But the song still means a lot to me. And I'm not just saying that to jump on some generational bandwagon. The moment I heard/saw the video for it on MTV, I felt like I was witnessing history: this was the antidote to all of the overblown rock and pop that had been shoved down our throats during the latter part of the 80s. It was raw and intense in a way that revealed all of the bands riding the top of the Billboard charts in those days for the crap peddlers they really were.
But the most striking thing to me was that Cobain & Co. weren't merely telegraphing some tired sentiment like "it's cool to be uncool." This song/band didn't give a shit about being cool. "Cool" was some concept that advertisers had invented to make you feel bad about yourself so you buy stuff you don't need.
No, this was a generational call to arms to stop being apathetic and stop blindly consuming bullshit. And it rocked.
As soon as the video ended, I imagined everyone from MC Hammer to Axl Rose screaming at their agents on the phone, "What the f*** am I supposed to do after that?"
Quick side note about the song's origins: in 1990, Cobain was hanging out in Olympia, WA, with his friend Kathleen Hanna from the punk band Bikini Kill. (She recounts the story in this great video from 2010, when she performed a cabaret act of sorts at Joe's Pub in NYC.) In short, they got stinking drunk and wound up back at his apartment, where Hanna proceeded to write a bunch of stuff on his bedroom wall in Sharpie pen, including the taunt "Kurt smells like Teen Spirit." (Apparently, her bandmate Tobi Vail, who was dating Cobain at the time, wore Teen Spirit deodorant.) Six months later, Hanna got a call from Cobain, asking her permission to use the bit of graffiti for a song he was working on.
Said Hanna, "I hung up and I was like, how the f*** is he going to use 'Kurt smells like Teen Spirit' as a lyric?"
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