Kurt Cobain’s Isolated Vocal Track From ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ 1991

In 1991, Nir­vana’s Nev­er­mind album explod­ed into main­stream pop­u­lar cul­ture like–as one writer describes it– “a grenade det­o­nat­ing in your car radio.” The album, and the Seat­tle-based grunge rock move­ment it emerged from, was like a boost­er shot of 70s punk atti­tude into heavy met­al, sweep­ing away the hedo­nism and van­i­ty of 80s bands like Qui­et Riot and Möt­ley Crüe. The song that epit­o­mized the new atti­tude, for many, was the open­ing track of Nev­er­mind, “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” with its explo­sive expres­sion of youth­ful alien­ation:

With the lights out, it’s less dan­ger­ous
Here we are now, enter­tain us
I feel stu­pid and con­ta­gious
Here we are now, enter­tain us

The line “Here we are now, enter­tain us” was a joke Nir­vana’s gui­tarist and singer Kurt Cobain liked to call out to break the ice when­ev­er he would arrive at a par­ty. “A lot of times,” Cobain told Rolling Stone in a 1994 inter­view, “when you’re stand­ing around with peo­ple in a room, it’s real­ly bor­ing and uncom­fort­able. So it was ‘Well, here we are, enter­tain us.’ ”

The title of the song was tak­en from some­thing his friend Kath­leen Han­na, lead singer of Biki­ni Kill, had spray paint­ed across his wall: “Kurt Smells Like Teen Spir­it.” Han­na meant that Cobain smelled like Teen Spir­it, a brand of deodor­ant worn by his girl­friend, but Cobain claimed not to know that until much lat­er. Instead, he saw irony and rebel­lion.

You can hear Cobain’s iso­lat­ed vocal track from “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” above.  The song was record­ed at Sound City stu­dios in Van Nuys, Cal­i­for­nia in May of 1991. The band report­ed­ly chose the sec­ond of three takes. The extreme dynam­ics of the performance–soft to loud, apa­thy to rage–were inspired by the music of the Pix­ies. To watch a video of Nir­vana try­ing out an ear­ly ver­sion of “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” before an audi­ence at Seat­tle’s OK Hotel a month before the song was record­ed, see Josh Jones’s Decem­ber post, “The First Live Per­for­mance of Nir­vana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it’ (1991).”

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

Nirvana’s Home Videos: An Inti­mate Look at the Band’s Life Away From the Spot­light (1988)

The Pix­ies “Acoustic Ses­sions”: See the Alt-Rock Stars Rehearse for the 2005 New­port Folk Fes­ti­val