“Smells Like Nirvana” by Weird Al Yankovic

"Smells Like Nirvana" is "Weird Al" Yankovic's send-up of "Smells Like Teen Spirit", and it led off his 1992 album Off the Deep End as its first single that April, pulling him out of a three-year slump that followed the money-losing film UHF. It takes aim at Kurt Cobain's unintelligible delivery, and Cobain signed off on it right away when Yankovic phoned him on the set of Saturday Night Live.

For once the music was simple enough to spare the band the usual pile of overdubs: Jim West, Steve Jay and Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz, plus Tommy Johnson on tuba. The single peaked at No. 35 on the Hot 100 and matched that on the Mainstream Rock chart, and its video, shot on the original's set with some of the same actors, earned an MTV nomination. Dave Grohl said it made Nirvana realize how far they'd come.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.