10 Perfect Rock Songs That Changed Music History

There always comes a point in rock history where the genre needs a bit of a kick in the ass. While the '80s may have started off with a bang with the arrival of the hair metal scene off of the Sunset Strip, the entire thing started to feel much too stale towards the '90s, with every band sounding more and more artificial on MTV. Rock and roll was looking like a husk of itself, and it took a couple of kids in a gymnasium to remind us why we got into this music in the first place.

While Kurt Cobain may not have envisioned Smells Like Teen Spirit turning into this gigantic song, he did seem to know what he was doing with the lyrical content, speaking for the thousands of kids that were sick of listening to the same old songs on the radio and begging to be entertained in some way. With the same attitude of punk and the bombast of arena rock, Smells Like Teen Spirit was the wake up call for the rest of the rock scene, looking to strip things back to basics and finding something a little more rootsy than someone like Dokken could have given us at the time.

No revolution happens overnight, but Smells Like Teen Spirit was the kind of song that could get almost anyone on board with the new guard of rock and roll, emphasizing being yourself and not listening to what the more corporate side of the music business had to tell you. The '90s may have been going in one specific direction, but the minute that Dave Grohl's snare drum started, we were living in a much different world.