Singer Courtney Love, widow of the late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, reveals that her late boyfriend's band's biggest hit originally had completely different lyrics.
According to Love, the song "Smells Like Teen Spirit", which became one of the most recognizable of the pioneering grunge band, was written shortly before the release of the classic album Nevermind, produced by Butch Vig (Garbage leader and drummer), and most of its lyrics were soon replaced by familiar ones.
Kurt Cobain, Photo: AP
Hosting the podcast "60 Songs Explaining the Nineties," Love told presenter Rob Harvila that some of the song's original text appeared in her late boyfriend's diaries. "Some of them were in those diaries, and some were published," she said. Courtney read lines like "Come out and play, make up the rules, I know I Hope, to buy the truth" and "We're so lazy, and so stupid Blame our parents and the cupids" and said that had the song been recorded in its initial version, these would have been words that any guitar-rock enthusiast in the Ninties would memorize.
Other lines read by the singer are: "We merge ahead this special day, this day giving amnesty to sacrilege, A denial, and from strangers, a revival, and from favours, here we are now , we're so famous , here we are now , entertain us". Host Harwila noted that only five lines of the initial version found their way into the final and familiar version of the song.
Courtney Love. Photo: AFP
Love admitted that she would have preferred the line "Who will be the king and queen, of all the outcasted teens" to remain in the eventually recorded version. That's because, she claims, they would have helped her and their daughter avoid "all the they put us through" (after Kurt's death). Cobain and Love married in 1992 and were married for two years, before the musician took his own life in 1994 at the age of 27.
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