NIRVANA's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' video surpasses two billion views on YouTube
12-06-2025
NIRVANA‘s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video has surpassed two billion views on YouTube. The clip, which was uploaded to the Google-owned video platform in June 2009, previously hit one billion views in 2019.
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” opened NIRVANA‘s breakthrough release “Nevermind” (Geffen/UMe) which hit No. 1 around the world, selling more than 30 million copies worldwide. The single made its radio debut on August 27, 1991 and the accompanying video showed the band playing background music for a truly spirited high-school cheerleading squad. The clip was filmed on August 17, 1991 at a sound stage in Culver City, California.
The “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video was directed by Samuel Bayer, whose his personality clashed with those of the NIRVANA bandmembers. “He’s got a little Napoleon complex,” NIRVANA frontman Kurt Cobain said in the NIRVANA biography “Come As You Are: The Story Of Nirvana”. “He was just so hyper, such a rocker guy. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe we actually submitted to that.”
Courtney Love, who married Cobain in an intimate ceremony on February 24, 1992, told New York Magazine in 2011: “Kurt hated Sam Bayer. For ‘Teen Spirit’, Kurt wanted fat cheerleaders, he wanted black kids, he wanted to tell the world how fucked up high school was — but Sam put hot girls in the video. The crazy thing is it still worked.”
Back in December 2019, NIRVANA‘s video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” officially hit one billion views on YouTube.
“Nevermind” would come to be much more than one of the most successful and influential albums of all time. It returned rock ‘n’ roll integrity and passion to the top of the charts and continues to be a singular inspiration to fans and musicians alike over the last three decades — and generations to come. It has been credited over the years with helping to kill off hair metal.
Charles R. Cross, the author of “Heavier Than Heaven”, a biography of Cobain, told Today.com about the mega-success of “Nevermind”: “It’s an incredible album. It would have been a hit whenever it was released. But at the same time, the timing was right for there to be a superstar act like NIRVANA. It came right at the end of the death knell of hair metal and the world was screaming for rock music that would be meaningful again. And the timing for a new generation wanting a voice was also ideal. It just so happened that everything came together at the exact right moment when rock needed a revolution.”
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