How Nirvana Helped Revitalize Weird Al's Career – Smells Like Teen Spirit
It maybe hard to believe now, but there was a time when Weird Al’s career seemed to be in a funk, but it would be a decision by Michael Jackcson and alternative rock band Nirvana who helped him resurrect his career. That’s what we’re going to explore in today’s video. Weird Al would end up making a name for himself in the 80’s parodying some of the most popular artists of the day including popstars like Michael Jackson and more alternative artists like Devo, B-52’s and Talking heads. But it would be Nirvana’s second album Nevermind that soon caught his
attention in 1991. While Weird Al loved the album, he didn’t think anyone would really hear it because Nirvana was relatively unknown at the time recalling to Spin “I was such a fan of the band,“Weird Al” Yankovic. “I heard Nevermind and I thought, Oh this is really great. I wish it were popular enough for me to do a parody…but that’s never going to happen!” “It was the energy, the attitude. I liked the sound of real instruments. I like guitars. I like people screaming.” Nearly five months after it’s release Nevermind topped the billboard charts displacing Michael jackson’s
from the number one spot. The timing seemed perfect for Weird Al to parody the band, but he struggled to get a hold of Nirvana’s management. Despite Nirvana’s
Do your own thing. Others own their own thing….P.S. Teen Spirit has an uncanny resemblance to Godzilla by Blue Oyster Cult.” One thing that’s unique about Weird Al is that he doesn’t legally need permission from an artist to spoof or parody their songs, but out of a sign of respect he always asks the artists for permission to parody their songs. There have been cases where artists have said no to him including Paul McCartneh and most famously Prince who turned him down half a dozen times or so. By the late 80’s Weird Al’s career was in a
lull. He would identify 1989, 1990 and 1991 as being the lowest in his career. It was during this time he had released his first motion picture which was a colossal failure as was the soundtrack as he’d tell SPin magazine saying and i quote “Weird Al” Yankovic: I had a really nice run through the ’80s and things kind of stopped for a while after UHF. It was sort of a dark period. The movie tested extremely well — it was Orion Pictures’ highest-testing movie. So they thought it was going to be a big hit. They were internally
pumping me up as their new Woody Allen. This was going to be the start of a franchise. And you can’t help but be sucked into that frame of mind. I was thinking, “Okay great! I’ll be a movie star.” And then after the first weekend I was basically a ghost. No one at Orion wanted to establish eye contact. That was the beginning of three years where it was kind of hard for me to recover: I had failed at the box office, the soundtrack to the movie didn’t go anywhere. Weird AL for a second thought about parodying
another Michale Jackson song. The king of pop had just released his album Dangerous and the song “black or white” weird al wanted to parody with his version called Snack All Night, but Michael Jackson said no to Weird Al parodying the song as the song had an important social message. Then Nirvana came along and proved to be a blessing for Weird Al. As luck would have it Nirvana would appear on saturday night live in early 1992 and one of weird al’s friends was a cast member on the show VIctoria Jackson. Through her help he was able
to get on the phone with Kurt Cobain and ask for permission, which he gave. Weird Al would recall to Spin He was sweet and he got it in like five seconds and said, “Of course you can do a parody.” The famous quote from him was, “Is it going to be a song about food?” because at that point that’s primarily what I was known for. And I said, “Well, no, it’s going to be a song about how nobody can understand your lyrics.” And he said, “Oh, sure, of course, that’s funny.” That’s one of those phone conversations
I wish I had recorded. I’d love to hear that myself. However after the parody came out Weir Al would meet cobain telling Spin Yankovic: I only met Kurt in person once at a restaurant in Los Angeles. He just happened to be eating at an adjoining table with his friends. This was after the parody had come out, so I got to go over and thank him in person. I just profusely thanked him and said, “Anything I can do for you, let me know.” Kurt extended his hand to me and said, “Polish my nails.” The parody would
take three to four days to record and Weird Al wanting to stay authentic to the original song would book the same soundstage and even the same janitor and a few of the cheerleaders who appeared in the video. Another fun fact is that tony hawk is one of the people in the bleachers. The resulting parody would be called smells Like nirvana would end up being one of the biggest hits of weird al’s career peaking at number 35 on the billboard charts and turning around the lst three years of his career with the resulting album Off the
Deep End going platinum. It was following Cobain’s death in 1994 that Weird struggled as to whether they should play teh song during live shows , but ultimately decided to with Weird Al telling the audience each night that the song was a somber dedication to kurt. When it came time to visit Seattle following Kurt’s death weird al would look back telling spin The hardest one was doing Seattle, because I didn’t know if I should be doing that song in Seattle at the time. I didn’t know how people would take it. I asked a lot of journalists
there, “Should I do this? Should I not do this?” And almost unanimously they said, “You should do this. It would be cathartic.” And it actually went over extremely well.
