The lyric from Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” finishes with “us.” The line appears in the song’s opening verse and leads into the famous chorus.
Nirvana recorded the song for their 1991 album Nevermind. Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and Dave Grohl are credited as writers, and Butch Vig produced the recording. The arrangement combines a quiet-loud dynamic with distorted guitar, a forceful drum performance, and Cobain’s often deliberately unclear vocal delivery.
The song became a major breakthrough for Nirvana and helped bring grunge and alternative rock into the mainstream. Its title came from a phrase written by Kathleen Hanna of the band Bikini Kill, who had sprayed “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit” on a wall. Cobain initially did not know that Teen Spirit was a deodorant brand.
Because the vocals are heavily blended with the instrumentation, listeners sometimes misremember “entertain us” as “entertain me.” The plural pronoun is important: the line addresses a group, matching the song’s collective, crowd-like energy.