Courtney Love shares Kurt Cobain’s first draft for Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’
Courtney Love, the former partner of Kurt Cobain, has shared unpublished lyrics that the late legend wrote for the biggest Nirvana hit, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. Love, the frontwoman of Hole, revealed the lyrics while appearing on Rob Harvilla’s podcast 60 Songs That Explain The ’90s.
Amid some fascinating anecdotes about her infamous relationship with Cobain, Love unfurled the lyrics to read out to Harvilla. “Some of these were in these journals, and some of them are unpublished,” Love explained before reciting the lyrics.
“Come out and play / make up the rules / I know I hope / to buy the truth / who will be the king and queen / of all the outcasted teens” before the chorus kicks in: “We’re so lazy / and so stupid / blame our parents / and the cupids / a deposit, for a bottle / stick it inside / no role model “, the first set of lyrics read.
She then read out a second draft of the lyrics: “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.”
Only around five of these original lines made it to the song’s final version, which arrived as the lead single of 1991’s masterpiece album Nevermind. Love concurred that, to her, it’s a different song. “The only consistencies that it retains are: ‘load up on guns and bring your friends’, and ‘little group has always been and always will until the end’, that’s it.”
Love also explained that she wishes Cobain would have kept the line: “Who will be the king and queen / of all the outcasted teens”, saying it would have “helped my life a little bit better, taking on the shit that me and my daughter have,” ostensibly referring to the backlash to which she was subject following Cobain’s death in 1994.
