Here is some background information on "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from songfacts.com : Kurt Cobain: "I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off The Pixies." Cobain wrote this for Nirvana. It came together in a jam session when he played it for the band. Kathleen Hanna, part of the group Bikini Kill, gave Cobain the idea for the title when she spray painted "Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit" on his bedroom wall after a night of drinking and spraying graffiti around the Seattle area. In his pre-Courtney Love days, Cobain went out with Bikini Kill lead singer Tobi Vail, but she dumped him. Vail wore Teen Spirit deodorant, and Hanna was implying that Cobain was marked with her scent. Cobain didn't know it when he wrote the song, but Teen Spirit is a brand of deodorant marketed to young girls. Kurt thought Hanna was complimenting him on his rebellious spirit. Sales of Teen Spirit deodorant shot up when this became a hit, even though it is never mentioned in the lyrics. This was the first "Alternative" song to become a huge hit. Since "alternative" implies lack of popularity, people started referring to the genré as "Modern Rock." It helped ignite the "grunge" craze, characterized by loud guitars, angst-ridden lyrics, and flannel. The group hated the video, but everyone else loved it. The concept was "Pep Rally from Hell." The cheerleaders were strippers. Two days before shooting the video, the band played a show at The Roxy Theater in Los Angeles where they invited everyone to come by the shoot and be in the video. The shoot, which took place at Culver City Studios in California, took 8 hours, so they had no problem getting the kids to come out of the bleachers and form a mosh pit at the end of the day. The video was inspired by the movie and song Rock And Roll High School by the Ramones. At the end of the video, when the band and the teenagers smash the set, it is real. The band and the teenagers had began getting mad after being on set for over 8 hours, and one of the teenagers asked if everyone could destroy the set. The producer said yes, so they destroyed it. The girls who played the cheerleaders in the video were originally supposed to be very fat and unattractive (Cobain's idea). The Director did not like this idea, but still allowed the cheerleaders to have "sleeve" tattoos and the symbol for anarchy on their shirts. Weird Al Yankovic did a parody of this called "Smells Like Nirvana." He shot his video in the same gym with the same janitor, but in his video, the janitor was wearing a tutu. Cobain said he was "flattered" by the parody: "I loved, it, it was really amusing." The distinctive bridge was originally at the end of the song. Producer Butch Vig had them move it to the middle. Tori Amos covered this in 1992. She was on tour when Cobain died in 1994 and performed her version 2 days later at a show in Dublin. Patti Smith also recorded the song for her covers album Twelve. The line "Here we are now, entertain us" was something Cobain used to say when he entered a party. Krist Novoselic: "Kurt really despised the mainstream. That's what "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was all about: The mass mentality of conformity." For a while, MTV refused to air the video. When they finally did, it was on their alternative show 120 Minutes. When the song became a hit, the video went into hot rotation. The album cover shows a baby swimming toward a dollar bill. Cobain and Nirvana bass player Krist Novoselic had seen a documentary on underwater birth and wanted to use that image on the cover. Pictures of babies being born underwater were too gross, so they hired a photographer to take some underwater shots during a water babies class. The baby they chose was Spencer Elden, who was 4 months old at the time. At many of their later shows, Nirvana did not play this. Courtney Love deliberated a long time before allowing this to be used in the 2001 movie Moulin Rouge. Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, who along with Love control the Nirvana catalog, claimed Love was trying to get the title role in the movie, which went to Nicole Kidman. The opening guitar part is a small variation on the main riff of Boston's "More Than A Feeling." This was noted by a Rolling Stone magazine writer years later, but not as an accusation of plagiarism. Influences and similarities like this are everywhere in Rock music.

• published: 07 Aug 2009
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