Released: 09/23/91 (Europe), 09/24/91 (US), 04/96, 07/98

Releases: Released on vinyl, cassette and CD in 1991. Reissued in April 1996 by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab as a 24-carat gold CD and on 200g high definition vinyl. Reissued in July 1998 by Simply Vinyl on high-quality vinyl.

Additional Information: Recoded and produced by Butch Vig. Mixed by Andy Wallace. Dave plays all the drums on the album. 'Polly' was taken from Nirvana's April 1990 Smart Studios session (also with Butch Vig) when the drummer was Chad Channing, but at the 'Nevermind' session the drums for 'Polly' were re-recorded. The first batch of American pressings (46,251) on CD and cassette lacked 'Endless Nameless', the uncredited secret track which appears after ten minutes three seconds of silence once 'Something In The Way' has ended, because of a pressing error. The band put the 'secret track' on the album as a way of playing with the CD format, just as the Beatles, for example, put indecipherable messages in the runout grooves of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The cover shot was inspired by Kurt and Dave having seen a documentary on underwater birth during recording sessions. They investigated pictures of babies being born underwater, but they were too graphic. Therefore they chose a stock graphic of a baby swimming, but it was too expensive. As a result the art director, Robert Fisher, got Kirk Weddle, an underwater photographer to take some shots himself of a baby underwater. The baby in the final picture chosen was Spencer Elden. Kurt recommended the adding of a dollar on a fish-hook and thus a famous album cover was born. Inside the inlay is a page of random lyrics from the songs on 'Nevermind' mashed together in no particular order. Two of the lines amongst them were made up by Kurt and do not feature in the lyrics of any of the songs ("The second coming came in last and out of the closet" and "At the end of the rainbow and your rope"). The back-cover features a meat-and-diseased vagina collage by Cobain behind the Chim Chim (above the head of which is a picture of Kiss). Cobain's name appears on photo credits as 'Kurdt Kobain'.

Later reissues by MFSL and Simply Vinyl were both taken from the original mastertapes. The mastering techniques used on the 1996 CD and vinyl releases by MFSL supposedly enhance the sound by separating out all the instruments into different channels and the gold of the CD is less susceptible to corrosion than the aluminium used on regular CDs. The MFSL LP booklet for this release misspelled Nirvana ('Virvana') and CD releases do contain 'Endless Nameless' although, as with ordinary releases, this is not credited on the cover. The vinyl release by Simply Vinyl is a 180g vinyl pressing with a heavy card (300g) sleeve. The song credits on this vinyl release are different to those on the regular CD.