I may be a month (or two) late with this, but oh well….

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I was five when “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was released and “altered the face of the 90s.” Or made Kurt the voice of Gen X’ers.  Or however it’s being described this week.  I wasn’t able to appreciate its meteoric rise to the throne of cultural monarchy.  I didn’t even “discover” Nevermind until I was 14, in 2000.  I was there when it turned 10, sure, but by then it wasn’t an album anymore.  It was a thing.  The Thing.  But I discovered it as a rock album, a really good rock album.  When Rolling Stone jerked off to it for its 10th Anniversary, that was the first sign (for me) that Nevermind wasn’t just gonna be an alt rock album anymore.  It would become an irritating nuisance to music-o-philes like myself.

But at age 15 (the 1oth Anniversary of The Thing), even with the overrated dumbassery, it was still just a rock album with power chords and screams and a snare drum that could shatter windows as low volume.  In other words, it was something that you felt confident in playing as loud as possible.  It was, as a friend from high school put it, “one of those albums you could just put on and listen all the way through.”  (We hadn’t discovered pre-1990s music yet.)

But in the ensuing decade between The Thing turning 10 and turning 20, it’s become a skin rash that won’t stop itching.  And The Thing’s mirco-Thing, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” continues to enjoy a level of cultural impact equaled by the Beatles and Steve Jobs.  If you consider that comparison hyperbolic, go read any appreciative write-up of either Thing.

I could just as easily discuss Nevermind by itself from here on, but I’ve chosen to focus on its opening track for the same reason so many critics have: Not only is “Teen Spirit” a microcosm of the record as a whole – both sonically and its subsequent influence – but also because it’s just so much cooler, man, to say that a song changed the face of music instead of an album.

And certainly it did (help to) give voice to a generation who really didn’t give a shit about having a voice to begin with.  The lyrics suggest as much: “Here we are now, entertain us.”  That behemoth slacker riff, Cobain’s ambivalent delivery of the verses, the seemingly happenstance melody solo – what did it all mean?  Or say?  Or matter?  Probably nothing, as it’s been suggested by at least a few sources, including Dave Grohl.  Of course, he didn’t write it so it’s just an interpretation.  But still…One can argue that was the very point of the song, as some have: the idea that Cobain was satirizing the idea of a revolution by an apathetic generation.  Even if that is the case, lyrically the song has a tenuous grasp of anything concrete at best.  There are ideas to be coaxed from it, but none are anything more than marginally coherent.

Tellingly, most (positive) criticism aimed at “Teen Spirit” tends not to mention the lyrics for more than a few words.  When the song is interpreted, it’s never the same thing twice.  Go read the Wikipedia article on it.  No, the song’s lasting appeal comes from everything but what’s being said.  Which makes a critic wonder: If lyrics are half of a song’s composition and, therefore, subject to the same level of critical analysis as the music, why is this song different?  Because the song was as revolutionary as people claim?  Or because Cobain made more sense on Nevermind‘s successor and, thus, post-hoc interpretations have arisen in the song’s defense?  We may never know.

But what we do know are two things.  First, we have this great alt rock song that was given cultural zeitgeist immortality almost instantly and we’ve just accepted this in the two decades since its release.  Second, because of this tacit agreement on the song’s timelessness, any semblance of true criticism or analysis of the song is rather hard to find.

As a start, it’s a pop song.  It’s got a verse-chorus-verse structure, 4-, 8- and 12- bar sections, the quiet-loud dynamic to easily display which part is the verse and which is the chorus, and singing.  Yes, it has distortion and screaming at the end to the point of Cobain’s vocal chords ripping apart, but it’s at its core it’s a pop song.  And, in terms of structure, a pretty great one.  But there are a lot – like, seriously, lots – of great pop songs.  So why is this one so special?  (I keep coming back to this for a reason.)

Ah, because of its impact.  And because of its enduring influence on rock in the last 20 years.  And because…well, I’m not sure.  Alice in Chains debuted a year prior and found success with the same song structure (albeit, they were a tad more metal-tinged).  Soundgarden had already been around but didn’t find mainstream appeal with their version of grunge (albeit, psychadelia-tinged) until the end of 1991 and into 1992.  Pearl Jam debuted with Ten just a month prior to Nevermind and were also of the grunge-ilk (albeit more classic rock-tinged).  All Nirvana did was be the most pop-oriented of the Big Four.  Does that, therefore, make then superior?

I’ll admit that Nirvana may have perfected the structure of grunge – just the right amount of punk, a pinch of ’80s hardcore, a tablespoon of jangle-pop, and a cup of arena rock – but does that make the song as outstanding as everyone seems to think?  The other bands mentioned here wrote great songs, too, but they weren’t necessarily perfectly pop.  Hell, some are better in terms of actual songwriting and musicianship: “Alive,” for example, has better instrumentation and lyrics that actually mean something.  So does that really justify elevating this particular song above all others of its time?  Or was it that The Thing was simply more popular than the rest, even as Ten sold just as many records as, if not more, than Nevermind?

Neither importance nor influence (or whatever synonym you care to use) are necessarily married or symbiotically linked to quality.  Importance does not equal good.  Assuredly, “Teen Spirit” is great, maybe even excellent, but perhaps its importance has been misconstrued as greatness.  To wit, Pitchfork named it the 13th greatest song of the ’90s, saying:

Fellow Seattle bands Soundgarden and Alice in Chains had charting albums; the former had been nominated for a Grammy, while the latter was flirting with a gold record. But it was the release of “Teen Spirit” that galvanized all of these scattered pieces into what could be packaged and sold as a movement.

All of that may be true, but none of it defines the quality of the song, only its importance and popularity.  In fact, the entire retrospective critique mentions only one part of the song in terms of quality (“an underrated lyric” – bah!).  The rest discusses impact.  Even Rolling Stone in its review of Nevermind‘s 20th Anniversary boxset had to admit it: “the album has become so encrusted with myth, that it’s hard to wrap your ears around it, to really hear it.”

Here’s the thing: I’m not questioning the importance or legacy of “Teen Spirit.”  History is factual, after all.  What I am questioning is whether or not legacy and quality have to be considered conjoined twins.  What I pose is that not only can they be separated, but that it’s better to do so because it allows for legitimate assessment of quality apart from historical markers.  And in the case of “Teen Spirit,” it’s a peerless paradigm from recent history of when one arbitrarily raises the other.