Listening Guides

Listening Guide 23.1
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" 4 beats per measure

iTune link = Smells Like Teen Spirit

"Smells Like Teen Spirit" is arguably the most influential early recording in the Northwest style popularly known as grunge. Combined with Nirvana's music video, the imagery of the outsider and his dark, cynical view of the world connected with the youth of that generation. Cobain's lyric has no particular story line or theme, but the disparate phrases of text are unified by their brooding imagery of alienation, self-loathing, and disdain for those who love attention and popularity.
     The presentation is raw, simple, and direct by design, reflecting the desire of Nirvana and like-minded groups to present a music long on power and short on high production. Nevertheless, Cobain complained that he thought the album, in the hands of the major-label producers, was too commercial.
     Even with just a trio of instruments and a solo singer, the band achieves a wide range of volume and textures. The opening guitar riff sets the mood of isolation and intensity. Cobain's voice on the verses has an airy, meditative quality, very lonely in character. In the second half of each verse the band builds methodically to the chorus. On the chorus the group explodes into a rage, with Cobain kicking into a virtual scream.
     The second verse/chorus cycle is virtually identical to the first. A guitar solo is then played over a half-length version of the verse. When Cobain comes back for the third verse, he has rightly intensified the softer vocal style of the first two verses to help the overall performance grow and evolve. After the third chorus, Cobain keeps repeating his last phrase in an emotional climax that is ended by a power chord in the guitar.

iTune link = Terrible Lie

The album Pretty Hate Machine was frugally produced in a Cleveland studio, almost entirely done by Trent Reznor, with Richard Patrick on guitar. Due in part to the industrial style of the music, and probably for reasons of limited finances as well, the music is generated mostly by synthesizers and drum machines. The guitar is used sparingly and mostly for texture rather than as a rhythmic tool or dominant solo instrument. This album was virtually ignored upon its release in 1989 and met with hostile critical response. However, it garnished a cult following among fans because of its unique presentation of industrial-style rock. Instead of relentless mechanical repetition, Reznor's music used memorable riffs and verse/chorus song structures, even softer balladlike songs. Reznor also tapped into the Generation X aesthetic in his lyrics and vocal style. His songs are filled with angst and betrayal, obsession and disillusionment, expressing mistrust of lovers, religion, and society.
     "Terrible Lie" uses a lot of gated sounds, an electronic effect whereby the sound of a natural instrument in a natural space—for instance, a snare drum in a large room with a long reverberation time—is chopped off artificially before it has a chance to fully decay to silence. The song opens with electronic drum sounds, sharp snare drum–based sounds processed to sound like gunshots or pile drivers. They bounce back and forth stereophonically, adding to the artificial, mechanized sound of the music.
     For the verses Reznor uses a vocal sound of constrained rage, which is always unleashed just before going into the chorus. It is as if with each verse/chorus cycle he makes himself mad all over again. The verse has a sparse background, defined mostly by the distorted guitar and drums playing a sharp two-note figure alternating with the vocal.
     The choruses are fuller in texture, with a constant drum groove, long, rich notes from the synthesizers both in the low and high range, and with Reznor using his more screaming vocal style.
     After the first two verse/chorus cycles Reznor's interlude creates a long, methodical buildup, beginning with just the drums, adding whispers, then moderately intoned vocals, and more synthesizer sounds. These additions come in four-measure intervals.
     Like in any good song, the third verse is more intense than the first two, made possible by Reznor's twisting of the verse's melody. The third verse is followed by a succession of four choruses, each one adding layers of vocal and synthesizer textures. At the song's end a sharp chord is struck, leaving a soft, sustaining synthesizer chord to linger and die away.

iTune link = King of Rock

Run-D.M.C. was a pioneering rap group that successfully fused rap with heavy metal riffs and distorted electric metal-style guitar. King of Rock was the group's second highly successful album, paving the way for their mainstream crossover third album, Raising Hell, featuring their collaboration with metal band Aerosmith on a cover of the latter's "Walk This Way." The lyric of the song "King of Rock" features heavy band bragging in the tradition of first-generation rappers like Grandmaster Flash but with a tougher edge that paved the way for political rappers of the future.
      "King of Rock" features a slow, grinding drum beat and a two-measure metal guitar riff. It has no traditional verse/chorus form or other clearly contrasting sections marked by a change of harmony or melody, but there is a consistent form of a sort. In general, a section of the song is defined by a rap of four to eight measures, followed by an instrumental response of some kind. Changes of sound and texture between sections are achieved in a number of ways. Sometimes only the drums are heard, guitar solos come in and out, sometimes over the basic riff melody and sometimes not. The voices sometimes appear in a solo presentation; at other times, the rap lyric is passed from one vocalist to another, then done together in rapid succession. One solo voice is high and light; the other is deeper and more robust.
    Run-D.M.C. was a product of Def Jam Records, the next important hip hop label after Sugarhill. White co-owner Rick Rubin, a former punker, was out to have hip hop appeal to as many people as possible, including young whites. To that end Rubin signed an all-white rap group, the Beastie Boys. Beginning their career in New York as a punk act, the Beastie Boys kept the snotty attitude of punk in their hip hop and again proved how closely related hip hop and punk were aesthetically. Their 1986 Licensed to Ill album was the first hip hop record to top the Billboard charts, despite the controversy that they were cultural pirates and their stage antics were vulgar and testosterone-driven.
    Def Jam's next triumph was Public Enemy. Carrying the street-life topic of "The Message" several steps further, Public Enemy addressed police brutality, gang violence, drug addiction, and the ambivalence toward the black community by every institution, from public emergency services to record companies. Underneath Chuck D and Flavor Fav's virtuoso raps were sampled funk groove loops, synthesizer hits, and grating shrieking noises. The macho attitude was definitely in place. Chuck D used as his musical sources anything his girlfriend hated; Def Jam cofounder Russell Simmons called it black punk rock. It all seemed to come together in the 1988 album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Using a production team called the Bomb Squad, the music was dense and intense, used intricate technology, and was deeply funky. It was faster and more shrieking than the slow and low productions of earlier Def Jam productions. It was also perhaps the first album-oriented performance by a hip hop group, with each piece being unified thematically. It was the first real grown-up rap.