Anatomy of "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

Sometimes you don’t need to break the mold, structurally, to make a great song. One of the most popular pop songs of all time, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” by 90s grunge gods Nirvana, has one of the most straightforward structures in the pop universe. Let’s break it down.

You can follow along with the music video on YouTube.

It’s the basis for just about every section of the song, a progression comprised at the beginning of the song of four chords played on electric guitar. This is the intro.

Next, the heavy guitars drop out, the beat changes a bit, and the bass plays the chord progression under a simple guitar picking pattern. Vocals emerge. This is the verse.

The chord progression continues, but the guitars start to intensify, and the hi-hats open up, indicating a build. If the song follows through on this signal, we’re probably hearing the pre-chorus.

And we are. Next, the heavy guitars return. We are hearing the intro of the song all over again, only this time with loud, intense vocals. If this is the chorus, we expect to hear it again later.

The first time the song breaks from its primary chord progression is before we return to the verse, when Kurt Cobain snarls “Yeah / Hey.” We could give this short section its own label, but I like to simply think of it as the end of the chorus.

Next, another verse. Then another pre-chorus and another chorus.

Up to this point, the song’s structure is about as straightforward as it could be. This is a very common setup in pop music for a song’s “bridge.”

And a bridge we get, yet there are no vocals. Instead, we hear a lead guitar play the melodies of the verse and the pre-chorus, almost note for note, and over that same old chord progression.

This is followed by a third verse, a third pre-chorus, and finally, one last chorus.

So the song’s structure is as follows:

Intro

Verse

Pre-chorus

Chorus

Verse

Pre-chorus

Chorus

Bridge

Verse

Pre-chorus

Chorus

It follows one of the most predictable song structures in pop music history, and it relies almost completely on four simple chords, yet, almost 30 years after its release, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” persists as one of the most well-known pop songs of all time.

Sometimes, less is more.