This Final Project Smells like Teen Spirit
Final essay for my freshman year dean's seminar class, Entertainment Nation (footnotes excluded)
Prof. Samantha Silver
Entertainment Nation
9 May 2024
Can you smell it?
It was the beginning of a new decade and the United States of America found itself in a state of utter stagnation. Dealing with the long overdue end of the Cold War, trying to hold on and maintain a damaged economy, and facing the ideological animosity of a whole new generation of kids, both the government and the “baby boomer” generation braced themselves for a cultural revolution led by scrawny, baggy-clothed musicians that took the whole nation by storm. The September 30th, 1991, MTV release of the instantly iconic music video for Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” or the essential encapsulation of the generation-defining “grunge” movement of the 90s, initiated the apogee of a new counterculture and marked a before and after in American entertainment history.
The transition from the 1980s to the '90s in the United States was marked by economic recession, the inhumane devastation and governmental handling of AIDS, and the passing of the 40-year threshold of a fugazi nuclear war against the Soviet Union. Those in control, primarily of the “baby boomer” generation, governed through conservative political ideals in hopes of returning the nation to glory. Those being controlled, specifically the adolescents of the so-called “Generation X”, apathetic of institutionalized education, fatigued of war, culturally isolated, and in need of social revitalization, despised the world that their parents had left for them. As it seems to be the historical norm, the youth turned to art, in this case to rock music, resembling the 60s counterculture that characterized their parents’ social revolution. Since its genesis, rock has been a medium of political subversion and “associated with freedom, youth, and thus deemed a threat to a responsible and respectable way of life.” This time was no different; however, in the musical sense, there did exist an intergenerational dissonance. This was a type of rock that broke the barriers and defied what had come to be socially accepted in years past.
Out of the depths of Washington State’s garages and college radio, the “grunge” movement was born. Basking in authenticity and expressive forms of cultural identity, grunge’s “70s-influenced, sleepy, staggering, and drunken slowed-down punk music” perfectly mirrored the attitude of the personal angst of the youth. Through the belief that anyone, no matter the money, connections, or even talent, could produce music, independent labels like Sub Pop allowed up-and-coming bands like Green River, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, and the antiauthoritarian paradigm of grunge, Nirvana, to release the records that defined the newly-formed “Seattle sound.” Said sound became the “soundtrack to this suspended moment in time.” These bands and their iconic singers became the voices of an “oft-labeled, seldom understood” generation. They “reaffirmed their dedication not just to a musical culture but to a world community…” and were able to unify those who were a lost cause. As the years went by, the political climate worsened, and grunge was gradually becoming a nationally known music genre, Nirvana, formed by Aberdeen, Washington natives, Krist Novoselic and Kurt Cobain, alongside drummer Dave Grohl, was scheduled to release their sophomore album “Nevermind” on September 24, 1991, and with it, six days later, the MTV release of the music video for the lead single “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” A moment that changed music history and American pop culture forever.
Initially, the song was not meant to be the cultural phenomenon that it ended up becoming. Cobain actually had the bare-bones song structure in the back of his mind as a throwaway, treating it as just another clichéd riff. It wasn’t until Butch Vig, the main producer of “Nevermind”, heard the instrumental paired with Kurt’s primal, war-cry-like vocal performance that the band realized that they had something serious at their disposal. “It fucking blew my mind. I kept trying to figure out excuses to get them to play the song again.” Although Cobain might have acted nonchalantly about the whole thing; from the title— which was inspired by the moment when Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna, drunkenly sharpied on his bedroom wall the phrase “Kurt Cobain smells like Teen Spirit” alluding to a popular deodorant brand at the time— to the seemingly gibberish lyrics, that, in reality, are a deep dive into Cobain’s introspective demons in lines like; “I’m worse at what I do best/And for this gift I feel blessed… I feel stupid and contagious” and the adolescent apathetic rage of the time, with the cynical “Here we are now, entertain us,” it was all an intentional critique of modern society and pop culture. Recalling the teenage years as riddled with self-destruction brought upon by the vulnerability and alienation that characterized Gen-X adolescence, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was a testament to the times; an “anthem of powerless rage and betrayal.”
If that wasn’t enough, the song was accompanied by what is now acclaimed to be one of the most important music videos of all time. Conceptualized by Kurt himself and inspired by the 1979 films Over The Edge and Rock’N’Roll High School, the video, first presented on MTV, showcases the band wearing baggy and worn-out clothes performing the song in a foggy high school gymnasium full of bored teenagers while a row of cheerleaders in anarchist uniforms dance to the chaos. As the song progresses and Cobain’s delivery gets more and more violent, the teenage audience does so too, forming an impromptu “pep rally from Hell'' composed of nerds, jocks, and weirdos alike, and causing absolute mayhem in the school’s gym. Funnily enough, although the final product rang true to Kurt’s initial concept, the video’s director, Sam Bayer, did not agree with the idea. He and Cobain got into a heated argument after Bayer ordered the extras to remain calm and not go batshit crazy; however, Kurt being Kurt, he compared the director to Napoleon and encouraged the kids to trash the set as if they were in a real punk rock show; “It was just like we were in school and he was the mean teacher.” In hindsight, Bayer is now thankful that the student riot became the last minute of the video, since, arguably, it’s what ties the whole video together. The video was the key element in the song becoming a worldwide sensation and incited the feeling of revolution and sense of belonging that the teenagers of 90s America so desperately searched for.
“The song was a call to consciousness,” said Novoselic, the band’s bassist. “The government was conservative and the culture was stagnant. This song was the sledgehammer that came along and destroyed it all … It changed the world. And, with it, ourselves.”
After the cultural explosion that was “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, Nirvana, having reached the top of the charts alongside Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden, invaded the heartland of traditional Americana, and grunge finally got its seat at the table. From the cities to suburbia, kids all over the nation found their calling, their way of “sticking it to the man.” They saw themselves in the internal conflicts and angst of the singers that defined the era. Kurt Cobain, Donita Sparks, Layne Staley, Eddie Vedder, Courtney Love, Chris Cornell, etc., became the gods of the middle-class youth. Grunge quickly evolved from a music genre to a lifestyle that involved fashion, political ideology, and social behavior. Ripped jeans, baggy tees, and beat-up Converse and Doc Martens became the uniform that defined this iconic style. Appearance was disregarded, but every detail was intentional. Grunge became a medium of acceptance “intended to show identification with street people and other marginalized groups,” especially the LGBTQA+ community, and a way for college students and “minimum-wage slaves” to bask in the cynicism of their condition, a newly found sexual awareness, the savagery of rock ‘n’ roll, and the desire to be done with it all. The mainstream was redefined, and parents did not understand it. “Cool” was cool again.
Unfortunately, just like all things in life, this mainstream success had its downside. The psychological ramifications of fame, internal conflicts with authenticity, and the already existing mental struggles of some of these artists prevented them from truly enjoying the accolades of their music careers. The most infamous example of this powerlessness is, of course, Kurt Cobain, who at the later stages of his career had reached a practically legendary status, but suffered from a grave depression that he was ultimately unable to escape from. He hated the success that he so obviously craved and experienced that he felt a lack of authenticity in himself, as if he succumbed to the vicious cycle of the mainstream that he strongly criticized throughout his career. For those who listened and keep doing so to this day, Kurt and his art served as vessels for their search for self-authenticity, one that Cobain was unable to reach. However, in the most morbidly authentic act of them all, on April 5, 1994, less than a year after the release of Nirvana’s last album, In Utero, Kurt Cobain was found dead from a self-inflicted, drug-induced shotgun blast to the head, marking both the death of grunge’s maximum exponent and the death of the movement in itself. From then on, Nirvana was mythologized into history, the remaining Seattle grunge bands started to decline in popularity, Dave Grohl founded the Foo Fighters, and those kids who were once lost in life, eventually found themselves on the way thanks to the indomitable force that was, is, and forever will be, the teen spirit.