WATCH: Arcade Fire Covers Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ During ‘Rococo’ Performance on Reflektor Tour … Sort Of

It looks like Arcade Fire just a got a little more grungy, because the famed Indy rockers semi-covered Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" during a performance of "Rococo" at their Friday night show in George, Washington, Rolling Stone reports.

Along their current Reflektor tour, the band has been featuring regular "covers" – or snippets of songs – as part of a "homestate-tribute." Perhaps because of this, the homage paid to the band who changed music in the 90s was no surprise, but the way the group did it was rather stylish.

Rather than doing a straight-up cover of the famed tune, frontman Win Butler decided to incorporate lines from the song into their own "Rococo" – off 2010's The Suburbs.

Butler has been rather outspoken about the immense influence that Nirvana was on him growing up. Perhaps another reason why their recent mix wasn't a total shocker. On the subject of the band's legendary album Nevermind, he told the Associated Press, "All of a sudden, the whole kind of social dynamic at my junior high changed where these kind of misfit kids who maybe come from a broken home and they're smoking cigarettes in the back and they didn't have money for nice clothes were in a weird way on the same level as everyone else socially." He added, "I was sort of like a weird kid who didn't know where I fit in or whatever and just to have that kind of voice be that big in culture, I feel like that was a magical period of alternative music where we had Jane's Addiction and R.E.M. and Nirvana. It was like seeing these kind of freaks from all the different cities of North America and you're like, 'Oh, wow.'"

Check out Arcade Fire's "cover" of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" below:

Tags
Arcade Fire, Nirvana, Reflektor, Win Butler
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