The Nirvana song Kurt Cobain said was “close to a Boston riff”
By the 1990s, rock music was crying out for something new. The glam rockers and hair metal heroes had had their day, and the youth longed for a fresher sound, for something cooler that they could claim as their own. Enter grunge. Spawning largely from Washington, the genre pushed alternative guitar music into muddier spheres, filling dingy, dark underground venues with equally dingy strums and dark lyricism. At the centre of this new movement was a band called Nirvana.
Led by a new kind of frontman in Kurt Cobain, the trio emerged as the most successful band in the grunge scene, winning audiences over with their unapologetic lyrics and thunderous drums, injecting new life into rock music. Teens were enamoured with their new, cool sound. But hidden just beneath those distorted guitars and dark themes were unexpectedly catchy choruses and classic riffs.
Nirvana had mastered the balance of edge and commercial appeal, leading songs like ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and ‘Come As You Are’ to earn surprising chart success. When he was writing, Cobain was, of course, influenced by the alternative rockers who came before him. He borrowed heavily from Pixies, from their constant shifts between loud and quiet, but he also set out to write pop songs.
This is particularly true of Nirvana’s signature hit, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, which was released in 1991. Speaking with Rolling Stone about the inception of the iconic track, Cobain remembered, “I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit it [smiles].” Cobain even suggested that he resonated with Pixies’ music so much that he believed he should have been in the band.
But Cobain was born just a little too late to join Black Francis and Kim Deal in their alt-rock adventures, so he created his own. On ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, in particular, he infused the influence of Pixies’ dark and dynamic style with something that would be slightly more palatable to the masses: a “clichéd riff” he suggested was “close to a Boston riff or ‘Louie, Louie’.”
According to Cobain, Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic deemed the guitar part “ridiculous” when the frontman first presented it to him, but that ridiculous riff would soon sit at the centre of one of the most iconic alternative rock songs ever created. By hiding the Boston-style riff under layers of distortion and tales of adolescence, Cobain turned a classic, catchy guitar part into something cool and fresh.
Boston’s hard rock sound was never considered to be as cool as Nirvana’s grunge approach, but they both worked upon the same premise: great riffs that would capture listeners far and wide. Cobain just took the initiative to bury this catchiness under musical murkiness, convincing the kids that it was far cooler than the rock music that preceded it.
Nirvana’s commercial success owed a lot to this balance between the commercial and the cult. Their melodies were radio-friendly, verging on pop music at times, but this element of their sound was always concealed with grungey noise, guitar distortion and Dave Grohl behind the drums. ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was close to a Boston riff, and just as catchy, but it managed to seem far cooler than any Boston track by adding these grunge elements.
