Nirvana
There’s something very special about a song that never seems to get old, and something that makes a classic even more poignant when it’s enigmatic singer commits suicide despite having what seemed like an almost ideal life.Smells Like Teen Spirit is a song that never fails to fill a dance floor in both rock clubs as well as ‘trendy’ clubs when the DJ decided to have a little ‘rock’ mix with the likes of Papa Roach, Blink 182 and Green Day towards then end of the evening. The song was the opening track from Nirvana's 1991 breakthrough album, Nevermind, and it was written by the late Kurt Cobain and his bandmates, Krist Novoselic and Dave Ghrol.
For many people, the unexpected success of this track was what resulted in alternative rock entering the mainstream charts as it reached number six on the Billboard charts as well as gaining incredible airplay all over the world. At the time music critics slammed the song and it's accompanying music video, claiming that it was an "anthem for apathetic kids" of Generation X. However, in the years that have followed, notably since the split of the band, the song has been dubbed as one of the greatest rock songs of all time. Origins
Kurt Cobain told Rolling Stone magazine that the song was his attempt at writing a track in the style of fellow rock band, and one he greatly admired, The Pixies; "I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit it. When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily that I should have been in that band— or at least a Pixies cover band. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard." The song was not actually written until Nevermind was already being recorded, and when he presented the bare bones to his bandmates, they branded the track "ridiculous." However, Kurt was adamant and forced the group to play the riff over and over again to drum into them how great it was. And he was right. The song title came from some graffiti; "Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit" which his friend Kathleen Hanna spray painted on his wall following a conversation about anarchism and punk rock by with Kurt thought the slogan had a revolutionary meaning, whilst Hanna actually meant that Kurt simply smelt like the deodorant Teen Spirit. Release
So, the track was released on September 10 1991 and marked the band's major label debut on Geffin Records. It was never intended to be a hit record, but simply to be the base-building alternative rock cut; it was actually anticipated that the follow-up single Come as You Are would be the song that could cross over to mainstream formats. Yet, as campus radio and modern rock radio stations got their hands on the track it was given the airplay it so greatly deserved, and in turn the album began to sell thousands of copies a week, culminating in the album knocking Michael Jackson's Dangerous album from the top spot on the Billboard charts in January of 1992. In the years following Cobain's 1994 death, Smells Like Teen Spirit has continued to garner critical acclaim. In 2000, MTV and Rolling Stone ranked the song third on their joint list of the 100 best pop songs, trailing only Yesterday by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones' (I can't get no) Satisfaction. Lyrics
The lyrics to the track might not be as crystal clear as say, a Girls Aloud song, and were often difficult for listeners to decipher, both due to their nonsensicality and because of Cobain's slurred, guttural singing voice. As the liner notes from the album also emitted any lyrics, many radio stations refused to play it because, quite simply, they didn't know what Kurt Cobain was saying. MTV went as far as to prepare a version of the video that included the lyrics running across the bottom of the screen, which they aired when the video was added to their heavy rotation schedule. The song and it's lyrics were soon accepted to be a teen revolution anthem, which was in part, solidified by the music video which went with the song. What's more, when discussing the song in Michael Azerrad's biography Come As You Are: The Story Of Nirvana, Cobain revealed that he felt a duty "to describe what I felt about my surroundings and my generation and people my age." The book Teen Spirit: The Stories Behind Every Nirvana Song describes "Teen Spirit" as "a typically murky Cobain exploration of meaning and meaninglessness." and Azerrad plays upon the juxtaposition of Cobain's contradictory lyrics (such as "It's fun to lose and to pretend") and states "the point that emerges isn't just the conflict of two opposing ideas, but the confusion and anger that the conflict produces in the narrator—he's angry that he's confused." Azerrad's conclusion is that the song is "alternately a sarcastic reaction to the idea of actually having a revolution, yet it also embraces the idea." I guess though, as much as we try to read into the lyrics and understand the mysterious Kurt Cobain’s thoughts, the simple fact remains; this is one of the greatest songs of all time. It defines what rock music is all about. FemaleFirst - Ruth Harrison