One Song - Nirvana “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

This time on one song: Mosquitos and libidos. That’s right, Diallo and LUXXURY are off on a sonic adventure with Nirvana’s 1991 grunge rock juggernaut, Smells Like Teen Spirit. Hear why Diallo thinks it’s one of the most important songs in pop culture, and strap in for some rarely heard Kurt Cobain vocal stems. There’s also a lot of talk about blap-um-blap-um drum patterns.  Artist: Nirvana Album: Nevermind Released: 1991 Genres: Grunge, Alternative rock, Hard rock Featured songs: More Than a Feeling by Boston, Godzilla by Blue Oyster Cult, Gigantic by Pixies, Early in the Morning by The Gap Band, Burn Rubber on Me by The Gap Band, Get Off Your Ass and Jam by Funkadelic, Me Myself and I by De La Soul, (Not Just) Knee Deep by George Clinton, Ain't Gonna Hurt Nobody by Brick, Funky Cold Medina by Tone-Loc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, D'Ollar Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ, and songwriter Luxury, also known as the guy who says interpolation on TikTok. And this is one song. Man, I am so excited for this one. Smells Like Teen Spirit is a mainstay at the top of all those 100 greatest songs of all time lists. It's got over a billion streams on Spotify. And personally, for me, it represents a crucial moment in the history of pop music. We're going to be getting into all of that, including the flannel, the grunge, and all the mosquitoes, albinos, and even our libidos.

This is one song. So, Diyala, do you remember the first time you heard Nirvana's? Smells like Teen Spirit. Yeah, man. I was of the age where, like, after school, I would go home and I would watch MTV to find out, like, what music I should be buying on cassette. And you're a cassette guy? I was a cassette guy. Because, you know, I like to, I live in Atlanta driving community.

I would drive around. I had my cassette deck in my 84 Honda Accord. I was so proud it had four doors. It had four doors. I was so happy I did have to be that guy with the compact where it's like you have to lift up the seat and let people in the back. I was like, no, you got your own door, Joe and Rashid. Y'all let y'all selves in, you know, like I was very proud of that. But I remember watching the video by Samuel Fier.

I, you know, I was like a person who early on was like, you know, because MTV listed the director on there. And I was like, wow, this video is cool. And it was like a bunch of really rock dudes in the stands. and they were like the cheerleaders with the anarchy symbol on their thing. And then this song came on. And, you know, like nowadays, like everybody gets content on their own time. But this is still in a time when, you know, there was such a thing as like a water cooler moment. We didn't have water coolers in school.

Obviously couldn't afford water in my neighborhood. But we would get at lunch and we would talk about stuff. I'll never forget the day after that song, we all heard it. I feel like the same day. The next day at lunch we were all like, because we were all like, it's a, guys, it's an all-black, you know, school environment. I always say there were only two non-black kids in my school. There was Tran Lee and there was Jorge Ramos.

I thought there was a Josh too. There were three, you're right. Jorge Ramos. And. Don't forget Josh. Oh, my gosh. Joel Blesinger. So we had literally one Asian kid, one Latino kid and one white kid.

Long story short, I'm sitting at a table with all my friends, all of them black. And they were just like, yo, did you see that band Nirvana yesterday? And we were all like, yo, that song goes. We didn't say goes hard. because that wasn't expression back then. I'm sure we were like, yo, that's dope. You know, like, we all liked that song.

It felt different. Like, nobody came to school talking about. You hear that new white snake song? No, no, no, no. That was never a thing. For some reason. Not a lot of Motley crew fan. And dotage.

Exactly. For some reason, that song and Kurt's whole thing just connected with people all outside the rock community and the Seattle, Pacific Northwest. Like, we all felt it. We all felt that song. I can't even describe

how much that song meant. But to me, that song still symbolizes how one song can change everything. Absolutely. It's just, it's the Oppenheimer of songs. It's like after Smells Like Team Spirit, nothing was the same. It created a genre and it absolutely ripple effect. It changed Atlanta radio.

Like I remember just a couple of months after that song came out, everybody wanted to get into the new alt rock. I think it was called Alternative Rock. And one of the stations that we used to listen to. Which to this day persists 30 years later, that's still a format. that did not exist before. 99 FM became 99X, you know, because they were playing edgier music than the pop stations. What about you, man? Do you remember the first time you heard it smells?

100%. Because I mean, it's interesting that your story was similar. The revelation was instantaneous. And actually, I have to give props to a friend of mine, Cecily Jacobson. So you have to understand, just back up a second. When I was in high school, my senior year, I was a DJ at the local college radio station. So like, I'm literally on a Wednesday night in my senior year, I'm awake at two in the morning till six, playing records. And I'm kind of integrated into this college music world for the first time. This is like where all the cool kids and the new records come out. You get free copies.

You get guest lists at shows and stuff. A friend of mine who I met this connection through the radio station gave me a cassette tape, a mixtape. So it was interesting. We got a cassette connection. But this mixtape had the forthcoming Nirvana record on it. It also had this band called Caius, who then went on to become Queens of the Stone Age. This is like, in my personal.

lifetime. This is a mythic cassette tape. Epic with so much revelation on it. And it also had Jane's addiction. Oh my God. It had the new Jane's addiction. All this to say that that's the first time I heard the forthcoming Nirvana record. And I was like, it was an instant like, you know, it's like pouring candy in your ears. It's just like, you know, adrenaline and sugar high. And then when I heard it a few months later on the radio, it came screaming out of the speakers in my car. And in that moment, I was kind of surprised that it was like on the radio because this was like an indie band in the college radio station world that I lived in. It was sub-pop.

It was this sort of cool, obscure Northwest thing. But suddenly, overnight, as you know, it was not an unknown underground band. It was on the radio. Minutes later, they were on SNL. And minutes after that, the frat boys were playing it coming out of the – that was the moment that I was like, whoa, what's happening here? This is not meant for these guys. I mean, were you a grunge kid?

I mean, something tells me you were probably really into grunge. In that moment, I was grunge. I was the personification. I mentioned on a previous episode, I had the dreadlocks already. You're the white guy with the dreadlocks. I was the white guy with dreadlocks. Oh, I'm sorry. At my school.

The white men with dreadlocks. Me and a Josh. Josh was the other white guy with them. Why is it always Josh or Joel? Shout out to Josh, who lives in Hawaii now. We just reconnected after many years. Great guy. But he and I were the two white guys with three white guys with three.

We both love Jane's addiction. This is why we had the dreads. And we were both Jews, by the way, it should be noted. And, uh, yeah, so I was a grunge kid. I remember I was on some substance and walking around with my shirt off in college. And I was, I was Chris Cornell from Soundgarden. I remember thinking I'm... Or ad endurance from Counting Crows.

No! He had dreads and he was in a band. I can't tolerate that. I touched a nerve. He touched a nerve. I am so sorry. But for the sake of entertainment, we can leave it in the show. I'm okay with that.

Fair enough. But I was not a count. and Crows fan. Just for the record. Let's put it out there on the record. Can I just say real quick, I think it's interesting that you heard Nirvana before you saw the video. For me, the two are so integrated, the fact that my first exposure to the song was that video, was just the rebellion in that video. With the visuals. I just feel like nowadays, absolutely. Nowadays, there's songs that I love and every now and then I'll be somewhere, like a club or a bar. and like I'll see, I'll be like, yo,

Kendrick Omar has a video for that song. Like, these are like major, it never occurs to me to like check out the video, but like there was a time. Yonte didn't even have any videos from Renaissance. There's no videos from that record. See, I didn't even know that. And by the way, I feel like, I feel like music videos, like what a wonderful medium.

They used to be ground zero for the culture. Right. I mean, like the guy who directed, smells like Teen Spirit, went on to direct some of the seminal videos of the decade. He did No Rain by Blind Meals. Melon. He did come to my window by Melissa Etheridge. He did like a lot of different. Like he primarily did metal, but he did a lot of videos that sort of defined that decade. And now I feel like, you know, besides TikToks and things you see online, like music videos,

like they're just not ground zero like they were when this song came out and again just changed everything. Well, and also just like to put a pin on that, like the video, their video is important now. But as you and I both know, it's more like the TikTok 10 to 15 second fragment that's important. not the full song as a music video experience. So that's like a huge, we've kind of lost that as an art form in and of itself. Absolutely. It's interesting to think about. Do y'all and my friend, are you ready to get into the one song this week on one song?

I'm ready. Let's do this. So I'm going to start with the guitar part. But before we get into Kurt Cobain's playing, I'm going to set the scene a little bit for you. So they're on this label called Sub Pop, which is based out of Seattle, and it's mud, honey, and Green River, who go on to become Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. It's the coolest label, at least in my world at that moment. in college radio. It was the coolest label

that existed. They even had this singles club where I was a member of the sub-pop singles club. Every month I'd get a seven-inch record with like one song by smashing pumpkins and the next week. Was Sonic Youth on the label? Sonic Youth was not on the label, but it's interesting you mention them because they become relevant when

Nirvana signs with Geffen for the big record. Sonic Youth was on Geffen and that's a perfect segue to the fact that the reason they wanted to sign with Geffen was because they already had Sonic Youth. And that was credibility in their Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're like, if we can sell 50,000 records like Sonic Youth, we're going to be in good hands.

They're like, oh, if we can just sell half of what Sonic Youth sold. And that's a big part of this story, because in this moment, we're kind of in this area of time in American culture where there's a big distinction between the mainstream and the underground. Absolutely. And being in the underground, you had some pride about, like, not being mainstream and, like, listening to different music from what the jocks were listening to and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So all this is happening, and part of why Kurt Cobain is such a fall. fascinating character and person to like not just the music but the person is because we know he had these conflicts about being an outsider but wanting to be accepted. I mean this is a pretty universal feeling, but it plays out in his art and in his journals that we now have access to. We know that he wanted more. He was an ambitious person and an ambitious songwriter. He wanted not just to write cool indie underground songs because at the end of the day, that's actually kind of easy to like write something cool that not everyone likes. The big challenging thing is to break out of the cool underground scene and to be heard. So he was aiming high. He wanted

to write like the Beatles. He wanted to write great beloved big songs. And that leads us into smells like teen spirit. It's a direct line because one of the kind of funny stories about the song and I'm going to play you the riff in a second is once he played this riff for his bandmates, they all, everybody laughed because it was so big and ambitious. It was so clearly a like it was so clearly a moonshot of a riff. And for a minute, they were all like, are we sure we're doing this? Is this really our band? And then it just became inescapably like, this is just too good.

We can't not finish the song and put it out in the world. But without any further ado, I'm going to play you the isolated guitar. Now, this riff is in the pantheon of iconic riffs. By the way, there's another episode of the show. We're going to go take a deeper dive into the concept of a riff. But basically, a riff is what you think it is. It's just a usually guitar part that you can kind of. kind of sing in your head later on.

It's almost like its own melody. So here is the iconic Kurt Cobain guitar and it smells like Teen Spirit. So just I want to give credit where it's due Butch Vig, seminal figure in all of this, producer who produced this record, went on to form garbage as his own project.

Yes, one of my favorite groups of all time. He, as a sound shaper and also just as a producer, part of your job, is to get the best performances. Massive credit to him for changing the sound of radio overnight with the guitar sound in my opinion in this song. There's great documentaries and books out there.

I urge you, if you're a fan, to look it up for his telling of a story. I think Butch Big, he's the George Martin that you can't, you can't. I'm going to use an Atlanta term from the 90s. You know, there's a lot of lo-fi stuff that I love, but I think to take over radio in the 90s the way Nirvana did, you had to make it chunky.

Yeah. Chunky is Atlanta term, chunky. And I feel like even if you had your setting, to what I, even if you had your car EQ to what I always called the gangster setting, which is bass all the way up, treble all the way up, and Mids all the way down, if you played a Nirvana song,

that sh-that sounded chunky in your car. Shout out to Alcast, they were the first once they ever used, I heard, use the word chunky. That's a great word. I'm going to start using that. But you know, but it sounds like what it means, right? It's like the bass, it's like, the drums are like, rum, boom, boom. It's got a growl. It's got body to it. It's got body to it.

Yeah, man, it's just, it's chunky, and I can't even describe it. He's a crucial part of the story who maybe sometimes gets left out in the world because the perfect blend of band and producer, another producer who is more of an indie rock mindset might not have understood that people here. He might have kept his shallow and high end. And that might have pleased, you know, the crowd that like bleach, but they had someplace to go. This is a radio hit. Let's get it on the radio. So some of the songs that are kind of in this pantheon of big, chunky, chunky, I should say.

You're learning. Riff, rock, bigness that were clearly, incredibly, incredible. Kurt's eye line for what he was aiming for. Here are a couple of them. This is Boston's more than a feeling. More than a feeling? Oh, I can't wait. I would not have drawn a connection.

The same is that kind of right? I don't know, but it's not fair. You're like, why can have you? You're not a lawsuit. We are not the snitch, please. We are not the music musical snitcher. We are not the snitch please. But I hear it.

Yeah, you hear that. And another one kind of in the same realm would be, this one. This is Blue Oyster Colt and their legendary riff monster aptly named Godzilla. Full admission, I don't think I've ever heard the song. Okay. That's incredible.

And by the way, I've never heard that song before. Yeah. Did he ever name check that song? It's like one of his influences? I haven't heard him necessarily name check that. I've heard a lot of speculation, like other people speculating, well, it sounds a little like this, sounds a lot of this. That's kind of why I played it. What I do know,

to answer your question, he was very vocal because he did very frequently name his influences very publicly. And he shared a lot of love with a lot of the bands that he came up, like, admiring. Yeah, no, he was gracious in that way. The band that Kurt Cobain really had his eye on, and he's talked about many times, was The Pixies. Yes. Hey, pie, let's have a ball. A pot, pop, hey, Paul, let's have a ball.

Hey, Paul, let's have a ball. I love music so much, man. It's called Gigantic. That is the Pixies. that, I mean, I just had one of those music moments where it's like, I still feel the same way when I heard that song the first time. I love that. This band is one of my favorite bands, one of Kurt's favorite bands.

One thing they pioneered or at least made kind of took as an idea and made kind of into their signature in a way was this quiet, loud thing. So there'd always be a quiet section that builds to a loud section. Yeah. Such a simple concept. But that is the Pixie's formula, as it were. I feel like various genres, various artists have played with quiet. loud, but I think that the success of smells like Teen Spirit

by easily made the quiet, loud thing, just a signature of American grunge in the 90s for sure. 100%. Yeah, I mean, it went from being, again, same idea. It went from being kind of a more, because the pixies are very well known in indie rock circles, if you will, but they never, they had that song maybe in the, towards the end of their career. They had one sort of minor MTV hit, Here Comes Your Man. But they were mostly an indie superstar band, but they were never a big mainstream band, not nearly the way Nirvana ever worked.

Did they do Monkeys Gone to Heaven? You know what? Monkey Gone to Heaven probably is their bigger one. I love that song. That song is so good. And maybe because of Fight Club, maybe their most well-known song is Where Is My Mind? Of course. So they didn't escape notice, I'm not trying to say, but they never got to Nirvana level. Never.

They should. They were that. I think they should have. They were almost like how the Smiths are. Like they're one of those groups that you only know if you get into the genre. Yeah. They never had a genre. That's so true.

Yeah. To this day, I mean, a recent interview with Frank Black from the Pixies, he's still a little bit bitter that Nirvana got there. Isn't that crazy? With that same kind of core idea of the quiet, loud thing. There's a quote, right? This quote is pretty delicious, so let's just go verbatim. Okay, so this is from a 2013 interview. Black Francis discussed the band's legacy.

Asked what his contribution to rock was. Francis replied, sarcastically, being original, influencing Nirvana so they could rip a song. I'll admit it. If Kurt Cobain fessed up to it, fuck it. I'll agree with you. You ripped us off. There's nothing quite like musician ego. And when it gets bruised. I understand, man. You thought it was your idea and the world thinks it's Kurt's idea. Take us out with just a little bit more, because the guitar riffs in this song are so epic. I always thought that it was cool that after singing two verses, Kurt basically plays a verse on his guitar as his solo.

You're absolutely right. The guitar soul is literally the melody. Yes. So let's listen to that. So good. So good, right? You know, it's funny listening back to that. I'm thinking about how, so Weezer, there's like a funny internet meme that like Weezer kind of begins right when Nirvana ends. And so the meme and actually Rivers Cuoma has participated in this is that Rivers is actually Kirk Cobain. Oh, I believe it. He just like changed his glasses. He just added glasses. I mean,

Clark Kent style and continues, it's a bit of a dark meme, but it's a funny one. But it's funny, I'm thinking about it, listen to that solo, because there's a bunch of Weas, like, there's an entire record, the Green album, where Reesers, every song does that same idea. Every guitar solo on the green album is just the melody from the song, which must have been a conscious choice, just for one record to try it out. Because it's funny, you don't have to think of anything new. You just play the melody again. Exactly.

I mentioned this a minute ago, but it's, you know, you can't imagine the world existing without this song being the way it is, and Nirvana, it's their iconic signature. your song. But when Kurt first brought that riff, and he had a melody for the chorus, which we just heard in the guitar soul, that melody plus the riff, when he brought it to the band, they were like, dude, this is ridiculous. Like, Kurt, bass player, Kurt Nova Selle,

literally said, this is ridiculous. Yeah. So they were jamming on it, they jammed on it. Kurt was like, let's just try it out, let's just try it out. This is a frequent thing that happens in the rehearsal space. Like, let's just work on it, see where it goes. So they go in, the band starts rehearsing, and just the course of playing it over and over again and to make their own rehearsal,

which is going 20, 30 minutes of the same song, to kind of make it more interesting, they decide what happens if we slow it down, kind of make it a little more heavy. Maybe they're taking some, like, inspiration from that Godzilla riff. Sounds a little bit... And Chris Nova Sellech comes up with his baseline.

And it should be noted that in the song, Chris Nova Sellech, his part is... It's very simple. As a bass player... I love it. It's so simple. You've got to get... You get in the groove, and you're like, this is not one of those songs are going to get fancy

and do, like, things that are, like, super interesting that'll make other bass players jealous. I'm going to stick with the groove. I'm going to play these four notes. I think that this is just one of those iconic baselines, just like excursions, which opens up a Tribe Call Quest's low-in-thory album. I feel like that baseline just opens it up. And I feel like hip-hop at this time is also really bass-driven.

Like, you know, if you look at DJ Mugs and the stuff that he does with Cypress Hill, House of Pain, and all that stuff, and just baselines in general were, like, just blowing up in this period. I truly love this bass. line. And I feel like Chris is one of the, he's kind of the forgotten member of Nirvana. Like if you, you know, nobody forgets Kurt. Obviously, Dave has had an amazing career post.

Dave made it hard to forget him. No, yes. Eucidous. But by the way, I really like, I really like some food fighter stuff. I really like some Queen of the Stone Age stuff as well. After the break, we'll be getting deeper into smells like teen spirit. And we'll also let you know who Kurt Cobain

said was the world's greatest on live TV. We'll be right back. You got to come back for that one. All right, welcome back to one song. Luxury. One interesting thing about smells like Teen Spirit is it belongs in that pantheon of songs where the title is never sang. Like the title's not in the lyrics.

Right. Explain how it came to be called Smells Like Teen Spirit. It's so funny you say that because as I'm thinking about it, like half the shows we've taped are in that same category. We did Blue Monday. We did How Soon as Now. We did How Soon As Now Smells Like Teen Spirit. Yeah. So if you hadn't noticed because when we were preparing for the show,

I had not noticed, to be honest, that that was not in the song. Yeah. It's a funny phenomenon. So the story goes, at the time, Kurt Cobain was dating the drummer for Bikini Kill, Toby Vale. Bikini Kill being a seminal, I think Olympia Washington punk band, a feminist punk band, founded by and headed by Kathleen Hanna, one of my all-time icons, who's now in Latigra. And Kathleen, one night, they were all hanging out at Kurt's apartment, which was, it sounds pretty ramshackle, but mattress on the floor kind of situation.

and so Toby Vail, the drummer from McKinney Kill, was wearing a deodorant that was actually called Teen Spirit. Yeah. So Kathleen Hannah, spray paint takes a spray paint bottle. What do you call it? Shaky, shaky thing. Can. Can, thank you so much. Kathleen Hanna takes a spray paint can and spray pants on the wall of Kurt's apartment.

Kurt smells like teen spirit. I've heard this story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of a compliment. I'm not sure what to make of it. Sounds like a diss to me. Kind of a weird burn. Kind of a sick burn.

If our producer sprays on the wall, Diallo smells like Old Spice, I'm not going to be like, hey, we're going to have to go to HR. It's also kind of sweet, though. You smell like your girlfriend's, like, niceness-producing pheromone thing. I guess we're lucky they didn't spell like, you know, Chris smells like secret because then they would have thought that there was like a scandal involved. There's a lot going on. Yeah, you're right.

Well, smells like teen spirit. Just stuck out to Kurtz smells like Jeanette. Would have been really hilarious. But anyway, go ahead. Cody Musk. Yeah, you don't want that. The cheap cologne from five. and dime store.

Charcar noir. Char noir, I kind of like that one at the time. But it's now many years later. It smells like Dracard noir is not a hit. Go ahead. It's not a hit. No, it does not work in the mix. We were just listening to the demo.

We'll play some of that in a minute. And it's fun to listen to it as one is reminded that these lyrics are never sung. But I wonder if because in the demo, they're kind of like rearranging all these mulatto, albino, like here we are now entertain us. We're going to talk about that lyric in a second. We're going to talk about that in a second. But the lyrics themselves are more kind of sonic. Like when you listen to the song,

you're like half the time, as Weird Al famously parody later, you're not 100% what he's saying. It's not the kind of lyric where the meaning sinks in and you're like, this is a song about X. So I just wonder if they got to the end. They're like, what should we call this song, guys? And it just was fresh in the top of his mind that she had just spray painted it on his wall.

Maybe they were just like, hey, as a joke, we can call it what Kathleen just spray painted. Why don't we talk about the drums? Yes. Yeah. Dave Grohl's iconic drum fill. and a lot of people, by the way, have been asking me. So, as you may know, on TikTok, I do a bunch of videos

where I talk about interpolation and influence and such. So I got a lot of DMs from strangers, which I love, by the way, please keep them coming, with requests. Like, they want to hear a breakdown of this song or this song or that song. And one of the most, probably the most common request, and I have not had a chance to get to it. So I'm excited to get to it right now on one song

is there's this Pharrell video interviewing Dave Grohl, making the rounds, where Dave Grohl, tells Farrell that one of his big inspirations for the drum break in Smells Like Teen Spirit was, as he puts it, some of the famous disco and funk drummers of the 70s. The Gat band. Gap band. He names Check. He named checks

Cameo. He name checks Tony Thompson from Sheik. So let's listen to it. Let's here's the breakdown. Here's the, as requested on TikTok, if you will. Here is the breakdown, starting with Dave Grohl's incredibly iconic drum intro. Okay, so here is what he is talking about

in particular. He's referring to that baum, ba'em, ba'em, bab'am, babum, bum, that simple idea, which is something that iconically shows up in many, many, many 70s funk songs, not the least of which are the ones I'm about to play you. We say you're going to play me some Greenwood, Archer, and Pine. I'm just going to wait for you. Starting with the Gap Band, which I only, thanks to this show and Diallo, teaching me live with the camera running, is...

That Gap is actually an acronym for the streets in their neighborhood. Yeah. I love that. So here is one of two songs. that the Gap band have a very similar fill. I like that one. I like that one. And they like that fill so much, my friend.

They used it in this song as well. Wait, you know what? Let's give it up to the Gap Band because they're like, they're like, we will not start our songs with music. We will start ourselves with roosters. We will start our songs with motorcycles. I think drop the bomb on me starts off with some bomb sounds. They're like, look, y'all, music ain't going to do it on its own.

So we got to start off with some other sound effects. We got to lure the listener in thinking they're watching a movie. You know, it's also funny about that fill is that like when I was a young drummer just starting out like in our circle of musical friends, we would refer to these fills as being kind of like they're funny cool because it's a simple, it's every time. It's not every time as it turns out. It's just these two gap band songs for that band. But the gap band always, it feels like they always do that fill.

And then as a young rock drummer mainly, we would do them too. So when Dave says this, it's like, oh, I feel another connection to Dave as he's a much better, bigger drummer than me, but just like, I totally get it. I'm like, yeah, but it feels good and it rocks off. All I can say is that there was a sound effects company that was like, look, guys, as long as they're in business, and then the gap band broke up, but they're like, I don't know where we're going to get our business. Our business model doesn't work unless the gap ban comes in here 12 times a year. Name a song that used this as the sample. Sample Source and Dave Grohl Inspiration. Okay.

In one eight seconds. On the fly, y'all. I should know that. We've already hit the sample. I know that sample. The sample was that. Yeah. What is that?

You've heard it a million times. A better hint is Chuck D. Bring the noise. Exactly right. Bring the noise. Yeah. I knew I knew that. sample from somewhere. That's a great one.

I'm just playing. Too black. Too strong. Yo, Chuck, these dirty triples are still front on us. Don't know we can do us. Ha ha. Yeah. That's pretty cool. What a brother know once again back is the incredible. Rom Animal, the Incanable D. Public Enemy number one.

Oh, said freeze and? I got numb. I didn't know what to do. My mind's more confession. You have to act out what the actual lyric is. I got numb. All right. And I got to give props to DJ Envy. Yes.

We were recently on the Breakfast Club. The Breakfast Club, yes, Charlie. And he reminded me of one that I'd forgotten and it's this. I kiss me and I'll kiss you back. That's the Digital Underground. Of course, this is me, myself, and I by De La. And it all stems from something about the music. It always makes me this.

I can't believe how many different ways that you could go with that drumming, the Blattin Blattens that you go. And it's also interested to me that when, I mean, literally, it's name is grunge. The genre's name is grunge, and yet it's influenced by glossy disco. Right. You know, disco, the much maligned, the President Carter of musical genres has actually influenced almost every genre that came after it. So shout out to disco and all the disco hits out there.

Although, in fairness, I would give, I would, half of these at least are more funk. I mean, they're right on that line maybe between funk and Disney. Yeah, yes, absolutely. You know what disco funk it is. But disco and funk, you know, they're kind of, you know, shout out to, to, to, Daz, you know, Disco Jazz. That's what we are.

We love being disco dads. Thanks for sharing those drums with this. It's funny, because I just realized, as we're talking about this, the Farrell interviewing with Dave Grohl, Ferell himself, starts every song famously with the, bah, bah, bah, right?

With that four, that thing of a repetition. Bum, bum, bum, bum, which is cool, but I also feel like Farrell smartly, Forell and Chad would throw that into songs so that the DJ knew how to bring in the beat. You know, there's nothing more. We've talked on previous episodes,

More Money More Problems, that little glistando in. Like, that's hard for a DJ to mix in. Yeah. You know, I feel like a lot of early hip-hop would just give you like a snare, like a pop, and then it would come in on the beat. But Farrell gives you the... Bam, bomb, bomb, bomb.

And then it's really easy to bring in the beat. The last piece of the equation is, of course, Kirk Cobain's isolated vocal. So I'm excited to get into this because it's going to send chills down the spine of every listener of one song. I'm going to start with the verse melody so we can talk about that,

and then I'll play you the chorus melody. And of course, we were talking about the quiet, loud, dynamic in the Pixies earlier. It's really clear when you hear the difference between how he sings these two parts. Starting with the melody in the verse. Load up on guns, bring your friends

to find her to pretend she's overworn and selfish shirt. I know I know A dirty word Hello, hello So this part of the song is actually relatively singable

At least for me personally Like I can kind of make that happen But once we get to the chorus I'm out I can't I can't My vocal chords are a little too valuable to me Hello Hello hello

Hello Well the lights out It's a dangerous Here we are now Entertain us I feel stupid And contagious Here we are now.

I'm a skater. And of course the most important part. The second most important part is, Yay. Yay. I mean, like, in his voice, you hear just, I mean, without overstay, you hear angst, you hear teen rebellion. You hear it all. You hear, like, the kid in the corner who feels like, you know,

I could be one of the popular kids. but I'm not going to be or you hear the kid who's like I'd love to be those kids but I can't be like you I feel like there's so many different relatable sounds coming out of his voice that's sort of no matter who you were I think that is one of the reasons why the jocks

started singing it because he's that part of our id that just you know feels rejected and can I just I want to talk a little bit about the elephant in the room as a black listener to the song this could have gone way south I mean he says a word mulatto, which is highly offensive. And it was actually offensive at the time.

Don't let people say, oh, it was 1991. People weren't so snowflake. No, people weren't crazy about it then. But I think we, because we were already relating to him and his vulnerability, it wasn't like Axel Rose was singing the word Malado. Like, Axel Rose sings the word balado. It matters who's doing it. Yeah, I know who this guy is.

But like when Kurtzig, it comes across different. And can I just say from a personal point of view, like, I immediately drew a connection between all four of these things. I was like, wait, a mulatto and albino, a mosquito, my libido. I was like, oh, my God, these are all things that have his blood. A mulatto has a white man's blood. He's a white man. It's a mosquito has your blood because it bitch you.

An albino has your blood because despite of what he looks like, he's, you know, one of us. And then libido, well, that's just blood in a, you know, in a teen's awkward position, you know. I'd never thought. I thought that was a reference to boners. So all of it, it was just like it all made sense because I felt like now I've learned recently that, you know, Kurt came up with these lyrics like very last minute. Yeah. So who knows what was going through his head. But some of these words are on the demo.

So like these words had been in his mind before he went into the boot to record it. It's one of those unknowable things like not as an outsider. It's kind of one of the beautiful things, right? Like art and even lyrics can mean different things to me, the listener than they're even intended to be by the person who wrote them. And at the time that Kurt was singing them, we will never know for sure, but he may not have himself intended. It was sonically a rhyme. It was just words coming to his head in the moment. And then the meaning was sort of ascribed later because that's a very frequent thing that happens in songwriting.

There's one word or one idea. And then the rest is sort of placeholdery. But it starts to weirdly make sense because your subconscious is actually doing work for you. I feel like you and I are both artists. And I'll always speak for myself, but I suspect this is true for you too. There are times when you think that you know that. meaning of what you're creating. And then you look back 10 years later, you know, I don't know if I was right about what

the meaning was even to me back then. Maybe I wasn't honest enough to admit that the meaning was that. So sometimes the meaning can even change for the artists. I also want to point out, like, because you were talking about the like, I really loved what you were saying about sort of how even the jocks, the popular kids, because it's very simplistic viewpoint. You're either an insider, you're either an underground, alternative underground kid or you're a popular me.

So that was a little simplified at the time, perhaps. but I love what you were saying about how even the jocks and the popular kids have a part of themselves, which is the insecure, needy, wanting to be heard, you know, a little sad at home kind of person. I feel like, you know, Kurt had a fascination with the guys who he was growing up with in, you know, in Seattle and in the Pacific Northwest. Because, you know, on another song he talks about he's the one who loves all our pretty songs. He loves to sing along. He likes to shoot his gun. He knows not what it means. There's a song on Bleach called Mr. Mustache, which is based on a cartoon.

And the cartoon is very anti, their term, not mine, very anti-redneck. That's what, you know, you'll read online and stuff. And, like, Kurt agreed with the sort of take that, like, you know, because in the comic strip, like, this guy who has a mustache, he's not all called Mr. Mustache, but he's like, my kid better come on. He better like football and he better not be no F word and S-word and N-word. And it's like all this stuff. And Kurt read that comic and he loved it.

and he found ways to keep coming back to, like, you know, these are the people that I grow up around. But even though I could easily be one of them, I'm going to take a more, you know, open-minded approach to it. One of my favorite Kirk Cobain lyrics of all time is, everyone is gay. And I think that, you know, he was. That was pretty brave at the time to sing that. He was freaking brave to sing a line like that. At the time, it was so brave. And we all were kind of grateful for it.

You know, one thing to connect the dots there, because especially in that moment, the idea of punk, rockness was an ethos. You know, part of it is a sound. When we think punk rock now, maybe you think the sex pistols or the Ramones, maybe you think blink 182. Like, that's what punk rock has come to mean kind of fast rock music. But it really at the time especially was an ethos of like there was a sensitivity to as much as was possible to being like a good punk rock person at the time would have been

kind of trying to be feminist, trying to be like not homophobic, trying to be a good person. Yeah, trying to be like, hey, we can all get down with this jam. Trying not to be racist. There's a lot of punk against racist concerts in the late 70s in England. And to connect it back to the vocals for a minute, when we were listening just now, I was hearing the punk rockness in that vocal. Because you're talking about guns and roses.

Axel Rose isn't, he's hitting the notes kind of almost like an opera singer. There's like a technical excellence in other genres, in pop music, of course. But from punk rock, we get now suddenly in the mainstream, this vocal, which is rough and dirty and imperfect. And he's losing it.

and he's like screaming his like nodules into oblivion. That was a new sound, certainly on pop radio in 1991. Absolutely. And that's from punk rock. I mean, like even when he sings the last part, a denial. Yeah. That's insane. And I feel like, can we hear a little bit of the denial clip from the end of the song?

And this is where his voice gets absolutely obliterated. You can hear it happening in real time. There's two vocals in there. There's two vocals. You can hear one just give up. One is just like, I'm. done. But I like when we were watching a video with Butch Vig

again, the producer of the track, and he was saying like, you know, he recorded it and I was able to place his vocals. He kind of hit the notes the same way. So I was kind of able to just place the vocals over it. I mean, like, this is just one of those great voices where even when you take all of the music away from

it and all but one layer, it still sounds great. Yeah. Okay, so we've been through the song, top to bottom, and of course it was massive. But what's interesting to me is that not everyone at the time knew it was going to be massive. I used to work at a record label 100 years ago. And, you know, as a as a young person at the label, like the interns, the assistants, we would pass around demos and get excited about stuff. Apparently, like, the people at Geffen were, you know,

they were excited about this act. Obviously, they had signed it, but like, it was the assistants walking around there who were like, no, this thing is going to be huge. And apparently, they had the ears on the ground. Yeah. Like one of the guys who worked on the iconic album cover, was like, oh, I need to knock this thing out of the park because I think this is going to be our next really big thing. So he's walking around with his demo, and they're going around, and after Kurt decides that he wants this to be like a baby underwater,

like he has to find somebody who could... Oh, that was his idea? I didn't know that. Look, the band was talking about a lot of ideas. They actually, they brainstormed the most about what is the baby chasing. And they talked about everything from, like, a raw piece of me. They talked about a lot of things before they landed on, you know, money. Yeah. But this is literally the guy who had to go out and find a person who was good at photographing humans underwater.

But apparently he found a – It's a specialty. This one guy was known for it. And apparently they dropped like a bunch of babies in the water. They were like four or five babies. They dropped into water. Yep. Okay.

And there was one where he was like, I got the perfect image. And then all we did was we photoshopped out. It's not Photoshop. That baby is actually underwater with its arms like that. They had to Photoshop out the bottom of the pool so it looked like there was nothing. water underneath, but that's how we got that iconic baby on the album cover. And I know that the guy, like, sued because he was only paid, like, something like $200 to appear on that cover.

He sued for, like, $250,000. And he lost. So shout out to, I forget the guy's name. It's Spencer, I want to say. I'm sorry he didn't get that money, man. But at least you are immortalized. Yes, he definitely is immortalized. So I'm going to flip the script right now.

which is a phrase that nobody who doesn't vividly remember the 90s even uses anymore. But I want to turn the tables, if you will, and play some songs for you. Because there are certain songs, anytime I think about smells like Teen Spirit, whether it's the artist's own admission or just my theory, I feel like they're heavily influenced. One person who admits I loved that song and I wanted to make a song quite like it is Raphael Sadiq of Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony. Okay.

And on the album, House of Music, he did his version of Howlowe, Howlowe. Can I just say it? Because everyone's waiting for me to say it. Interpolation. I mean, that's what that is. That's textbook. It's textbook. It's fun.

Anybody knows, anybody who listens to the show knows that I'm also a big Blur fan. Blur admitted that they only did song to sort of copy that quiet low thing that you were talking about earlier with the pixies and with smells like and that song which you've heard but now listen to it in the context of blur essentially trying to make a nirvana song here is song too it's fun right and then you notice the people who know that song we can't play too much of it after that loud party goes really quietly and he's like i got my head checked i wonder if they were thinking pixies or if they were thinking nirvana no he said specifically i wanted to make a grun song because you have to put this in the context everybody was like who's going to win america will it be

Blur Oasis, well, Oasis kind of won. And Blur on their follow-up album was kind of mad at America. And they were like, well, based on what's on American radio, this should be a hit. And of course, it ended up being Blur's biggest hit in America. And I'll bet you they were doing it in the room with big smiles on their faces

of sarcasm, because they knew that this was silly, right? They were having fun. And it's one of those examples of like when you're having fun and just trying to make fun of, have fun with, however you want to phrase it, a style of music, you might accidentally end up with your biggest song.

If you were to sit down and write a parody of a Nirvana song, you might write that time, you'd end up writing song too. That riff might come out of your body in 1994, whenever that was. So here's one more song. This is just a theory. I want you to think about smells like teen spirit, and I want you to listen to the song by The Offspring and then try and unhear it. Same rhythm.

It's the same song. It's the same drumby. There's nothing subtle about that. are times when I'm singing smells like teen spirit in my head, but then eventually I go to the offspring song because they're so freaking similar. It's insane. So I wanted to. If I know, I don't know the offsprings cataloging that well, but I sense in my mind they've got at least two other songs that kind of do the same thing. Yes. Is that right? Yes. It wouldn't even surprise me. Keep them separated. Is that, that's them too, right? That's a little different. But it's the same

idea. There's a quiet, loud, quiet, quiet thing that they do. All the time. But, I mean, at the end of the day, there's so many groups that were influenced by Navana. At this point, everyone was influenced by Nirvana. And by the way, can I just say right here while we're talking about Nirvana, I actually do like some whole songs. Yeah. Whole being the group with Courtney Love. Celebrity skin, that record is insane. So good.

I mean, like Celebrity Skin, Malibu, doll parts. There are so many songs. And you can kind of hear, like, you know, whether it's Courtney's, whether Courtney influenced Kurt a little bit or Kurt influenced Courtney, you can kind of hear some similarities there. I think that. people don't actually ever recognize how much Courtney might have influenced Kurt, because she's there from the beginning. People forget the very first time that smells like Teen Spirit is performed live internationally is on the UK show The Word.

And Kurt famously opens his performance by saying, I just want to tell to the people in this room that Courtney Love, the lead singer of Hull, is the best in the world. And literally one year later they were married. So, like, she's there from the beginning, guys. You guys can hate on her. I feel like there's a whole strain of people who hate on Yoko. Ono, but like, listen, if I'm being honest, I think Courtney Love is the more talented Yoko Ono.

We do not hate on the strong women on this show. No, I'm a big Yoko fan. I'm a big Courtney fan. We love you, Courtney. We love Kathleen Hanna. It's not generally putting those kids. We're big fans of these, like, fucking awesome music women. So at the top of this episode, we talked about how this was the song and Nirvana became the band.

Everything was very different after this song came. Nothing was the same. And that includes the culture. Like, grunge was not just a musical phenomenon. Don't forget. there was like Mark Jacobs fashion lines, New York Times article. That fancy flannel I couldn't afford. Fancy flannel.

New York Times. There was movie singles. Remember that movie singles came out? An entire movie about grunge in Seattle that was like kind of glorifying the music, the fashion. And actually, I was about to say the speak, but that, there's a funny story attached to grunge speak, like the language of grunge, which is a non-existent phenomenon, which was willed into existence by the, at the time, outgoing secretary at subpop.

record label. Yeah. Got a call from the New York Times during GrungeMania. Like everyone's blowing up on the charts. New York Times is like, oh my God, I think I know this story. Go ahead. We're going to do an article about grunge. Let's call like, let's call ground zero of grunge, which is sup hop HQ. Yeah. And Megan Jasper is her name. And Megan Jasper answers the phone. She's actually leaving. She's fired and she hasn't left yet. And she picks up the phone and gets this call from this reporter saying, calling from the New York Times, blah, blah, blah, so they talk. And towards the end, they're like, by the way, almost as a side. note, we're curious about the language.

Are there special words? Does this subculture have its own lingo? A little lingo? And Megan Jasper, she is in a mood. And she's like, she starts off kind of like, kind of like, nothing fancy. She's like making stuff up just to have fun. So she

comes up with a few ideas. I'm going to look at my list right now. The first one... But basically, she's making this up on the spot. I think that's what's funny about it. Like she's, these words do not exist on the Seattle C. The answer is no, there is no grunge speak. except when Megan Jansper answers the phone and changes the game by saying

Lame Stain, she explains, is an uncool person. Okay, we're off to a kind of slow start here, kind of basics. Rock on is a happy goodbye. Plausible. I believe that one. But then she continues. And the next one,

swinging on the flippity flop is what grunge people say for hanging out. We're going to go swing on the flippity flop. And then she ends it with a loser in grunge speak is a cob nobbler. I think she was, She should have become a comedy writer. She was brilliant.

You know what she became? Head of Subpop. It reminds me of Dave Chappelle saying he makes up slang when he talks to his agent. So he'll be like, okay, well, zip it up and zip it out. And then of course, Sage is like, yeah, Zippity Dude out to you, Dave. You know, D'allel, it's been fun swing on the flippity flogby today. My favorite cob nobler. Well, I thank you, Lamestein.

Well, as sad as I am to do so, it is time. time to end this episode of one song. Help me in this thing. All right, let's do it. Well, I am producer, DJ, and songwriter luxury. And I am actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle. This is one song. We will see you next time.

This is one song. And we see us. The talk smells like this spirit with the...