THE STORY OF A SONG: Nirvana - "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

Four brittle chords. A clatter or» the drums, A foot on the overdrive pedal - and the grunge revolution was up and running. The components of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit weren't complex, but that was precisely the point. This was the song that slashed and burned the hair-metal flotsam left over from the "80s, scrawled in a musical language that kids in bedrooms across the globe could, understand.
The song that fired the starting pistol for '90s rock was born in a barn in Tacoma, Washington,, where Nirvana's daily rehearsals would start with a freeform jam, recorded onto a boombox, Many oft he riffs tossed between Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl were steals - "A lot of it was derivative of Pixies and Sonic Youth,” recalls the drummer-but something stuck about the chords that became Teen Spirit. 

As for the title, Smells Like Teen Spirit was less a clarion call to alienated youth, more an in-joke between Washington's alt-rock players. Teen Spirit was the deodorant favoured by Bikini Kill drummer and Cobain's recent girlfriend Tobi Vail; the riot grrrl outfit's front woman Kathleen Hanna had also graffitied the phrase ‘Kurt smells like Teen Spirit' onto the Nirvana leader’s wall. Even so, in light of a rejected lyric – “Who will be the king and queen of the outcasted teens?”- perhaps Cobain had one eye on his demographic.
Teen Spirit was the first song the band played producer Butch Vig. “Ί remember pacing the room”, he says, “going, ‘Holy shit, this sounds so fucking good. Dave didn't have any mics on his kit, and Kurt and Krist had their amps at stun volume, but it just sounded perfect."
Grohl credited Vig for making the take released as a single in September 1991 “sound like Led Zeppelin's IV”. But as Teen Spirit flew to No.7 in the UK, crashed the Billboard Top 10 and swept up swathes of fans with its heavy- circulation punk-high-school video, Cobain felt the first stirrings of a self-created monster. "There was that punk-rock guilt,” says Grohl. "Kurt felt, in some way, guilty that he had done something so many people had latched onto”.