Nirvana honored with the Video Vanguard Award on the 35th anniversary of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Thirty-five years after the release of “Smells Like Teen Spirit“, Nirvana will receive the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award, one of the most prestigious honors handed out at the MTV Video Music Awards. The award will be presented during the ceremony scheduled for September 27 in Los Angeles. It has not yet been announced who will represent the band on stage.

Established in 1984 and named after Michael Jackson in 1991, the Video Vanguard Award honors artists who have left a particularly significant and innovative mark on the history of the music video. Over the years it has gone to, among others, David Bowie, Madonna, Peter Gabriel, George Michael, Guns N' Roses, R.E.M., Red Hot Chili Peppers, U2, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Kanye West, Duran Duran and Beastie Boys. The most recent winners were Shakira in 2023, Katy Perry in 2024 and Mariah Carey in 2025.
The honor arrives in the year of the 35th anniversary of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, released in September 1991 and accompanied by the now-legendary video directed by Samuel Bayer. Set in a school gymnasium gradually engulfed in chaos, the video played a decisive role in turning Nirvana into a global phenomenon and remains one of the defining images of the grunge explosion of the early Nineties.

The band's videography, however, includes numerous other clips that have since become iconic. Kevin Kerslake directed the videos for “Come As You Are”, “Lithium”, “In Bloom” and “Sliver”, while Anton Corbijn helmed the visionary, unsettling “Heart-Shaped Box”. After Kurt Cobain's death, videos were also made for “You Know You're Right”, directed by Chris Hafner, and “Dumb”, entrusted to Ruffmercy.
The announcement of the award came on September 9, a date with particular significance in Nirvana's history. It was on September 9, 1992 that the trio played the Video Music Awards in what became one of the most chaotic and celebrated performances in the show's history. Before launching into “Lithium”, Kurt Cobain provocatively strummed a few bars of “Rape Me”, a song MTV had explicitly asked them not to perform. During the set, Krist Novoselic threw his bass into the air, only for it to come back down on his own face, while Cobain closed out the performance by trashing the amps and equipment. A performance that has gone down in MTV history and stands as a perfect representation of the irreverent, anti-establishment impact Nirvana had on the visual imagination of an entire generation.

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