Shinedown‘s video for their single “Dance, Kid, Dance” opens by quoting Kurt Cobain‘s lyrics from the chorus of Nirvana‘s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Frontman Brent Smith was among the many people who felt thunderstruck when they first heard the iconic grunge anthem, and he tells ABC Audio he remembers exactly where he was when that happened.
“I was getting bullied, like, relentlessly in school, and I faked having a stomachache,” Smith recalls. “And my Granny, God rest her soul, I called her to come and pick me up from school, ’cause … man, it wasn’t fun.”
Smith then spent the day at his grandmother’s house, where he was free to watch MTV. At the time, his parents’ house had the channel blocked.
“I will never forget it, man,” Smith says. “I was sitting down on the floor watching MTV, I was having a ball. And all of the sudden, it started, and I heard the song and saw the video at the same time. And it literally catapulted me into a different universe.”
“[Cobain] literally was a superhero,” he continues. “I’d just never seen anything like it. As a kid that was getting bullied by the cool kids or whatever, I was Kurt. I looked at things the way he did. It was the first time I saw somebody who looked how I felt, and he was out in front.”
Smith adds that he got the idea to add the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” quote to the “Dance, Kid, Dance” video just before it was finalized.
“Everybody was kinda like, ‘Whoa, this kinda changes how you go into the video,'” Smith says. “I’m like, ‘That’s the point.'”
Shinedown will launch their Dance, Kid, Dance U.S. tour April 25 in Des Monies, Iowa.
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