10 Greatest Guitar Riffs Of The 90s
4. Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
And now we come to the song that practically announced the grunge scene in one fell swoop. With just a few random pick scratches, the whole sound of Smells Like Teen Spirit was enough to render the entire Sunset Strip obsolete and to signal the new guard of what rock music would sound like. Which is crazy when you consider the fact that the actual chords are a blatant rip off.
If you had asked Kurt Cobain what he was doing when writing this song, he hasn't hidden the fact that the chords are almost exactly the same as Boston's More Than a Feeling, just reworked with the dynamic sensibilities of the Pixies. For the more cynical rock fans, this is just more evidence that Kurt Cobain was just another hack musician who is way too overrated for his own good. Fair enough...if you haven't actually tried to play along with the track.
Though Kurt definitely didn't have as much formal training in music as someone like Yngwie, the way he locks in with Dave Grohl's drumming is actually incredibly tight, even with the sloshy dead notes that he hits along the way. This is practically a litmus test for how people would start writing alternative songs from here on out. It didn't matter if you could play insanely fast...just make the most with what you have and put as much force behind it as you can.