Throwback Thursday (9/10/2020)

Today's Throwback Thursday song is one of the most famous songs from the 1990's. An unlikely blockbuster. It's an anthem for those that didn't want an anthem.

On this day in 1991, Nirvana released the first single off of their album Nevermind.

"Smells Like Teen Spirit" was like a kick in the teeth to 1991 music. Combining punk and hard rock and a smear of pop sensibilities, the song rocketed up the charts, took over MTV and gave Generation X something to latch onto, even if they didn't want to.

Cobain, Grohl and Novoselic saw the tune as "the ultimate pop song" and the influence of The Pixies is clearly heard (the soft-loud dynamic). The guitar chords were similar in nature to Boston's "More Than a Feeling" and The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" (just listen closely), while the rhythm section kept everything together perfectly.

Perhaps their producer Butch Vig said it best when he told The Daily Beast in a 2017 interview, “It was a zeitgeist moment, you know? It turned people’s heads. Those records don’t come along very often.”

After listening to the original, check out some of the really cool covers of the song (showing the wide influence the song had on so many). Tori Amos, The Bad Plus, Robert Glasper Experiment and of course "Weird Al" Yankovic.

Did you know: Supposedly, the name came from graffiti Kathleen Hanna of the band Bikini Kill once wrote on the wall of lead singer Kurt Cobain’s hotel room. She wrote “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit” in reference to a deodorant brand that Cobain’s girlfriend at the time wore. Cobain, who didn’t know what Teen Spirit was, was said to have interpreted it as a revolutionary catchphrase and named a song after it.