Nutshell

"Nutshell" is Alice in Chains (AIC) vocalist Layne Staley "in a nutshell," meaning a tight summation of his internal world. He wrote the lyrics to the song. The rest of the band (guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell, bassist Mike Inez, and drummer Sean Kinney) wrote the music. After completing the Jar Of Flies album, Staley entered rehab for his well-documented heroin addiction. He was deep into that fight while recording this song, and we can hear it in the opening lyrics. We chase misprinted lies We face the path of time And yet I fight, and yet I fight This battle all alone No one to cry to No place to call home There's more to the song than heroin struggles, though. Staley also reveals his problems with fame ("we chase misprinted lies") and his general battle with modern life. My gift of self is raped My privacy is raked And yet I find, and yet I find Repeating in my head If I can't be my own I'd feel better dead The grunge era of the '90s was largely a reaction to the '80s, which were seen as a decade of conformity, soulless corporatism, and formulaic music (this epitaph is oversimplified yet is almost universal). The spirit of '90s youth was a refusal to submit to "the machine," not in a political sense so much as a personal and spiritual one. Staley embodied that ("if I can't be my own, I'd feel better dead"). It was Staley in a nutshell, but it was also the '90s zeitgeist in a nutshell.

Jar of Flies was AIC's third studio EP and their second acoustic one. It was the first EP to debut at #1 on the Billboard 200, and was the penultimate studio recording with Staley and AIC, as the band started to fracture and Staley's heroin addiction began to destroy his life.

Alice in Chains opened their April 10, 1996 MTV Unplugged show with this song. It was an emotional performance because it was the first time they'd played together in over two years, and because Staley was suffering the effects of his long battle with heroin addiction. Staley delivered one of the most heartbreaking vocal performances of his career. It set off a mini-resurrection for the band as they went on to play The Late Show with David Letterman and four shows with Kiss, but ultimately led to Staley being found nearly dead from a heroin overdose after his final performance with AIC on July 3, 1996 in Kansas City, Missouri. The Unplugged performance is included on the 1999 compilation album Music Bank and on the 2006 greatest hits album The Essential Alice in Chains.