What was the last song by a band to outsell ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’?
Every now and again, a rupture comes along that breaks the linear plodding of pop culture. In the 1990s, that was ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, a mammoth anthem that launched Nirvana to manic heights and dragged grunge along with them.
But since then, the great vastness of the internet seems to have smothered those ruptures. Sure, after Nirvana, the likes of Slipknot caused a commercial stir, The Strokes certainly made waves, Arctic Monkeys sealed a record-breakingly fast selling debut, but not much competes with the sustained seismic event of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’.
The late, great David Bowie even predicted this back in 1999 in the wake of Nirvana’s boom and the dawning of he internet’s influence on society. The Starman who had seen lofty heights himself said that the need for totemic stars was being dissolved. “Now it’s all sub-groups and genres. It’s a communal kind of thing.”
This was further ratified by the futurist professor, Thomas Fey, who said, “Pop culture, once a powerful unifying force of shared references that bridged generations and communities, seems to have fragmented into countless niche silos.” That seems starkly apparent: how many people get their culture from big mainstream sources these days?
So, with that in mind, it is perhaps unsurprising that very few songs by bands have hit the same heights as ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ in the years since. And with reference points scattered onto personal feeds, there’s every chance you might not have even heard of the songs that have.
Have you heard of the modern rock songs that have outsold ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’?
Released back in 1991, the classic Nirvana track has shipped a whopping 16.91million certified units. The actual figure likely far outstrips this when you take into account bootlegs, illegal downloads and so on. However, that near-17m is still more than enough to make it the third best-selling single of the 1990s, behind only ‘Candle in the Wind, 1997’ and ‘All I Want for Christmas’.
Since then, we have seen the era of the marketable pop star develop. These are far easier to market than alternative bands who sit in their “niche silos”. So, while the likes of Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus and Eminem might have outsold ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, only four singles by recognisable ‘bands’ have (and they’re hardly rock).
The first arrived in 2009, a whole 18 years after ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, and put it this way, while it might be a few folk’s guilty pleasure, it certainly wouldn’t have been Kurt Cobain’s cup of tea. The answer: ‘Hey, Soul Sister’ by Train. While technically a band, the song, in fairness, does have all the same tenets of a solo act like Jason Mraz. But it did fetch sales figures of 17.9m.
Then, like London buses, two arrived at once in 2012. Once again, they’re both pretty shite, too. Both ‘Sweater Weather’ by The Neighbourhood and ‘Radioactive’ by Imagine Dragons sealed 24.1m sales. This makes them among the very best-selling songs of all time. And it amplifies the sense of cultural division we now see since the dissolution of any recognisable ‘mainstream’ that there’s no way my father will have heard of either of them.
Nevertheless, Imagine Dragons remain the biggest commercial ‘rock’ band of the century so far. They’re simply huge with the Monster Energy crowd. And it comes with a smattering of indicative irony that the only song to eclipse them by a band was fuelled by a TikTok trend.
The best-selling song by a band since ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is: ‘Heat Waves’ by Glass Animals, fetching 24.9m certified sales. If you haven’t heard of it, then don’t worry, you’ve not been living under a rock, you’ve just been living on a different feed.
