The Nirvana song that begins “I’m so happy, cause today I found my friends” is “Lithium.” It appears on “Nevermind,” Nirvana’s second studio album, and is one of the record’s most distinctive songs because its bright, chant-like passages clash with its troubled subject matter.
Kurt Cobain wrote “Lithium” as a fictional account of a man turning to religion after the death of his girlfriend, partly as a way to avoid suicide. The song’s narrator swings between happiness, despair, spiritual belief, and instability, making the opening line deliberately more complicated than it first sounds. The “friends” he finds are later described as being in his head.
Nirvana recorded the definitive album version with producer Butch Vig in 1991. “Lithium” was released as the third single from “Nevermind” in 1992 and became a major alternative-rock staple. It is sometimes confused with another famous “Nevermind” opener, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” but that song begins with a separate guitar riff and lyric.