Actors - Smells Like Teen Spirit

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	Actors - Smells Like Teen Spirit

Smells Like Teen Spirit is a song by the American grunge band, Nirvana. It is the first track and first single from their 1991 album Nevermind, and is commonly regarded as the song that brought Nirvana and grunge music to the attention of teenagers around the world.

The song reached #1 for many weeks on charts around the world in 1991. On the Billboard Hot 100, the song reached #6. It was voted best single of the year in The Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll. Sales of the single and album in the United Kingdom decelerated due to an appearance on the BBC's Top of the Pops, during which frontman Kurt Cobain sang in a deliberately low, mournful tone, a protest against the show's requirement that bands must not play their instruments live, and changed the first two lines of the song to "Load up on drugs, kill your friends" (altered from "Load up on guns, bring your friends"). He would later claim it was a tribute to The Smiths frontman Morrissey. This performance can be found on the 1994 home video Live! Tonight! Sold Out!!.

"Oh well, whatever, nevermind"

Much of the song reflects Cobain's depleted views on life, although he maintained that he was a happier person than people thought.

In Heavier Than Heaven, Charles Cross' biography of Kurt Cobain, an argument is made that the song is a reference to Kurt's break-up with Tobi Vail. This argument is backed up by lyrics which were present in earlier drafts, which can be seen in Kurt's Journals, such as "Why don't you cry when I'm away / Oh yeah we want what's best for you" and "Who will be the King & Queen of the outcasted teens".

Nirvana's Nevermind album, on which "Smells Like Teen Spirit" appears, took its title from the name of an album by the Sex Pistols (whom Kurt was very fond of) - Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols. (Some sources also claim that it is a tribute to a 1987 song by the Replacements called "Nevermind".)

Rolling Stone magazine ranked "Smells Like Teen Spirit" the ninth best song of all time. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" won "Best New Artist" and "Best Alternative Group" at the MTV Video Music Awards 1992. In the year 2000 Guinness Book Of World Records - Most Played Video On MTV Europe: "Smells Like Teen Spirit", and in 2002 it was the featured song in an episode of the SBS documentary series, Impact: Songs That Changed The World.

Historical significance

Many consider Smells Like Teen Spirit to be the anthem of the nineties, even, indeed, the anthem of a generation. Released in 1991, the song found itself in a music scene caught in limbo between the theatrical acts of the 80s and an uncertain future, and the teenagers of this era held an attitude reflective of this, somewhere between apathy and rebellion. When Teen Spirit hit the charts during this period, teenagers all over the world, not just America, found in its anarchic energy a perfect rendering of their world views and self-views. The stunning success of the song gave this generation a voice and a message, one that is now idealized by the modern MTV culture. Teen Spirit is also widely considered the definitive Grunge song, and its raging popularity opened the gates for countless other bands of this genre (see also Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains).

Musical qualities and influences

Smells Like Teen Spirit is in the musical key of F minor, and is based around a riff using four power chords (F5-Bb5-Ab5-Db5) with more than a passing similarity to a section of Boston's AOR classic "More Than a Feeling", as well as Blue Öyster Cult's "Godzilla". But the starkest similarity is with a song called "Mr Chips" recorded by Crazy Horse, Neil Young's backing band. Kurt Cobain was a big fan of Young's music.

While melodically and harmonically simple, it features a minimalistic, moody verse with stream of consciousness lyrics rising to a ferocious chorus, and Kurt Cobain's voice showing a range from tuneful melancholy to primal scream.

In a January, 1994 Rolling Stone magazine interview, Kurt, months away from his death, admitted that Smells Like Teen Spirit was an attempt to write a song like those of 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." He also talked about his dislike for the song, mostly because of its success, and how "Drain You", from the same album, was "definitely as good as 'Teen Spirit'."

Origin of name

"" is a U.S. deodorant brand sold by Colgate-Palmolive. Cobain got the song name when friend Kathleen Hanna, lead singer of the riot grrrl punk band Bikini Kill at the time, spray painted "Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit" on his wall. Since they had been talking about anarchy, punk rock and similar topics, Cobain took it to be a slogan in that vein. The meaning, however, was that Kurt smelled like the roll-on deodorant brand that Tobi Vail, Hanna's band mate, and Kurt's then-girlfriend, wore. Cobain claimed that he did not know it was a brand of deodorant, and in retrospect was unhappy that a commercial product was named in the song.

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