Smells Like Teen Spirit, is the song that Nirvana is best known for.
It was written sometime in early 1991 by Kurt Cobain, lead singer, founder and frontman of Nirvana. The first ever live preformance of Smells Like Teen spirit was at the OK Hotel in Seattle, Washington. At the time the lyrics weren't complete and there was a lot of changes between this version and the one that featured on the album Nevermind. The most notable change was that the original opening lines were "Come out and play, Make up the rules", a big difference from what would eventually become "Load up on guns, Bring your friends".
Kurt Cobain was known to change is lyrics though, especially for live prefomances, for example, the lyric "Our little group, has always been" was slightly altered to become "Our little tribe, has always been".
Another point to the lyrics is that due to Kurt Cobains slurred, tunefull singing, the lyrics were hard to decipher. A lot of people tried but they kept on getting them wrong, it amused Kurt Cobain that so many people were trying to figure out the lyrics and what they meant.
Here are the lyrics to Smells Like Teen Spirit.
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Many people have tried to figure out what the lyrics actually mean, Some say that it's about a break up, some say it's about a revolution. It amused Kurt Cobain that all these people were trying to figure out what it actually meant.
Kurt Cobain said in an interview with MTV, that a song doesn't have any one overarching theme, a lot of his lyrics came from poetry, or just stuff that spewed out of him at the time, sometimes he would only think of lyrics at the last minute becasue he was so lazy.
The origin of the name basically comes from graffitti, the story goes something like this.
Kathleen Hanna, lead singer of the band Bikini Hill and one of Kurts friends, spray painted "Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit" on his wall. Since the two of them had been talking about anarchy, punk rock and other similar topics recently, he just asumed that it was supposed to be a slogan.
What it actually meant was that Kurt smelled like the deodorant "Teen Spirit" that Tobi Vail ( Kathleen Hannas band mate and Kurts then-girlfriend) wore.
Kurt would later claim that he was unhappy that the song was named after a commercial product, the company who made the deodorant tried to cash in on the connection by making several adverts referencing the song.
In later interviews, Kurt said that he was unhappy that Nirvana was best known for Smells Like Teen Spirit, and that he would have liked Nirvana to be recognized for other songs.
Later on, in the last few Nirvana tours before Kurt Cobain Died, Smells Like Teen Spirit was scrapped from the show.
Basically, my comment is that it is one of the, if not the best song ever written.
I can't upload MP3s so if anyone wants a few version up here I'll have to send them to somebody so they can upload them.
Anyway, what does everybody else think of Smells Like Teen Spirit.