Acoustic Versions: Smells Like Teen Spirit

Tori Amos: Smells Like Teen Spirit

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I’m sure most of our readers know that Nirvana recorded an Unplugged album for MTV. However, Smells Like Teen Spirit was not on that album. Instead, Tori Amos was the one who remade the song as a solo piano ballad. The lyrics are all over the place, suggesting two or more teens who have gotten together to do… something. In Nirvana’s original version, the music suggests a rage that must soon boil over. But Amos finds the searching, and the fear that drives that rage. There is a lot of space in the music, and the narrator feels the urge to fill it with something. The listener is no closer to knowing how this will end, but we have more of an idea of how it started.

The image I have chosen for this post comes from a manga called Teen Spirit. The picture seemed perfect to me, but I have never read, (or even seen), the manga, so the picture might not be appropriate to the song at all. If Geoviki can’t fill us in, maybe a reader could tell us more in the comments. Thank you.