Coronavirus quarantine drives people into the kitchen to cover Nirvana’s Gen X anthem
It has an unmistakable guitar riff, angst-filled vocals, an intoxicating bass line and hard-hitting drums.
It’s a song that catapulted alternative rock into the mainstream during the early 1990s, shifting music’s epicenter to Seattle.
Of course, we’re talking about “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” a mega hit off Nirvana’s second album, “Nevermind.”
The song helped the band’s major-label debut album topple Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, from the top spot on the Billboard 200 charts in January 1992.
It’s been covered a variety of ways, including through orchestras and solo violinists and other bands. And while no cover will likely match or surpass the original’s authentic emotion from Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, life amid COVID-19 has given way to creative ways to pay homage to the song during the global coronavirus pandemic.
First, YouTube user MaroMaro1337, a musician in Lodz, Poland, used multiple stylophones to recreate the Gen X anthem, before Tik Tok users went with kitchen utensils in tribute to “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
Check out MaroMaro’s version, which has nearly 240,000 views as of Thursday morning, below:
And click here for a list of the TikTok ones.
If you crave nostalgia during quarantine life, watch the original from the iconic video, which has more than one billion views on YouTube, below:
This story was originally published April 9, 2020 at 12:42 PM.
