The Story Behind The Song: Nirvana’s grunge athem ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’
There’s no other single like Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ so wrapped in lauded stature and rock mythmaking, a thunderbolt of a single that gave the band’s frontman exactly the pop heights he was gunning for while spelling the beginning of his downward spiral.
First, there’s the lore. The great rock tapestry will tell you that up until September 1991, punk was ancient history, and in its stead was the hair metal buffoonery and glossy power ballads dominating the MTV corporate machine, hungry for more cartoon spandex. Then, from Seattle’s parted heavens, down descended ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ to unleash the grunge revolution to cast out the likes of Whitesnake and Mötley Crüe to the ether of irrelevance.
It’s a lofty pedestal Kurt Cobain could have done without. The Nirvana frontman knew better, having listened to the Melvins as a high-school teen and his locale’s Pacific Northwest underground names like Wipers. Throughout the 1980s, Cobain was just another of Seattle’s alternative kids playing guitar in the city’s teeming alternative scene, small fry to the Green Rivers, Mudhoneys, Screaming Trees, Skin Yards, and Soundgardens, standing as regional big names when Nirvana first sparked in 1987.
He wasn’t expecting to knock Michael Jackson off the top spot, however. A dizzying five years later, and Nirvana’s sophomore LP, Nevermind, shot to number one on the Billboard 200 and kicked Dangerous into touch. While a simmering alternative surge was swelling to bursting point for anyone paying attention, all it took was any one of the emerging ‘Big Four’ to finally break that grunge dam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam all counting major label records and interest before ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ finally pulled the plug on the hair metal party for good.
When Cobain penned his future anthem, Nirvana was rising steadily among Seattle’s punk community. Joining the city’s Sub Pop Records roster, 1989’s Bleach debut had enjoyed Jack Endino’s raw production, and the ‘Sliver’ single was spinning heavy rotation on college radio.
Yet, beckoning commercial pastures saw Cobain sharpening his popcraft and easing into potential success away from his punk pedigree. Besides, if it was good enough for Sonic Youth! A recent signing to DGC for their Goo prompted Nirvana to take up Geffen’s major label for album number two and bask in the bigger budgets and extensive promotion the bigwigs now offered.
In this new air came the seeds of Nirvana’s true breakthrough. “I was trying to write the ultimate pop song,” Cobain recalled to Rolling Stone in 1994. “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 title had been lingering as a joke since Bikini Kill singer Kathleen Hanna scrawled “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit” with a Sharpie pen on the wall of his house. It sounded good to him, unbeknownst that the slogan came from an in-joke between Hanna and Bikini Kill drummer Tobi Vail as a reference to the cheap deodorant brand. Later in early 1991, Nevermind producer Butch Vig was handed a bunch of rehearsal tapes in preparation for the album sessions at Los Angeles’ Sound City Studios, which crucially featured the genesis of Cobain’s little Pixies pop rip-off.
‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ had been fleshed out enough for its live debut five months before its studio single hit global charts. Needing to raise cash for the trip to Los Angeles to cut the Nevermind record, Nirvana headlined a show at Seattle’s OK Hotel on April 17th, 1991, featuring Bikini Kill and Fitz of Depression as the two openers.
Played last after ‘Verse Chorus Verse’ before their encore, featuring different lyrics and a wonky solo, Nevermind’s future lead single still somehow shines above the rest of the set, no matter how primitive its shape, unveiling a serious sophistication to Cobain’s songcraft and anticipating the next rung of their major label rise.
Cut the next month along with most of the record – ’Polly’ was already in the bag from the 1990 Smart sessions – Nirvana carried on as just another Seattle band, popular enough to support Sonic Youth over in Europe and join the 1991 Reading Festival bill, but hopeful their next big number was going to make a big splash.
Released to the world that September, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and the ensuing Nevermind album would catapult Nirvana as one of the 1990s’ biggest stars, upend rock on one hand while wrap the band in a stultifying mythos they never asked for, a ‘spokesman for Generation X’ pressure that Cobain ultimately wasn’t equipped to ever deal with.
