10 Rock Music Songs That Were Almost Never Released
3. Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
The song that launched grunge into the stratosphere and ensured that green stripey shirts would always be fashionable, Smells Like Teen Spirit is the Nirvana song and, in many ways, the song of the 90s.
Taken from their industry-shifting album, Nevermind, Smells Like Teen Spirit made Nirvana gods on Earth and opened the floodgates for dozens of imitators, pastiches, and parodies for years to come. And guess what? Bassist Krist Novoselic hated it the first time he heard it.
After Kurt Cobain had first recorded the song, which he wrote in homage to the band Pixies, he presented it to the rest of the band. Novoselic called it "ridiculous", claiming that the riff was too predictable. Cobain thought about this and, in a clear and rational manner, made the group play it for an hour-and-a-half.
Over the next 90 minutes, Novoselic softened on the track and it was decided that it should feature on Nevermind. Had Cobain not been so ruthless in exercising his power as band leader, then Smells Like Teen Spirit would have never left the studio.
This means that there would be no Weird Al version, and what sort of a world would that be?