Alice in Chains is back on the charts—with a song recorded more than 30 years ago with late lead singer Layne Staley.
The 1994 song “Nutshell” re-entered Billboard’s Hard Rock Streaming Songs chart at No. 25 for the week of June 8, 2026, marking its 34th overall week on the chart.
Known for its emotional acoustic guitar and lyrics about loneliness and separation penned by Staley, “Nutshell" was never released as a single but appeared on Alice in Chains’ EP Jar of Flies, which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard in February 1994.
Rolling Stoneonce ranked “Nutshell” one of the 10 saddest songs of all time, noting that the song “took on a new meaning after the singer Layne Staley died tragically at a young age.”
“When you listen to this song today, it's impossible not to think about his death, and lines like ‘I'd feel better dead’ are positively chilling,” the outlet shared. “This ballad was never a single, and it sounds unlike their famous works from this period, but it touched a nerve with fans …it's a wonderful tribute to the spirit and resolve of Staley.”
In June 1994, Staley told Hit Parader that the Alice in Chains bandmates hadn’t planned to record an acoustic EP with Jar of Flies. Instead, they just experimented in the studio after a long run on the road.
“We just wanted to go into the studio for a few days with our acoustic guitars and see what happened,” Staley explained in the interview. “We never really planned on the music we made at that time to be released. But the record label heard it, and they really liked it. It was more their idea to release it than it was ours. For us, it was just the experience of four guys getting together in the studio and making some music.”
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Staley died in 2002 at age 34 of an accidental drug overdose. While Alice in Chains is best known for heavier grunge anthems such as “Man in the Box” and “Would,” the acoustic “Nutshell” is the song that bandmate Mike Inez best remembers Staley for.
“I think the No. 1 for me is ‘Nutshell,” Inez told Revolver magazine in 2015. “Layne was very honest with his songwriting. And in 'Nutshell,' he really put everything in a nutshell for everybody. That song still gets me choked up whenever I play it. I get a little teary-eyed, and sometimes when we're doing the arena runs, especially, they'll have some video footage of Layne. And I look and see me and [bandmates] Jerry [Cantrell] and Sean [Kinney] looking the wrong way. We're not looking at the audience; we're looking back at Layne, and it's pretty cool that there's still that song for us. Yeah, it's just a sad thing.”
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