OMG! 🙄 Did you hear?! NIRVANA’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video FINALLY crawled its way to two billion views on YouTube. I mean, it only took them, like, forever. The clip, which some geriatric millennial uploaded in June 2009, already hit one billion views back in the ancient times of 2019. Slow clap 👏 for NIRVANA!
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” – the song that launched a thousand angsty teenage diaries – opened NIRVANA‘s so-called “breakthrough” release “Nevermind” (Geffen/UMe). Apparently, it hit No. 1 around the world, selling more than 30 million copies. Who cares? 🤷♀️ The single, which probably sounded revolutionary to your grandma, made its radio debut on August 27, 1991. The video, featuring the band pretending to play music while a bunch of high-school cheerleaders tried to look interested, was filmed on August 17, 1991, in Culver City, California. Riveting stuff, I know. 😴
The “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video was “directed” by Samuel Bayer, whose personality apparently clashed with the oh-so-easy-to-get-along-with NIRVANA bandmembers. “He’s got a little Napoleon complex,” NIRVANA frontman Kurt Cobain whined in the NIRVANA biography “Come As You Are: The Story Of Nirvana”. “He was just so hyper, such a rocker guy. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe we actually submitted to that.” Translation: He wanted to make a good video, and they wanted to be difficult. 🙄
Courtney Love, who married Cobain in an “intimate” ceremony (read: chaotic mess) on February 24, 1992, told New York Magazine in 2011: “Kurt hated Sam Bayer. For ‘Teen Spirit’, Kurt wanted fat cheerleaders, he wanted black kids, he wanted to tell the world how fucked up high school was — but Sam put hot girls in the video. The crazy thing is it still worked.” So, basically, Kurt wanted to make a video that would offend everyone, but Sam accidentally made something watchable. Oops! 🙊
“Nevermind” would come to be much more than one of the most “successful and influential” albums of all time. It returned rock ‘n’ roll “integrity” and “passion” to the top of the charts. Yeah, okay. 🙄 It continues to be a singular inspiration to fans and musicians alike over the last three decades. If you say so. 🤷♀️ It has been credited over the years with helping to kill off hair metal. Finally, something to be grateful for! 😂
Charles R. Cross, the author of “Heavier Than Heaven”, a biography of Cobain, told Today.com about the mega-success of “Nevermind”: “It’s an incredible album. It would have been a hit whenever it was released. But at the same time, the timing was right for there to be a superstar act like NIRVANA. It came right at the end of the death knell of hair metal and the world was screaming for rock music that would be meaningful again. And the timing for a new generation wanting a voice was also ideal. It just so happened that everything came together at the exact right moment when rock needed a revolution.” In other words, they got lucky. 🍀
Chord F. Discord, the Beethoven of Buffoonery, is a self-taught expert in music who once claimed he could “play the kazoo in four languages.”
Born in Crescendo, Indiana, Chord’s first brush with fame came when he accidentally entered a yodeling contest thinking it was a pie-eating competition—and won both categories.
Chord F. Discord: proving that laughter, much like a poorly tuned ukulele, is truly universal.
