SMELLS LIKE teen bullsh*t (revised)
Issue #23 isn't ready yet, so gaze at this revised issue from the past
Foreword:
I had wanted to release Issue #23 today, but a number of excuses have gotten in the way (chief among them, the appearance of Morbius on Netflix).
Instead, I’m sharing this revised version of a newsletter I delivered last year, before I moved to Substack. It might be my favorite issue ever.
And at the bottom, subscribers can get access to a recording of me reading this aloud in a crowded backyard in July: it’s a perfect summer 2023 memento.
SMELLS LIKE
or A Physical Sensation
Featuring…
UNNECESSARY CULTURAL ANALYSIS
KURT COBAIN
&
MORE UNNECESSARY CULTURAL ANALYSIS
I want to explain why I decided to call my newsletter SMELLS LIKE.
The truth is, I just thought it sounded cool.
But I don’t want to say more than that. The reptilian overlords could be subscribing. To break this down starts to get into a marketing analysis, which I do for eight+ hours a day at my real job, and which I try to avoid in writing these essays.
ON THE OTHER HAND
marketing is a fascinating way to look at history.
AND HISTORY IS FUN, DON’TCHA THINK, KIDS?
We already know art is a great way to look at history because it shows us what people were thinking and feeling in their time. Whereas looking at marketing throughout history shows us what the ad execs spent their dollars on, which shows what the power elite think the people are thinking and feeling.
What I mean is, if art imitates life, marketing imitates art. It is bullshit upon bullshit.
In 1988, when I was two years old, a new commercial appeared on TV for Teen Spirit, an antiperspirant deodorant for girls. And because this was the late 80s, the commercial featured a rap, the lyrics of which were:
It’s a physical sensation (Teen Spirit)
Antiperspirant made for you and your generation (Teen Spirit)
A physical sensation with fragrance that’s made for you (Teen Spirit)
The harder you play, the harder it works: Teen Spirit (Just for teens…Mennen)
In case you didn’t know this already, these are bad lyrics!
And the performance doesn’t save them.
But, like any ad, the goal was not to create art. The goal was to imitate art and provide a message.
Of course, no one at Mennen (the company in charge of selling as much Teen Spirit as possible) could have predicted that Teen’s Spirit’s actual success would be helped by another set of lyrics you probably know:
Hello, hello, hello, how low
Hello, hello, hello, how low
Hello, hello, hello, how low
Hello, hello, hello
With the lights out, it's less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid, and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us
A mulatto, an albino
A mosquito, my libido
These are better lyrics!
They are so good that you probably also know the name of the song, and also the band, and also the lead singer.
I don’t need to tell you that “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was a phenomenon. But what made it such a phenomenon? And did Kurt Cobain REALLY write a song about a deodorant?
In 1991, I was five years old, too young understand Seattle grunge music and too young to appreciate that at some point in my life my body would start smelling like wet garbage, necessitating the application of a hygiene product that would make me smell like wet garbage sprayed with Febreeze.
And strangely, hygiene companies didn’t totally understand this either until the 90s. Up until the 90s, deodorant had been packaged and marketed for adults. “Old Spice,” “Lady Speed Stick,” you might as well just call them “H’or de Near Death.”
In an article from the Chain Store Drug Review, published on this exact day in 1991, Teen Spirit (the deodorant) was described in thusly:
Teen Spirit, by Lady Speed Stick, is targeted to the more than 12 million girls between the ages of 11 and 16, a population that has spending power and is seeking products to meet its special needs. They also have an extra need for strong deodorant/antiperspirant protection because of their changing bodies and active lifestyles.
“A population that has spending power” sticks out to me as particularly nefarious because I don’t know about you but when I was a teenager, I felt like I had no power at all.
Also, the thought of a copywriter in his thirties referring to 12 million teen girls and their “changing bodies and active lifestyles” creeps me the fuck out.
I don’t have the data to back this up, but I do not believe that teen spirit deodorant was successful until Kurt Cobain wrote a song called “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and made it cool.
So why did he write that song?
That is data that I do have.
To quote Kathleen Hanna,
“I mean, who names a deodorant Teen Spirit? What does teen spirit smell like? Like a locker room? Like pot mixed with sweat? Like the smell when you throw up in your hair at a party?”
Kathleen Hanna is a rock singer for the group Bikini Kill, and in her youth, a close a friend Kurt Cobain’s.
Long before Nirvana’s big hit, Kathleen and Kurt were just two kooky kids looking for some clean American fun.
Says Kathleen,
“I remember that night. We were just hanging out and getting drunk. At the grocery store in Olympia me and Tobi [Kurt’s girlfriend] were like ‘Ewww, look at this, it's so crazy! It's called Teen Spirit!'.
“I ended up hanging out with Kurt and Dave that night. We got pretty drunk and did this thing where we turned off all the lights and smashed everything in Kurt's room. … I started drawing on the wall in Sharpie markers, I wrote ‘Kurt smells like Teen Spirit', because it was in my head from earlier in the grocery store.”
Love or hate “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” we can all agree the lyrics make no sense and it’s also one of those frustrating songs where the title doesn’t appear in the lyrics.
Side note: What kind of a fuck doesn’t use the title of his song in the fucking song? This is a tried and true hit making strategy: come up with a title, repeat the chorus seven thousand times until people buy your record. Say what you want about Lionel Richie, but tell me that simple saying the words “All Night Long” doesn’t encourage you to hum a few bars to yourself in line at Starbucks.
Say what you want about Lionel Richie, but he’s a goddam hitmaker!
To be fair, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was also a tremendous hit, but the kind of hit that could only be written by a sarcastic fuck.
The 90s were a wonderland for sarcasm, and Kurt Cobain was king of sarcastic fucks.
You can only understand the lyrics of Smells Like Teen Spirit if you are a lonely teenager in the suburbs watching MTV, inundated with marketing bullshit, and your only protection is sarcasm. Specifically the lyric “Here we are now, entertain us,” refers to the relationship between teenagers and MTV, in that there was no relationship. The reason MTV was allowed to exist, the reason any TV exists, is because some boring 36-year-old marketing executive realized there was “a population that has spending power and is seeking products to meet its special needs” and “because of their changing bodies and active lifestyles” they probably don’t wanna to listen to the bullshit of 36-year-old marketing executive.
But you know who’s bullshit they will listen to?
(cue scene of grunge kids in a high school gymnasium thrashing to the sounds of that great, great hit of the 90s)
Kurt Cobain was 24 when Smells Like Teen, which, in some circles, is considered an adult. Most popular musicians peak in their 20s because you need to be mature enough to write good songs but close enough to the agony of adolescence to connect with the teen demographic.
Still, that didn’t stop the suits from giving it one more go.
In 1992, a new commercial appeared for Teen Spirit (the deodorant), but this time, with a very different vibe.
There was no rap, but there were, in a sense, lyrics. The words SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT appear on the screen, in a lurid, 90s font and if you look very carefully, you will see a trademark symbol.
Dumbass Kurt Cobain never trademarked the song title he stole from Kathleen Hanna, and it fills me with rage to think that the Mennen corporation, owned and operated by the Colgate-Palmolive Company, gets a kickback every time that song gets played.
Still, at long last, Teen Spirit. The commerical says, “This smells like teen spirit.” This product that you can buy and keep until you’re old and boring and have to get a job.
But I don’t think we buy it, do we?
Teen spirit is so much more than just changing bodies and active lifestyles. It’s the jubilation of making mistakes your parents have to pay for, and spending all summer doing whatever the fuck you want with whoever is at the mall.
Teen spirit is that mixture of defiance mixed and total surrender, a need to fight met with the realization of total powerlessness, that makes you yell at your parents, write random shit on people’s walls, and dance into sweaty pile in a high school gym before going home and masturbating for two hours in the shower my whole family uses. Pot mixed with sweat mixed with who-gives-a-fuck-if-we-die-in-my-mom’s-car-on-the-way-to-prom.
So that’s why I call my newsletter SMELLS LIKE, as a homage to something I will never understand. I never had any teen spirit. As soon as I turned 14, my dad made me get a job.