The Makers of These 3 Iconic Rock Songs Didn’t Even Believe in Them

Everyone is their own worst critic. We get in our own way. These are conventions we hear time and time again, and that’s because they are deeply true. Some artists aren’t able to see which songs will be successful before they are. The three songs below proved wildly popular, but the bands that recorded them didn’t have a lot of belief in them before fans got hold of them. These rock songs defied their artists’ expectations tenfold.

“Smells Like Teen Spirit” — Nirvana

Kurt Cobain had very little belief in “Smells Like Teen Spirit” before it became the band’s biggest hit ever. In fact, he nearly scrapped the song before it had the chance to get heard and adored by millions of listeners. Part of his issue with the song was that it was written as a parody of pop music. “I was trying to write the ultimate pop song,” Cobain once said. “I was basically trying to rip off The Pixies.”

[RELATED: The 3 Undisputed Best Songs From Nirvana’s 1991 LP ‘Nevermind’]

Though Nirvana had many songs that were pop-friendly, it wasn’t their goal. In fact, they rejected the idea of their songs having mass appeal on numerous occasions. But when you write a truly great song, there is no stopping its success. That was the case for “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.

“Maggie May” — Rod Stewart

Somehow, Rod Stewart and his record label thought “Maggie May” had no commercial appeal. They were proven wrong when this song became one of Stewart’s biggest hits, surprising everyone involved with the making of it.

In hindsight, it’s really hard to imagine what Stewart didn’t hear in this song, but sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. The subject matter is a little personal, so I could see Stewart getting bogged down by that, thinking no one would connect. “‘Maggie May’ was more or less a true story, about the first woman I had sex with, at the Beaulieu Jazz Festival,” Stewart once explained. Despite the intimacy of this song, listeners found something to relate to, making “Maggie May” a massive, enduring hit.

“Paranoid” — Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” was written as a filler track, but it certainly doesn’t seem like one. “The song was written as a filler for the album—it was never intended on being anything else,” Tony Iommi once said. “But it became a single because it was a short song, and because it became what it did.”

This song clearly blew past the notions the band put on it. It became one of Black Sabbath’s signature songs, proving that great work doesn’t have to be painstaking.

(Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

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