It’s the song that should never have been a hit. The group were a trio of scruffy unknowns, one band member thought it was “ridiculous”, nobody could understand the words, the title made no sense and the main riff sounded like Boston’s “More Than A Feeling”. Yet the sheer intoxicating thrill of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was uncontainable, and as the song stormed MTV and then the mainstream pop charts, it turned Nirvana into reluctant celebrities almost overnight, transforming the musical landscape. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was the sound of a dam bursting as alternative rock became the rage, and record labels swept up every guitar-based band they could find.
The first time Nevermind producer Butch Vig heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, it was on a cassette the band sent him ahead of recording. Vig had initially worked with the band on a set of demos for Sub Pop that had been heavily taped and shared, ultimately finding their way to executives at Geffen via Sonic Youth. After considering some big-name producers, Nirvana decided to ask Vig to record the album and sent him their work in progress before the sessions.
“This tape turned up in the mail,” Vig told Uncut in 2021. “It began with Kurt saying, ‘Hey Butch, we’re going to play you our new song’ and then they kicked into ‘Teen Spirit’. It was a boom box recording with this scratchy guitar and Dave’s drum fill, then sheer distortion and occasionally you could hear Kurt sing ‘hello, hello, hello’. The recording was horrible, but I could make out the hooks and I was excited.”
Kurt Cobain had started “Smells Like Teen Spirit” with the intention of writing the “ultimate pop song”. When Cobain played the guitar part to the rest of the band, it sounded so much like Boston’s “More Than A Feeling” to Krist Novoselic’s ears that the bassist described it as “ridiculous”, but the group then spent hours perfecting the arrangement. Novoselic slowed the whole thing down while drummer Dave Grohl introduced a disco-inspired beat. All three were ultimately credited as co-writers. The band leant heavily into the loud-quiet dynamic of The Pixies, but Cobain’s riff had a magic of its own, while Grohl’s performance gave the song monstrous energy.
It barely mattered that Cobain’s lyrics were hard to decipher apart from the raging chorus: “here we are now, entertain us/I feel stupid and contagious” and the catchy vocal riff of “hello, hello, hello, how low”. Instead, they added to the mystery. When the single was sent to radio stations, some DJs complained it was unintelligible, but ended up playing it anyway. Weird Al Yankovic’s parody put it best: “It’s hard to bargle nawdle zous/with all these marbles in my mouth… We’re so loud and incoherent/boy, this oughta bug your parents”.
What was it about? The title offered a clue. Although the words “Smells Like Teen Spirit” didn’t appear in the song, they did capture the whiff of surly adolescent rebellion the song exuded. Famously, Cobain took the name from graffiti, “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit”, scrawled by a drunken Kathleen Hanna on Cobain’s bedroom wall after the duo had spent an evening vandalising an anti-abortion clinic that presented itself as a counselling service for pregnant teens. Cobain had no idea that Teen Spirit was the name of a new brand of deodorant marketed at teenage girls and that this had become a running joke among Hanna’s bandmates in Bikini Kill. But he did like the phrase, so asked Hanna if he could use it. And while the words “Teen Spirit” never featured in the lyrics, “never mind”, the title of the album, very clearly did.
When Nirvana entered LA’s Sound City studio to record Nevermind, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was one of the first tracks they laid down, helping define the record’s sound of focused, melodic aggression.
“I was dumbfounded,” says Vig. “I got up and started pacing around the room listening to the song. When they finished Kurt asked what I thought. I said it was amazing, play it again. I made some notes to help the arrangement, but it didn’t need a lot of work, there were just a couple of sections that needed trimming. I was blown away by how tight they sounded and how hard Dave hit the drums.”
Vig became even more convinced of the song’s strengths at a gig at LA club Jabberjaw that took place in May 1991, a few days after recording ended.
“It was like a coffee house that held 150 people,” he says. “The place was packed. I asked Dave if I could sit behind him. Jennifer [Finch, L7] and I crawled behind Dave and sat there looking at a room of 150 people who all had their mouths open. They played ‘Teen Spirit’ and the crowd had never heard the song, but went mental. This was the first time I really got an inkling that this band was connecting with people in a way I had not seen before. I got no idea of that from the studio. I knew it sounded good but that doesn’t mean it is going to resonate with anybody else.”
The final element was the video. This was shot by Samuel Bayer and cost between $30,000 and $50,000, cheap for the time. Filmed on a set in Culver City, it featured the band performing the song in a musty, dusty high school gym to an audience of kids, coaxing them into a good old-fashioned teenage riot. It debuted on 120 Minutes, MTV’s slot for alternative music, in September 1991, before moving to regular rotation in October. At a time when alternative rock was still ghettoised, and when the video itself had relatively low production values, this was quite a statement. It earned MTV a new audience and propelled Nirvana into the charts.
This was a shock to Geffen. The label thought “Smells Like Teen Spirit” would be an icebreaker before the release of Nevermind’s second single, “Come As You Are”, which was seen as the one with crossover potential. So when “Teen Spirit” became a US No 6 hit, Nirvana weren’t even in the country, they were touring the UK. Fortunately the song was a hit there too, reaching No 7 and earning the band unforgettable appearances on The Word, which Cobain ended by screaming “Roger Taylor” instead of “a denial”, and Top Of The Pops, where Cobain, protecting his voice before a gig, sang the song in a lower key like a parody of Morrissey.
In these moments, it seemed that Cobain was already tiring of a song that he could see was going to change his life, but such performances only added to the band’s appeal. Later, the band would toy with the audience, or play “More Than A Feeling”, as they distanced themselves from an anthem that had attracted an entirely different audience to the misfits and freaks they identified with.
Cobain would complain that he wrote better songs, but “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had a spectacular magnetism. Few bands have managed to capture the sound of youthful anger, frustration and boredom in such an exciting manner. Like “My Generation” or “Thirteen”, it reflected a mood of generational angst, and these are themes common to teenagers throughout history, ensuring it continues to appeal to young fans today.
“While you weren’t sure exactly what he was singing about, he was touching a generation of people who also felt disillusioned and bewildered and uncomfortable in their own skins,” says Vig. “It tapped into something that you can’t define but the audience immediately understood.”