Understanding Smells Like Teen Spirit

With the lights out, it's less dangerous.

If you were to write a list of the most historically important rock songs, odds are Smells Like Teen Spirit would be in the top 10. As the vanguard of the grunge revolution, Nirvana's breakthrough hit set the stage for the reinvention of rock music in the '90s, and it remains an iconic example of the sound that shaped my childhood. And it all started with a drunken scribble on Kurt Cobain's bedroom wall.

Huge thanks to our Elephant Club members:

Susan Jones
Jill Jones
Duck
Howard Levine
Len Lanphar
Kevin Wilamowski
Warren Huart
Ken Arnold
Elaine Pratt
William (Bill) Boston
Chris Prentice
Jack Carlson
Christopher Lucas
Andrew Beals
Dov Zazkis
Hendrik P
Thomas Morley
Jacob Helwig
Kelly Christoffersen
Davis Sprague
Donal Botkin
Stephen Cook
b-rom
Hendrik Stüwe
Dan Bonelli
Kevin Boyce
Darius Rudominer
Damien Fuller-Sutherland
Luke
Ian Seymour
Dhruv Monga
Ken Jones
Obadiah Wright
Carlos Rendon
Kylie McInnes
Jody
Neil Moore
PhilRosas
Reiji Kobayashi
Catherine Berry
Matt Ivaliotes
OrionWolfie
Laurence T Maloney
Oliver Marchand
Kai
Chris Davis
Liz Webb
Luke Klima
Fred Kroon
HardScale
Chris Piro
Matt Robbins
Ryan Evans
Shanta Kaneshiro
Chris Burgess
Leigh VanHandel
Brandon B. Roderick
Aaron Boodman
Timothy Halloran
Leo Bellantoni
Steven Fines

And thanks as well to Henry Reich, Gene Lushtak, Eugene Bulkin, Logan Jones, Oliver, Anna Work, Adam Neely, Rick Lees, Dave Mayer, CodenaCrow, Arnas, Caroline Simpson, Michael Alan Dorman, Blake Boyd, Charles Gaskell, Trevor Sullivan, Tom Evans, David Conrad, Ducky, Chris Connett, Kenneth Kousen, h2g2guy, W. Dennis Sorrell, Andrew Engel, Peter Brinkmann, Michael Mol, naomio, Alex Mole, Betsy, Tonya Custis, Dave Shapiro, Jacopo Cascioli, Rafael Martinez Salas, Walther, Graeme Lewis, Jake Sand, Jim Hayes, Scott Albertine, Evan Satinsky, Conor Stuart Roe, ZagOnEm, Dragix PL, רועי סיני, Kottolett, Brian Miller, Pamela O'Neill, Thomas Morgan, Mark James, Adam Ziegenhals, Mark, Amelia Lewis, sonicolasj, William Merryman, Ryan Mayle, Justin St John-Brooks, DialMForManning, Matthew Moore, JD White, Andrew Wyld, Joe Johnston, A Devoted Servant of the Holy Water Bottle, vivi mouse emoji, Claymore Alexander, gunnito, Graham Orndorff, Daniel Sim, Joel LaRosa, Drunk Wookiee, Douglas Anderson, Foreign Man in a Foreign Land, Vigilance Deadname, Boomer Dell, Taylor Malik, Paul Tanenholz, Tom, William Christie, Joyce Orndorff, Stephen Tolputt, Patterner, Messier42, Bradley Crowley, Mark Mitchell Gloster, Andy Maurer, William Spratley, Samuel Ollesh, Don Jennings, Cormag81, Derek Hiemforth, Bryan, Mikeyxote, Milan Durnell, Dan Whitmer, Thel 'Vadam, Mireille C, N Zaph, David Dynes, M3RK Chaos Official Patreon page, Kenneth Boardwine, Peter Golbus, Ceri Williams, Marc Testart, Carlfish, Peter, Michael Morris, Bill Owens, Stephanie Miller, Martin Romano, George Burgyan, Kyle Kinkaid, Belinda Reid, Matthew Soddy, Mike Wyer, DraconicDon, John W Campbell, StellarDrift, Isaac Hampton, Jimmy2Guys, Megan Oberfield, acefusti138, morolin, An Oni Moose, Ken Birdwell, Blue 5alamander, Panda, Cliff Hudson, griffin cofell, Olivia Herald, Donnie, Macy Allen, doug lute, Patrick McKenna, or dahan, Ethan Savaglio, Robert Bailey, Deirdre Saoirse Moen, and Elizabeth Reckers! Your support helps make 12tone even better!

Also, thanks to Jareth Arnold!

[tone]

Some additional thoughts/corrections:

1) As I understand it, Hanna and Cobain were the only ones there when they vandalized the pregnancy crisis care center (basically a clinic set up to draw in women seeking abortions and then talk them out of it with misleading information, in case you were wondering what that was about.) and then Grohl joined up with them later when they went back to Cobain's place. I simplified the narrative a bit for the video because those details weren't important to my actual point.

2) Going back and looking- at More Than A Feeling in the context of this song, I was surprised to find that they actually do change chords on beat 3 of the first bar, the just pull it back in the second. It's actually an almost entirely different riff. I suspect if Nirvana hadn't made the connection themselves, no one else would've.

3) I'm not 100% sure there are kicks on the beats in the fill for Burn Rubber On Me. I hear them, and it'd make sense for disco, but most drum covers on YouTube only put kicks on the offbeats so maybe I'm wrong. Not super relevant to my point, but wanted to clarify in case I'd made a mistake.

4) In retrospect it might've been a good idea to point out that the quiet section bass doesn't actually have the pull-chord syncopation in it. I don't really have anything much to say about that beyond "it reduces the energy level" which I already said about other parts of the section, but it's still a true thing.

5) In the specific instance of the verse vocals I used, he's pretty sharp on the low G, to the point where it might sound like he's actually just flat on an Ab. Looking at the rest of the verses I'm pretty sure that's unintentional, and I wanted to stick with the first statement 'cause otherwise I'd have to include an explanation for why I wasn't.

6) Also, technically, he does hit the G as the bass drops to a C, so I suppose it is sort of a chord tone, but again I don't view that C as implying a change in harmony.

7) The chords in the layered guitar part aren't actually _completely_ unrelated. The first one is the same, the middle two are built on the perfect 5th of the underlying harmony, and the last one is nominally the same again although he does some decorative stuff to prevent it from being identical. So they overlap a bit, but the distortion is so strong that even that winds up feeling pretty messy. This also probably explains why it's so hard to hear in the mix: By keeping the part quiet, it kinda just sounds like overtones to the main guitar part, so my ears are struggling to separate it out into its own distinct part.

[pinflan]

I've always really respected how open Kurt was about his influences. I think it says a lot about him that he got this sudden, unexpected, worldwide fame and he used it to promote lesser-known acts that he loved.

[gabrielmalta]

"He acknowledges that he knows where you want him to go, but he pretty clearly doesn't want to be there" sums up Kurt and Nirvana perfectly tbh

[gearandalthefirst]

I'm so glad you included the backstory (and Hanna's denial of the "scent marking" story). I'm from the PNW, the ties between Riot Grrrl and Grunge are so obvious when you know the scene but a lot of people don't acknowledge it.

[Sam_on_YouTube]

I've always loved that origin story. The fact that Cobain didn't know what Teen Spirit was until after he released the song is priceless. Reminds me of the name Breakfast at Tiffany's. The author, Truman Capote, knew what Tiffany's was. But it was based on an overheard conversation from someone who didn't. They thought Tiffany's sounded like a nice place for breakfast. That inspired the creation of the Holly Golightly character.

[zbr]

I think I speak for all of the loyal 12tone viewers when I say this has been a time coming, and I thank you for finally breaking down THE best song of the 90s!

[krisfrederick]

Nirvana broke into "More Than A Feeling" at the Reading Festival 92' before playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" acknowledging this, and it's hilarious. "I wanted to write the ultimate pop song." Well done, Kurt.

[fouyuck]

This is one of the first songs I learned on drums. It’s still so fun to play and I’m thankful of this track for teaching me how to play

[pantonec]

THANK YOU for mentioning and playing the buried guitar in the choruses. I've felt like I heard a guitar with a chorus effect on it in there for a while now but couldn't find anyone mentioning it, so figured I was hearing ghosts. Good to know my ears did not deceive me.

[wesleybrehm]

You inspired me to pursue a career in music during the pandemic. I giggled way more than I probably should have when you mentioned a motif and used the jaws doodle to represent it at 16:06. I'm always impressed by your subtle but witty doodles. You rock!

[ChatookaMusic]

The focus brought to the "here we are now" line reminds me of a nationsquid video I watched about the Beatles and the growth of teen culture around them, and in that light its hard not to read the line as a sort of demand aimed at a culture that tends to blame teenagers themselves for being what they are; You created us, you made us what we are, now take responsibility for it. Here we are now, entertain us.

[DanielHuschert]

Ok, as a non-native English speaker I probably don’t get most of your puns, but drawing a sink to illustrate ‘sync’opation is one of the most hilarious ones yet… 🙈😂

[silverXnoise]

To be fair, from an electronics engineering perspective, distortion isn’t much more complex than that. Thanks for making these, and for highlighting the literal soundtrack to my early/mid 1990s youth.

[dannymars]

that explanation @ 18:00 of those inharmonic guitar stems really helps to understand Nirvana’s thrashy guitar sounds. Awesome stuff

[aisounddesign]

Of all the Nirvana tracks Teen Spirit has the most textural and environmental variation and is also the most produced. As you show here: solo chords, full band with distortion, drum/bass w/ vox and arp, "Hello" section w/ layered vox, full band with panned gtrs. and verbed vox, and the turn-around "yeah" riff that breaks the key and the loop. For a simple "punk" song it's actually quite savvy and quite a production. No other Nirvana track has this much variation and is probably one of the reasons why it is so successful. If you think of the track as being built upon the bass tone, it's really more 80s new romantic than Boston and The Pixies, which gives it that extra moodiness (and then it kicks your ass); much like a dramatic arch: filled with tension and release, conflict and climax and that oh so necessary pinch of chaos that AI's will never truly compute.

[noahbones]

16:55 im glad someone finally mentioned the 2 hidden guitar tracks. They are definitely burried in the mix a bit but they come up in level now and then. Pretty genius actually, adds all kinds of overtones and such. These hidden guitar are actually on the same tracks as the feedback before the solo, the rhythm guitar for the solo, and also the feedback at the end of the song. Its most noticable at the first post-chorus when they move the levels up. its also pretty noticably at the end of the song.

[J-Hell]

This song is lodged in my soul. Two notes and I was back at university again.

Thank you for waiting until you accumulated so much experience and thank you for taking all the time you needed to analyse it.

[lightaces]

The idea that "untrained" musicians don't know theory is nonsense - they just learn it more haphazardly, and don't have the same language "trained" musicians have - but you don't make music seriously without having some kind of frame work to build upon.

[louisaruth]

it has been forever since listening to nirvana... i guess bc the older i get, the more kurt's suicide makes sense and i would rather focus on fighting for a world worth living in. thanks for reminding me why i used to like grunge so much

[aliquidcow]

I think the interesting thing about analysing this song is that for a lot of people it's the first song they learn on guitar, and at that point you're maybe not used to paying so much attention to the details in a song (e.g. the way the guitar riff is played slightly differently at different times, or some of the ways that the bass isn't just playing the root notes). It was only coming back to this song more than twenty years later when a friend wanted me to teach him the bass parts that I came to it with a much more experienced ear and realised that there was more to it than a very young me had heard.

Also, regarding that delayed kick hit on the first beat of the bar, I always think of this kind of thing as more like holding the last beat of the previous bar for slightly longer. To me it has the feel of like raising a stick up in the air in order to slam it down with more force, which I think it why it gives it that sense of impact.