Nirvana

Before he was old enough to say "embarrassing," millions of people saw Spencer Elden in his birthday suit on the cover of Nevermind. Now a teenager, he's trying to make sense of his very public image.

Every generation has its own soundtrack. The Silent Generation (people born in the '20s and '30s) had big band and swing. Baby Boomers (born in the '40s and '50s) had rock and soul. Generation X (born in the '60s and '70s) had grunge and hip-hop. On this edition of All Songs Considered, we look back at the defining music of those generations and ask what the soundtrack is for the current generation, Generation Y (or Millennials).

Glenn Miller's "In the Mood," Edward R. Murrow's wartime broadcasts from London and Public Enemy's influential hip-hop album Fear of a Black Planet are among the recordings added to the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry.

Nirvana's Bleach (reissued this month) didn't make much of a splash when it was released in 1989. But with hindsight, the album shows a band clearly hurtling toward greatness. A mere two years later, Nirvana headlined England's Reading Festival; by then, the greatness was obvious.

The Bryant Park Project begins a series of "best songs in the world" for our stages of grief. Today, BPP web editor Laura Conaway celebrates denial with Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit.'

The popularity of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," by the Seattle rock band Nirvana, announced the dominance of grunge music over the synthesized sounds of late-'80s pop and rock. Nirvana remains widely celebrated as a rock band that, unlike many of its peers, became enormously popular on its own terms.