Essential Nirvana Songs That Aren't As Overplayed As Smells Like Teen Spirit

Nirvana's 1991 single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is undoubtedly a remarkable and brilliant piece of work, jumpstarting a cultural revolution and bringing on rock's grunge era. But let's face it — it's overplayed to the point where we're starting to get tired of it. We're not saying it's a '90s rock song that's overrated, but the way that it's saturated the rock world for more than 30 years now could diminish the perception of the monumental impact of Nirvana.

The Washington state power trio — Kurt Cobain on guitar and vocals, Krist Novoselic on bass, and future Foo Fighters leader Dave Grohl on drums — was the biggest band in the world for only a little over two years. It started with the ascendancy of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," then the tragic story of Nirvana ended in April 1994 with Cobain's death. During their relatively short existence, Nirvana recorded a wealth of material. Not only is it consistently high-quality, ground-breaking, and definitive '90s rock, but a lot of it just hasn't been heard as much as that consequential breakthrough hit. We went through Nirvana's catalog and found some other songs that best represent its sound, approach, and message that have gotten somewhat lost in the shuffle over the past 30-odd years. These are the crucial Nirvana songs that deserve as much attention as "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

During their initial brush with fame, while handling massive media attention, Nirvana tried to convince the world that it really wasn't doing anything new — that it was really more of a punk outfit. Nirvana could make that argument by pointing to its earlier work, including the 1990 song "Sliver," which received a wider audience on the 1992 rarities collection "Incesticide." "Sliver" is a punk song in its snotty attitude and point of view, taken to its extreme. It's an account of an evening a child spends being babysat at his grandparents' house. It's just a few hours, but Cobain's narrator manages to stage a hissy-fit while also eating dinner, ice cream, and watching TV. It's boring, it's banal, it's the worst, as far as Cobain's punk kid is concerned. 

"Sliver" does what so few Nirvana songs do and what Nirvana emphasized in live appearances and in interviews: It has humor. It also sounds like a punk song, but the material isn't anti-establishment or a call to arms, just a relatable childhood experience, delivered with Nirvana's signature melodic elevation of punk elements.

It makes sense that Geffen Records picked "In Bloom" as one of the post-"Smells Like Teen Spirit" singles to promote Nirvana's burgeoning "Nevermind" album. It wasn't nearly as big a hit as its predecessor, but if new fans like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and have never heard "In Bloom," there's plenty of what makes the former so special present in the latter, and it'll quickly rank high in any personal list of best Nirvana songs.

For example, "In Bloom" takes up the mantle of an anti-establishment tone with lyrics that are self-referential and self-deprecating and allude to the weirdness of modern life and being professional entertainers. Also coming in hard is a groove-providing guitar riff and mathematically precise drum pounding from Dave Grohl. And as he did in "Teen Spirit," Kurt Cobain contributes a mind-melting guitar solo all full of feedback and bent notes that approaches the edge of anarchy and then steps back to join those radio-friendly pop melodies. Like any good Nirvana song, you can bob your head along to Krist Novoselic's monster bass lines, or you can do what Nirvana fans did back in the '90s and run around and mosh.

On this deep cut from Nirvana's breakthrough second studio album "Nevermind" comes "Drain You," which finds the band at its sloppiest, most metal, and most provocative. Studio wizards reigned in the sometimes unhinged and off the wall Nirvana sound honed at its electric live shows on major singles like "Smells Like Teen Spirit." "Drain You" similarly bears the touch of major-label professionals, but they couldn't cover up all the jagged edges or dampen Nirvana's impish attitude.

Kurt Cobain wasn't afraid to get a little gross with his lyrics, using explicit physical and biological imagery to metaphorically describe emotional or psychological concepts. On "Drain You," he gets hilariously and subversively grim, opening the song with a conversation between two babies, as one says to the other, "it is now my duty to completely drain you / I travel through a tube and end up in your infection." Then, the chorus talks about passing chewed meat between mouths via exuberant open-mouthed kisses, and that's exactly the kind of inscrutable but unsettling lyrics Nirvana covered up with layers of guitar noise and slurred singing.

In 2002, almost a decade after the death of frontman Kurt Cobain, an oft-rumored and little-heard Nirvana song finally saw an official release. A major selling point of a self-titled retrospective compilation was "You Know You're Right," the very last piece of music that Cobain had recorded with the rest of Nirvana. It's a more raw sounding example of Nirvana's sound, lacking the expensive studio sheen the radio-friendly "Smells Like Teen Spirit" received. From the jump, "You Know You're Right," which doesn't sound like it's much more than a demo, listeners know this is a Nirvana song, as it goes from quiet to loud to quiet again before descending to feedback and menacing auditory chaos. 

 It also makes reference to Cobain's progressive politics. During a latter chorus, he switches the lyric "you know you're right" to "you know your rights," a clever bit of wordplay that's also a call to action in what would be the final released studio recording of the musician's life and career.