Watch 1,000 Musicians Perform Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” Together

About 936,000 results come up when you search YouTube for “smells like teen spirit cover.” That’s a lot, but we’re not that surprised, as Nirvana’s breakout grunge hit is one of the most overwhelmingly popular songs of the past three decades. You don’t need us to tell you that thousands of musicians, both aspiring and established have taken on the song, but what you may not know is thousands of musicians recently covered the song… together… at the same time ( via Hypebeast).

This concept may sound familiar to you: In the summer of 2015, a group called Rockin’1000—which consists of a thousand musicians, as you might have figured—wanted Foo Fighters to perform in Cesena, Italy, so they organized a thousand-person performance of “Learn To Fly” that did eventually lure the band to play a show in Cesena.Since their initial stunt, though, they’ve decided to keep the train rolling, and the latest product of their absolutely massive efforts is the above video of the band performing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” from July 2016.

You can forget what a thousand people looks like, but hey, it’s a lot. Watching the clip above is more like seeing an organized stadium chant than a band performance, but that’s less a knock on the band and more a comment on the sheer size of the performance. The band is actually super impressive, as keeping a thousand musicians in sync with each other is no small feat. Let’s quantify the size this way: If you doubled the NBA (which has about 450 people in the entire league), you’d still be a hundred basketball players short of a full 1000-person band.

It is sadly not possible for Nirvana to reform and head to Cesena, Italy for a special performance, but we like to think Kurt Cobain would at least give the video a nod of approval if he was still around today.

Featured image: Sub Pop

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