Remembering Kurt Cobain: 10 important songs from Nirvana’s leader

Kurt Donald Cobain Fradenburg He was born on February 20, 1967, a pivotal year in the history of rock. They say he got his first guitar at 14 years old. Ever since he struck his first chords, nothing has interested him more than starting a rock band.

Somehow he knew that it was in music that he would overcome time, although this came later. First, the harsh adolescence was to leave on him a rebellious, brooding and painful imprint that he would carry through his whole life.

At the age of only 9 years old, he had to endure the divorce of his parents, and the following years were transitions from one house to another. In high school, he was teased by his peers and often left alone. His only interest was music and drawing.

When you turn 18, Kurt Nirvana cover next to Krist Novoselic. While this wasn’t her first musical project, it was the first time she teamed up with someone who took music seriously and not just as a hobby. Together with drummer Chad Channing, they record their first LP “bleach”, released in 1989 by the independent label Sub Pop Records.

However, with their next album, they are gaining attention not only in independent circles in Seattle, but throughout the world. In the late 1990s Dave Grohl he sits down on the drums, and the following year they release “Nevermind”, their first masterpiece and an album that will bring grunge to the attention of the industry.

Kurt Cobain He was not only a frontman with an energy capable of electrifying an audience (or an entire generation), but, above all, a composer who knew how to fill his lyrics with a chilling sensitivity, which, thanks to his sharp and silent voice, became eternal. .

Here we present 10 of those songs that, almost 30 years later, are still anthems for all those with a “teenage spirit”.

10. Smells like teenage spirit

The theme that opens “doesn’t matter”probably one of the most popular songs on the radio in the 90s. Essentially the same Kurt He denied this many times and said that he did not understand why this song became the anthem of generations.

Its name comes from a prank played by Kathleen Hanna on the Nirvana leader when she wrote on a wall that Kurt “smelled of teenage spirit”, deodorant of the time. The theme of the lyrics is simple: teenagers in the midst of their age are looking for a way to rebel and have fun.

Due to its importance in the history of grunge, it could not fail to make this list.

9. Rap ​​me

A song with a title that could be translated as “Rape me” captures very well what he was always trying to address. Kurt in his music. The song features a female rape victim who confronts her assailant, urging him to commit the crime, announcing that he will not bow his head in the face of adversity and will not be ashamed of his subsequent desire for revenge.

The song was one of the reasons record networks tried to censor the band’s third album. “In the Womb” (1993)

8. pennyroyal

Also appeared in “In the Womb”the title of the song refers to an abortifacient drink, which was very fitting for the theme of the album cover, despite being written in 1990.

However, the song goes further and seems to be an allegory of a man who knows that inwardly he is fading away among his addictions and melancholy. The disabled version is shocking. “I’m so tired I can’t sleep / I’m a liar and a thief (…) I drink warm milk and laxatives.”

7.Polly

This theme appears on three of the band’s albums: Wow, Incesticide and in disabledand perhaps one of the most disturbing of the group.

The song tells the true story of a teenager who was kidnapped and tortured in 1987 and managed to escape his attacker. However, Kurt approaches the lyrics from the point of view of the damaging one, as someone who completely identifies with evil.

6. Lithium

The fifth song of Nevermind hints at the maxim Marx that “religion is the opium of the people.” The lyrics are about a man who, after the death of his girlfriend, takes refuge in religion as a last resort to avoid suicidal thoughts. The topic is quite representative of the past Kurt lived in the Christian home of his parents.

5. Heart shaped box

Probably one of the songs that caused the most problems when it was finished. The theme was originally “a box in the form of a coffin”; but takes its final name from the “heart-shaped box” that Courtney Love left on a table in the house she shared with the leader Nirvana.

The song began to be composed in 1992 and since then Kurt could not finish it. It was in meetings in the womb in which Kurt promoted her and her bandmates gave her the finishing touches. Listening to the final version Cobains he could see that he thought it was a good song.

4. Something’s on the way

A burst of energy that is “doesn’t matter”concludes with an acoustic keynote, ‘Something’s on the way’. The song was revived after being part of the Batman (2022) soundtrack.

The song is about a homeless man who lives under a bridge, protects himself from the rain and cold with a tarp with holes in it, and keeps local animals as pets. However, the voice Cobains This gives that hint of helplessness that the described scene depicts. Legend has it that the theme alludes to the time when Kurt lived in such conditions.

3. Eat like you eat

Group’s third songdoesn’t matterconsidered the best Generation X anthem compared to the classic “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. In fact, it was the second single from the album.

The song is a manifesto that sounds desperate and sincere and alludes to this young generation’s need to identify, to feel part of something in a society that always seems lazy and elusive. “Come as you are / Take your time / the choice is yours (…) And I swear I don’t have a gun”

2.About the girl

Pop song from Nirvana’s first album”bleach”. This is a simple, tender and touching love song dedicated to his then girlfriend, Traceywith whom he lived in the early days of the band, when a rock star was just a distant dream.

1. All apologies

One of the jewels in the crown “In the womb” Without a doubt, this theme is one of the most emotional, composed Cobains. During a concert in 1992, the vocalist dedicated it to his wife and daughter. “I like to think it’s for them,” he admitted in a later interview, although he emphasized that it was a feeling, not a lyric.

The song was recorded as a demo in 1991, albeit with a much more folkish twist. The lyrics do not have an exact meaning, but they have been interpreted many times as the sum of the feelings that gripped the artist in the last years of his life, and as a letter of “apology” to his family and fans for the end of his life. which has already been foreseen.