One Song - Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

We’re taking you back to one of our very first episodes, talking 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, One Song Nation, we're off this week, but for now we're revisiting one of our favorite early episodes of the pod, our episode on Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana. That's right, D'all. This is one of my favorite episodes from the early era. Like, we were really hitting our stride at this point, figuring out what the show was. Listen, I'll just say this one thing about our own show is that after we tape it and a year goes by, it's fresh to my ears to listen to it again. So if you missed it the first time, but even if you haven't, check it out again. It's our one song episode on Smells Like Teen Spirit. and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick.

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This episode is brought to you by FedEx. These days, the power move isn't having a big metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate launch. The real power move is leveling up your business with FedEx intelligence and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo-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, Diallo, do you remember the first time you heard Nerville?

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 uh 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 have 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 didn't 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 Byer 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 a bunch of really rock

dudes in the 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 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 Josh. 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 an expression back then. I'm sure we were like, yo, that's dope. You know, like we all like 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. Van Dodege.

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 the Oppenheimer of songs.

It's like after Smells Like Team Spirit, nothing was the same. It created a genre, and it absolutely... It created a genre. Ripple effect that... 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... 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? 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,

Cessaly Jacobson. So you have to understand, just back you 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. My senior year, I'm awake at 2 in the morning until 6, 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 list 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 Stenia.

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 like 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. It was subpop. 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... I was actually one of two white guys with dreadlocks at my school. The white men with dreadlocks. Me and a Josh. Josh was the other white guy with... 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 drugs. We both loved Jane's addiction. This is why we had the dreads. And we were both Jews, by the way. It should be noted. And, 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 Chris Cornell from Soundgarden. I remember thinking I'm... Or ad endurance from Counting Crows. 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 into the show. I'm okay with that. Fair enough. But I was not a Counting 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 Kumar has a video for that song. These are like major, it never occurs to me to like check out the video, but like there was a time. Yonthe 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. 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 Melon. He did come to my window by Melissa Etheridge. Like, 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 TikTok, 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 the Singles Club where I was a member of the Sub Pop Singles Club.

Every month I'd get a 7-inch record with like one song by Smashing Pumpkins. With Sonic Youth on the label? Sonic Youth was not on the label, but it's interesting you mentioned them because they become relevant when Nirvana signs with Geffen. Oh, that's a 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 mind. 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 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 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 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 Smales 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 moon shot of a riff. Yeah. 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 sing in your head later on.

It's almost like its own melody. So here is the iconic Kurt Cobain guitar from 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. 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 the story. I think

Butch Vig, he's the George Mark 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 settings 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 down, if you played a Nirvana song. That sh-that sounded chunky in your car. Shout out to Outcast. They were the first ones that 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, grr. Yeah. It's got a growl. It's got body to it. It's got body to it. Yeah, man. It's just chunky. And I can't even describe it back to that.

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. Yeah. Might not have understood that people. He might have kept his shallow and high end. And that might have pleased, you know, the crowd that liked bleach. Which is like, let's get this thing.

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 in Kurt's eyeline 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. We're not the snitch please. We're not the 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.

Whoa. You know what? Full admission, I don't think I've ever heard the song. That's incredible. And by the way, I've never heard that song before. Yeah. Did he ever name check that song? I'm gonna be honest with you. 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. 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. 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. Such a simple concept, but that is the pixies formula, as it were. I feel like various genres, various artists have played with Quiet Loud, but I think that the successes 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

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 wore. Did they do Monkees Gone to Heaven? You know what, Monkey Gone to Heaven probably is their bigger one. I love that song.

That song's 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, never. They were that, 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 buster. 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 they didn't 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 solo is literally the melody. Yes. So let's listen to that. As soon as I find it.

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. Like, 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, listening 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 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 song. But when Kurt first brought that riff, and he had a melody for the chorus, which we just heard in the guitar solo, 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 Sellej 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 Sellich comes up with his baseline. And it should be noted that in the song, Chris Novicellich, his part is...

It's very simple. As a bass player... 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 or I'm 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 bass lines, just like excursions, which opens up a Tribe Call Quest's low-in-theory album. I feel like that baseline just opens it up. And I feel like hip-hop at this time is also really bass-driven. And, 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, I truly love this baseline. And I feel like Chris is one of the, it's kind of the forgotten member of Nirvana. Like, you know, nobody, nobody forgets Kurt.

Obviously, Dave has had an amazing career post. Dave's made it hard to forget him. No, yeah. Eucuitous. But by the way, I really like some foodfighter 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. Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids. And I want to give back to the community. Ooh. Then it's the vacation of a lifetime.

I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IGPrivatewealth.com. All right, welcome back to one song. Luxury. One interesting thing about smells like Team Spirit is it belongs in that pantheon of songs where the title is never sang. 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. It 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 Cobang 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 Hannah, 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, sounds pretty ramshackle, but mattress on the floor kind of situation. And so Toby Vale, 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, bottle, what do you call it? Shaky, shaky thing. Can. Thank you so much. Kathleen Hannah 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. 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, 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. Her smells like Jeanette. Would have been really hilarious. But anyway, go ahead. Pote Musk. Yeah, you don't

want that. The cheap cologne from Five and Dime Store. Chouard noir. I kind of liked that one at the time. But it's now many years later. Smells like Dracar 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 out 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 there was just like, hey, as a joke, we can call it what Kathleen just spray painted.

Why don't we talk about the drums for a minute? 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 him 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 Farrell 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.

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, but boom, but baum, 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 Phil 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, 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 could say is that there was a sound effects company that was like, look, guys, as long as they're in business, The Gap Band broke up and they're like, I don't know where we're going to get our business. Our business model doesn't work unless the Gat Band 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-second clip. 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. Just 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. How low can you go? Yeah, that's pretty cool.

What a brother know once again back is the incredible. From Animal, the Incanable D. Public enemy number one. All who said freeze and. I got numb. I didn't know what to do. Like mine's more confession. You have to act out what the actual lyric is.

I got numb. And I got to give props to DJ Envy. Yes. We were recently on the Breakfast Club. And he reminded me of one that I'd forgotten and it's this. Kiss me and I'll kiss you back. That's 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 dance. 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, its 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 but but disco and funk you know they're kind of you know shout

to to jazz older brother young guys yeah we love being disco dads oh thanks for sharing those drums with this it's funny because i just realized as we're talking about this the ferell interviewing with dave grroll ferell himself starts every song famously with the but ba, ba, ba, right? With that four, that thing of a repetition. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. That's his signature sound. Which is cool, but I also feel like, Farrell smartly,

Ferrell and Chad would throw that into songs so that the DJ knew how to bring in the beat. Like, 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, bam, bum, bum, 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. up on guns bring your friends fond of lose 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. Where the lights out.

It's a dangerous. Here we are now. Entertain us. I feel stupid. And contagious. Here we are now. And it's... I'm a skato.

Yeah. And of course the most important part. Hey. The second most important part is... Yay. Yay. I mean, like, you, 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 snowflakey. No, people weren't crazy about it there.

But I think we, because we were already relating to him and his vulnerability, it wasn't like Axel Rose was singing the word Malato. Like, Asher Rose sings the word ballotto. It matters who's doing it. Yeah, I know who this guy is. But like when Kurtzigate 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, an 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 bit you. An albino has your blood because despite of what he looks like, he's, you know, one of us. And then a libido, well, that's just blood in a, you know, in a teen's awkward position. You know, like. I 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 is yeah 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 i always speak for myself but i suspect this is true for you too there are times when you think that you know the 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 was a very simplistic viewpoint. You're either an insider, you're either an underground, yeah, no. Alternative underground kid or you're a popular me. So that was a little simplified at the time, perhaps. But I loved what you were saying about how even the jocks and the like 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-there-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 in the comic strip, like this guy who has a mustache, he's not all called Mr. Mustatch, 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 I, but even though I could easily be one of them, I'm going to take a more, you know,

and minded approach to it. One of my favorite Kurt 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 that 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. Rock But it really at that 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 like punk against racist like concerts in the late 70s in England. And to connect it back to the vocals for a minute, I was when we were listening just now, I was hearing the punk rockness in that vocal. you're talking about Guns and Roses. Axel Rose isn't, 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. 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. 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 is going to be massive I used to work at a record label a hundred 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 part 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 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. 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 but 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. Spencer, I want to say. I'm sorry you 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 love that song

and I wanted to make a song quite like it is Raphael Sadiq of Tony Tony Tony Tony Tony Tony okay this is and on the album House of Music he did his version of Howlow, Howlo? So I don't have to Can I just say it because everyone's waiting for me to say it?

Interpolation I mean that's what that's that is. That's textbook. It's fun, right? 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 to sort of copy that quiet low thing that you were talking about earlier with the pixies and what 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 two.

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, I got my head checked. I wonder if they were thinking Pixies or if they were thinking Nirvana went. 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, Ais is kind of won. And Blur on their follow-up album was kind of mad at America.

And they're like, well, based on what's on American radio, this should be. be a hit and of course it ended up being Blair'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 or you might write that time.

Don't have you'd end up writing song too. That rip 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 this song by The Offspring. And then try and unhear it.

Same rhythm. The fucking song. Same drumby. There's nothing subtle about that. There 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, there's a quiet, loud, 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. 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 Kirk. 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. I'm a big Yoko fan. I'm a big, Courtney fan. We love you, Courtney. We love Kathleen Hannah. She'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. 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. All that fancy flannel

I couldn't afford. Fancy flannel. New York There was movie singles. Remember that movie singles came out, an entire movie about Grunge. Seattle that was like kind of glorifying the music, the fashion, the, 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, that record label, got a call from the New York Times during grunge media. Like, everyone's blowing up on the charts. New York Times is like, we're going to do an article.

I think I know the story. Go ahead. to do an article about grunge. Let's call ground zero of grunge, which is sub-pop HQ. 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, 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? It has its own little lingo.

And Megan Jasper, she... is in a mood. Yeah. 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, I'm going to look at my list right now. The first one... But basically she's making this up on the spot. She's making enough 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 nobler. I think she was a,

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'all, it's been fun swing on the flippity floppily. My favorite cob nobler. Well, I thank you, Lamestein. Well, as sad as I am to do so, it is 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 some.

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.