Recording and Lyrics
The song was recorded around January 27, 1992 at at Santa Monica Sound Records, in Santa Monica, California. As normal for Yankovic's band, they generally recorded the songs that they thought would be released as singles last; in this case, they knew that "Smells Like Nirvana" would be the lead-off single for the new album. Recording took between three and four days. The band worked at trying to match the same tempos that were in the original "Smells Like Teen Spirit" song; Jon Schwartz, Yankovic's drummer, noted that "the part was pretty loose. Tempos were up and down. We adjusted the tempos on our song to meet the Nirvana version. It's by no means steady." Compared to previous parodies, where upwards of 20-some instruments had to be mixed together, the simpler composition of "Teen Spirit" made it much easier for the band to complete the song.
Yankovic later expressed the fact that recording the vocals for the song was particularly difficult, because he was singing "for eight to 12 hours a day", which caused strain on his vocal chords. For the verse where Yankovic mumbles the lyrics to the song, he placed several cookies in his mouth to achieve the garbled effect. During the parody's musical interlude, Yankovic gargled water to the tune of the original's guitar solo. The solo also features a tuba, courtesy of Tommy Johnson, and kazoos.
Lyrically, "Smells Like Nirvana" was written to poke fun at the difficult-to-understand words as sung by Cobain for many of his songs. One verse begins "What is this song/All about?/Can't figure any lyrics out". At one point, Yankovic purposely garbles the lyrics: "It's hard to bargle nawdle zouss /With all these marbles in my mouth". He admitted in an interview that he woke up "in the middle of the night" and wrote down the phrase "bargle nawdle zous", thinking that it would "be important someday."
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