Nirvana’s ‘Dumb’ Video Nominated For Webby Award
Directed and created by RuffMercy, the hand-painted Super-8mm film was first released to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Nirvana’s ‘In Utero.’
The new video for Nirvana’s “Dumb” has received a Webby Award nomination in the yearly event’s Art/Experimental category. Voting for the Webby People’s Voice Award is open beginning now through Thursday, April 18, at 11:59 pm PDT. Until then, fans can cast a vote via the event’s official website.
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To commemorate the 30th anniversary reissue of Nirvana’s In Utero, UMe commissioned a quasi-psychadelic visualizer for the remastered track, “Dumb.” Directed and created by RuffMercy, the video was made from hand-painted Super-8mm film, influenced by the aesthetic of Kurt Cobain’s own physical artwork throughout his life. This is the first new piece of official video content released by Nirvana since the “Heart Shaped Box” music video in 1993. At the time of writing, the “Dumb” video is about to cross 2 million organic views.
RuffMercy (real name Russ Murphy) got his break making graphics for MTV and Nickelodeon, though he has been making music videos since 2011. His credits also include videos made for Radiohead frontman Thom York’s Suspiria remake in 2018.
The In Utero 30th anniversary multi-format reissues were released on October 27, 2023. Configurations include a limited-edition 8LP Super Deluxe box set, 5CD Super Deluxe box set, 1 LP + 10” edition, 2CD Deluxe edition, and a Digital Super Deluxe edition. Additionally, In Utero’s original twelve songs, along with five bonus tracks and B-sides, have been newly remastered from the original analog master stereo tapes by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Services—who assisted producer Steve Albini as the only other engineer at the original sessions.
Nirvana recorded In Utero over the course of six days in February 1993 at Pachyderm Studio in Cannon Falls, MN with Steve Albini. In a retrospective review, Pitchfork rated it a rare perfect score of “10.0” and wrote, “In Utero is the sort of painful shock that, paradoxically, reinstils the empowering sensation of feeling alive.” Upon its arrival back in 1993, David Fricke wrote in Rolling Stone, “In Utero is a lot of things—brilliant, corrosive, enraged and thoughtful, most of them all at once. But more than anything, it’s a triumph of the will.”
Originally released September 21, 1993, In Utero was Nirvana’s third and final studio album, its first No.1 debut on the Billboard 200 and has since been certified 6x platinum in the United States.
