Get the latest gossip

Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ Video Hits Two Billion YouTube Views


Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' video has hit two billion YouTube views.

The Samuel Bayer-directed clip in which late singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain and company rock a high school gym into a frenzy debuted on MTV in the fall of 1991, quickly catapulting the group to global superstardom. Among the other rock acts to hit two billie are: Twenty One Pilots (“Stressed Out,” “Heathens”), Imagine Dragons (“Believer,” “Thunder”), Guns N’ Roses (“November Rain”) and Linkin Park (“Numb”). The unlikely long-for-pop-radio five minute hit featuring such obtuse lyrics as “A mulatto, an albino a mosquito, my libido” and a visual in which band members Cobain, drummer Dave Grohl and bassist Krist Novoselic thrash about as anarchist cheerleaders whip teens into a frenzy in a smoke-shrouded gymnasium was the unlikeliest hits at a time when Bryan Adams, Michael Bolton, Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men ruled the charts.

Get the Android app

Or read this on Billboard

Read more on:

Photo of Nirvana

Nirvana

Related news:

News photo

Fontaines D.C. Combine Bring Me the Horizon and Nirvana for ‘Like a Version’ Cover

News photo

Nirvana, Paul McCartney, Mariah Carey ‘MTV Unplugged’ Sets Finally Hit Streaming

News photo

Classic ‘MTV Unplugged’ Episodes From Nirvana, Oasis, R.E.M., Bob Dylan & More Streaming on Paramount+ Now