No one has ever considered Nirvana the sunny song-of-the-summer kind of band. They were the brooding voice of an angsty generation—musicians who captured the pain and confusion of youth in the '90s. And "Smells Like Teen Spirit" became the anthem of an era of counter-culture teens horrified with the materialism of late 20th century popular culture. In fact, Kurt Cobain actually wrote "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in his own attempt at making a pop song, with a chorus that bassist Krist Novoselic once said "could have been him watching TV aghast at popular culture."
By the time Nirvana reached its last tour in 1993, the song had become so popular that Cobain hated playing it, and stopped entirely in 1994. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he said.
In his attempt to write a subversive pop song based off the Pixies' dynamic structure, Cobain had written an actual pop song. And in an F minor key, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" certainly doesn't even sound like any typical pop song.
However, using some simple technology, Vimeo user Sleep Good auto-tuned "Smells Like Teen Spirit" into a major key and turned it into a pretty mainstream pop song. It sounds like it could be a heavy Weezer song, or, god forbid, most of the top 40 rock of the late '90s and early 2000s. Take a listen if you want—you can't unhear it. But even though it's mostly horrifying, it's technically not a bad song, either.
Matt Miller is a Brooklyn-based culture/lifestyle writer and music critic whose work has appeared in Esquire, Forbes, The Denver Post, and documentaries.
