10 Best Rock Ballads Of The 90's

The members of Alice in Chains seemed to be at an all time low once they came off of their highly successful Dirt album. Each of the album's songs displayed Layne Staley laying out his drug addiction bare for the world to see. Though it may have felt cathartic to expel his demons through song, the band's collection of acoustic cuts Jar of Flies is where reality started seeping in.

Whereas most of Dirt sounded like a spiral down to the bottom of a drug-induced Hell, "Nutshell" is the sound of a man who knows he's lost his battle with addiction. With just a few simple chords, Staley's vocal floats above the music like some kind of angelic umbrella. The way that he paints pictures of loneliness and despair almost feel like Staley is talking to us from beyond the grave. The lyric of feeling better dead than having to live in pain is both bone-chilling and stunningly beautiful.

Staley would eventually lose his battle with his demons, passing away in 2002 of an eventual drug overdose. While it may not be the easiest thing to listen to in retrospect, "Nutshell" is still one of the rawest emotional passages in Alice in Chains's entire discography.