Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Reworked in Major Key, Becomes a Cheerful Pop Song


Last year, Josh Jones took a good look at what hap­pens when Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” gets shift­ed from minor to major key, and Radiohead’s “Creep” moves in the oppo­site direc­tion. Sud­den­ly, two songs you know so well sound so dif­fer­ent.

Over the week­end, “Sleep Good,” a psy­che­del­ic pop band from Austin, TX,  took their own whack at shift­ing Nir­vana’s 1991 song into major key. And the result will catch you a bit off-guard. A grunge anthem abrupt­ly turns into a cheery pop song, and the bop­ping cheer­lead­ers in the orig­i­nal music video strange­ly fit into the mood of the adapt­ed song.

You can find a ver­sion of “Teen Sprite,” as the song has been dubbed, over on Sound­cloud.

via Uncrate

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Relat­ed Con­tent

Watch Nir­vana Per­form “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Just Two Days After the Release of Nev­er­mind (Sep­tem­ber 26, 1991)

Hear Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Shift­ed from Minor to Major Key, and Radiohead’s “Creep” Moved from Major to Minor

1,000 Musi­cians Play Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Live, at the Same Time


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Comments (2)
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  • frank says:

    No offense to any­one who worked on this but to me it sounds quite hor­ri­ble :)) Not sure it’s an inter­est­ing to move to go from minor to major… The oppo­site on the oth­er end can be quite amaz­ing, like when A Per­fect Cir­cle cov­ered Lennon’s Imag­ine, it brought such a weird entire dif­fer­ent mood than the orig­i­nal, a very down one but in a good way, in a beau­ti­ful way…

  • Tom Diderot says:

    There’s a small band called Orange Way who made a major chords hap­py cov­er back in 2008. It’s been com­ment­ed by the French Mag­a­zine Longueur d’on­des ;)

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