It’s very rare for a single song to come along and define an entire generation. Usually you have different eras of music. One such era wasn’t just defined by a single song, that song changed the entire recording industry and the youth culture along with it.
Of course I am talking about Nirvana’s seminole hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. To say this song defined my generation is an understatement. It shaped everything from our fashion, vocabulary, culture, society expectations to the way we interacted with one another. Not to mention how it changed MTV from the channel flooded with glam metal and quirky music videos to somber, rock rifts indicting American in the process.
Nirvana burst onto the scene, quite literally, out of no where. Sure they had a local indie following in their hometown of Seattle that pre-dates their dominance of radio and video stations across the country but it was that single hit, that music video, that set the tone for the entirety of the 90s youth culture. Gone were the days of glam rock. Hair metal retired. Bubblegum wouldn’t see a resurgence until Britney Spears came on the scene as the decade came to a close. Grunge was here and it was so much more than a musical movement, it was the heart and soul of the teenagers struggling to find their identity in the decade of MTV and Mountain Dew.
I first heard Smells Like Teen Spirit at a time I wasn’t even into rock. I was a hip-hop and dance girl at an early age. All my recordings were rap groups and dance/pop and electronic groups. My first tape I ever bought was Technotronic’s Pump Up The Jam: The Album. I was raised by MTV and they were known for playing a variety of pop and hip-hop tracks mixed with some hair metal and quirky punk acts. Then Nirvana changed everything.
That song took me and my peers by storm. I bought Nevermind just like everybody else. I didn’t care for the movement it started, most grunge was beyond me but that one song, that one album, gripped me in a way I can’t even put into words. We had our voice. We hard our spokesperson. We had our youth leader. It was finally going to be our world and we were ready to put our mark on it. Nirvana gave us an anthem we could march to. It inspired so many youth.
I never embraced the larger grunge rock scene, I dabbled at best preferring folky alternative like Beck and Cake but I fully embraced the style. I dressed like all the other grungy kids who said we just didn’t give a shit how we looked. Our generation said screw capitalist fashion sensibilities. We opted for comfort over style. That didn’t stop the capitalists from missing the point and trying to market their new grunge-inspired fashion to us, but it was a start.
Whenever I get nostalgic for the 90s I usually turn to a mix of West Coast G Funk. That was my bread and butter. I was fully invested in 90s hip-hop culture. But I would be lying if I didn’t quite often take a detour to revisit Smells Like Teen Spirit every once in a while. If Nirvana never happened, if they had never been a success we never would have gotten acts like Smashing Pumpkins, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, Bush and hell the Beastie Boys never would have given us Sabotage if Grunge hadn’t changed the world. The influence and impact of that one song was felt all across every facet of teen culture in the 90s. Even Nickelodeon embraced it. We owe a lot of our youth to that one song. Pour one out for the late, great grunge pioneer Kurt Cobain. We owe our entire identity to him.
Stephanie Bri 