Kurt Cobain: Formulate Infinity

Kurt Cobain: February 20, 1967 - April 5, 1994

This article was originally published on FarFromProfessional.com (4/5/24).

Thirty years after his suicide, Kurt Cobain’s artistry still resonates with sonic youth.

I spent the last couple of weeks going through Nirvana’s discography and reading articles about the band and Kurt Cobain to prepare myself for this inevitable day: the 30th anniversary of Cobain’s suicide. After taking this plunge into Nirvana, I achieved enlightenment and realized that there’s nothing new or revelatory that I could say about the band’s cultural impact on rock music back then and (apparently) right now, or the profound tragedy of losing Kurt Cobain at such a young age. It’s all been well-documented and written much better than whatever I could try to say, but you never forget your first love, even if they leave you, and Nirvana was that for me.

I was twelve-years-old and on Spring Break, visiting my grandma in Southern California, when the news broke. I excused myself from the living room where we were watching the news, and I went into the back room where I was staying to spend the rest of the afternoon listening to my Nirvana tapes, as the tunes played the soundtrack of my tears. Later that evening, I listened to the tributes pour in on K-ROQ, and I tried to understand how Kurt Cobain, god of 90’s teenage rebellion, grunge rock icon, pop culture figurehead, was gone.  

You didn’t have to live through the era to understand how “Smells Like Teen Spirit” changed the game for music, and if you’ve ever heard the song, it’s easy to hear why that track had the juice to carry Nevermind beyond the top of the Billboard charts to 30 million copies sold worldwide. Queue up “Smells Like Teen Spirit” right now, and you get it. That track is still a banger. You can feel the flannel on your skin. You didn’t have to be alive back then to understand their music or Cobain’s genius, but you have to have lived through that period of time to truly understand what it was like to experience the zeitgeist of Nirvana and the collective pain the fans felt on April 8, 1994.  It took three days for someone to find Kurt Cobain’s body, and in a matter of hours after that, grunge was also dead.

Legends never die, though, and the most impressive thing about Nirvana’s legacy is how they’ve connected with Gen Z. Kurt Cobain was ahead of his time. He sang about feminism and masculinity. He was anti-establishment and anti-violence, but he loved to collect guns. He often described himself as bi-sexual. He wore dresses on stage and challenged social norms by openly supporting the LGBT community. Those were fringe movements back then It’s easy to see why he connects with Gen-Zers. He was them. He was authentic to himself and in the music that he created with Nirvana, and this is what I’ve always appreciated the most about Kurt Cobain, and I believe it’s the reason why Nirvana has endured for so long.

Thirty years is a long time. Frances Bean Cobain, Kurt’s daughter, has outlived him by a few years and is now married to Tony Hawk’s son, Riley (wild shit). It’s hard to imagine how Kurt would have aged, but I like to think of him continuing to make music, like Paul McCartney. Maybe he would have settled into an acoustic groove and made folk music. He wouldn’t even be 60 yet. Those Cardigans would have been age appropriate. He might have eventually found happiness. He could have been a cool ass grandpa. If only he would have kicked his addiction and not killed himself. Perhaps his legacy wouldn’t be what it has become, but none of this matters today.

Nirvana is timeless. Even though their sound is specific to a brief era in rock music, it continues to resonate with young people who think outside of the heart-shaped box. That’s because they were authentic and raw, led by one of the greatest songwriters to ever rock a crowd. Kurt Cobain has been gone for a long time, but he’ll never be gone forever.