, in order "to prepare people for the next album," which became their 1991 release, Nevermind.

Cobain was happy with the time Peters spent with Nirvana, telling Azerrad, "The chemistry was definitely there...We could have ended up writing some really good songs together.

"[4] As Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic explained, however, "If Dan were to have joined our band it would've been certain that Mudhoney was finished, and we didn't want to be responsible for that.

The same month, the studio version of "Sliver" appeared on Incesticide, a rarities compilation released in the wake of the surprising success of the band's major label debut, Nevermind.

In an October 1990 interview in London, England, Cobain told Rupert Brankin-Frisby of Vice Lizard that the song "was inspired by 'cutie' bands like the Vaselines, Beat Happening and Half Japanese.

[17][18] Reviewing the single in a 1990 issue of Melody Maker, Everett True wrote, "Sure, the vocals are lazily throat splitting, the guitars belligerently grungy, the bass up and out of place .

"[19] In a July 2018 retrospective review of Incesticide, Jenny Pelly of Pitchfork wrote that "Sliver" was "a hilarious caricature" of a pop song that featured "the exaggerated naivete and cool simplicity of Olympia bands that Cobain loved, like Beat Happening and the Go Team.

's "The 20 Greatest Nirvana Songs - Ranked" list, with Sam Law calling it "a finely-balanced moment in time, powered by the frontman’s tortured intelligence but not yet corrupted by the anguish and addiction that would eventually spell his demise.

[24] Rivers Cuomo, of the American alternative rock band Weezer, cited "Sliver" as the song that made the biggest impact on his life in his early 20s, and shared his memory of hearing it for the first time in a 2015 Pitchfork interview: "It was just one of those things where, by the time it got through the first chorus, I was just running around the store ... [It] had the simplicity of the Velvet Underground in the structure and the chords ... [and] the melody and the major chord progression of the pop music I love, like ABBA, but also this sense of destructiveness ... and it came out in this new hybrid style.

Cobain does not play the guitar in the video, only singing into a microphone while wearing a red and black striped mohair sweater his wife, Courtney Love, had bought for him from a fan after a Nirvana show in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

[31] The video was accepted by MTV in May, but frames featuring the logos of the magazines Maximumrockandroll and Better Homes and Gardens had to be removed due to the network's rules on product placement.