Smells Like Teen Spirit

Following its release as the lead single from their second album Nevermind in September 1991, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ cemented Nirvana’s position as one of the most important bands of the decade, and ultimately came to define an entire era. With 1.1 billion streams on Spotify, and 1.3 billion YouTube views on the official video alone, the track remains Nirvana’s biggest hit. ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ made its live Irish debut at a fabled gig in Sir Henry’s in Cork in August 1991, just before the success of the single catapulted the band to global fame. But that iconic live show isn’t Nirvana’s only Irish connection – with both the late Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl proudly tracing their roots back to these shores.

Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit (Official Music Video)

The Story Behind The Song

Nirvana started out as the classic rock hopefuls – with big dreams but no real sense of where it might all lead. But that there was something special about them was clear to the fans that showed up at their gigs. Having gained a loyal local cult following, playing at parties around Olympia, WA, they gradually began to build a serious name for themselves. In 1989, they released their debut album, Bleach – which featured Kurt Cobain on vocals and guitar, Krist Novoselic on bass guitar and Chad Channing on drums. They subsequently collaborated with producer Butch Vig and brought in Dave Grohl as their new drummer – and with their star rising, the band caught the attention of DGC Records, who signed them for $287,000.

As they set to work on their second album, Nevermind, Nirvana joined forces once again with Vig. Speaking to Hot Press in 2002, the producer recalled the first time he heard ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ live – during a rehearsal in North Hollywood, before they began recording the album.

“It f****** blew my doors away,” he said. “We set up in this big room and Kurt had a Mesa-Boogie stack that he had been using live, it was super loud, even more painful when the guitar was clean, so sharp sounding. We didn’t put any mikes on the drums, they were still so loud in the room, and when Dave kicked in that first beat: dudda-da-dudda-da-dudda-da-duuum, it was like a bombshell dropped.

“And they played it so f****** intense, and I started pacing around thinking: ‘I-gotta-get-this-on-tape-I-gotta-get-this-on tape-I gotta-get-this-on-tape’, and I sketched some notes. They ran through another one and again it was so intense and so tight and just so powerful, I was like, ‘Okay, that’s cool, let’s just move on to something else’. I felt like if they kept playing it I would ruin it, it sounded so good at that moment.”

The lyrics of the song were inspired by a phrase that Kathleen Hanna – lead singer with the all-female Washington punk outfit, Bikini Kill – wrote on Cobain’s wall: “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit.” Hanna was referring to a brand of deodorant. In a 1994 interview with Rolling Stone, Kurt Cobain said that, when approaching ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, he “was trying to write the ultimate pop song.”

“I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies,” he added. “I have to admit it. When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily that I should have been in that band – or at least a Pixies cover band. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard.”

Nirvana (l to r): Krist Novoselic, Dave Grohl and Kurt Cobain

Kurt Cobain (left) and Dave Grohl (right) – both felt at home in Ireland...

Before the track was officially released as the lead single from Nevermind , Nirvana set off on a mini-tour of Ireland, as Sonic Youth’s support act. They made their live Irish debut in Sir Henry’s in Cork, on August 20, 1991. The gig, which featured a performance of the then-unreleased ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ in front of a half-full venue, has gone on to secure a special place in Irish rock lore. It was named by Hot Press as one of the Greatest Ever Live Gigs in Ireland.

Speaking to Guitar World in 1993, Cobain said that his ancestors originally emigrated from Cork. He noted that he’d “never felt more spiritual” than he did when visiting Cork for the gig at Sir Henry’s.

“It was the weirdest feeling and I have a friend who was with me who could testify to this,” he continued. “I was almost in tears the whole day. Since that tour, which was about two years ago, I’ve had a sense that I was from Ireland.”

Dave Grohl, who played drums on that same trip – and who is now the frontman with the wildly successful Foo Fighters – also claims Irish roots through his mother.

“I knew that we had Irish heritage in our family, but I’d never been,” Grohl said on The Ryan Tubridy Show in 2021. “So the first time I came, I woke up, I walked outside and everyone looked like my mother. I ran back to the phone and I called her and I’m like, ‘Mom - everybody looks exactly like you here!’”

Exactly three weeks after Nirvana’s Sir Henry’s gig, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was released – and, against the odds, it brought Nirvana’s alternative sound firmly into the mainstream. As its music video picked up regular daytime rotation on MTV, the single peaked at No.6 on the US Billboard Hot 100. It was subsequently nominated for two Grammy Awards, for Best Rock Song and Best Hard Rock Performance with Vocal.

Nevermind was also greeted as a major critical success on its release in September 1991 – and it matched that acclaim commercially, reaching No.1 on the US Billboard 200, going on to become one of the best-selling albums of all time. In 2004, the album was added to the National Recording Registry as “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”

Nirvana released their third and final studio album, In Utero, in September 1993. Less than seven months later, Kurt Cobain died tragically by suicide. Following his bandmate’s death, in order to get away from the intense pressure and the terrible sadness which surrounded Cobain’s death, Dave Grohl spent time in the Ring of Kerry, in the South-West of Ireland. During the road trip – during which he encountered a young hitchhiker in a Kurt Cobain t-shirt – he was inspired to face up to his demons, and return to the US, where he formed Foo Fighters.

‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ has entered popular music folklore. Kurt Cobain loved the parody by “Weird Al” Jankovic (released in 1992). It was also the inspiration for ‘Smells Like Queer Spirit’, by Queer-core band Pansy Division. It featured in The Muppets movie (2011) as well as Moulin Rouge (2001) and Black Widow (2021). The original has continued to strike a chord with subsequent generations, thirty years after its release. As well as being included on numerous ‘Greatest Songs of All Time’ lists (music mag Kerrang named it No.1 in its Greatest Singles of All Time list), in 2017, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. As of 2021, the single continues to be streamed regularly – with 1.1 billion Spotify streams. The official music video, meanwhile, has garnered 1.3 billion views on YouTube.

It is – and will forever remain – one of the greatest and most widely loved rock 'n' roll classics of the final decade of the 20th Century.