Cobain started his iconic grunge group with bassist Krist Novoselic in 1987 when he was 20 years old. After playing with several drummers and releasing their first album on an indie label, the band picked up drummer Dave Grohl, signed to a major label and released their second, groundbreaking album, Nevermind. “It turned out to be the place where alternative rock crashed into the mainstream,” according to AllMusic. Released in September 1991, Nevermind combined a basement sound with the slick production that only a major label could provide. The first track, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” became the “anthem of apathetic kids” and “the perfect encapsulation of Generation X angst and ennui” within a few months. The song hit #1 on the Billboard Alternative Songs Chart, #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and was Rolling Stone’s #2 song of the year. “It was a zeitgeist moment, you know? It turned people’s heads,” said Butch Vig, who produced the song. “Those records don’t come along very often.” And it didn’t stop there. Songs like “Come as You Are,” “Lithium,” and “In Bloom” created seismic waves that made the grunge band from Seattle bonafide rock stars. Nevermind hit the top of the Billboard 200 chart in January 1992, replacing the likes of Garth Brooks and Michael Jackson. Even today, the album is still selling: In April 2021, it hit 10 years on the Billboard albums chart, a feat few albums have accomplished. And in June 2021, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” became only the second song from the 1990s to hit a billion streams on Spotify. Nevermind’s influence is far-reaching to this day. In 2019, 28 years after the album’s release, Jung Kook of South Korean K-pop band BTS tattooed Nevermind lyrics on his right arm. The “Stay Away” lyrics “rather be dead than cool” have been a life motto of the vocalist since he was a teenager. Another BTS singer, Jimin, has a prominent “Nevermind” tattoo on his ribs, but it’s likely related to a BTS song called “Never Mind”—which is itself on an album some fans theorize is connected to Nirvana and their album. After Nevermind, Nirvana went on to release a third and final studio album, In Utero, as well as several live albums, extended plays and compilations. Sadly, Kurt Cobain had a history of mental health issues that were worsened by years of drug and alcohol abuse. He committed suicide by a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 27 in 1994, leaving behind a simple handwritten note that mentioned Neil Young’s quote that it’s “better to burn out than to fade away.” Cobain was survived by his “goddess of a wife who sweats ambition and empathy,” Courtney Love, and “a daughter who reminds me too much of what I used to be, full of love and joy,” Frances Bean. In 2019, Frances, who is now 29 years old, co-curated the “Kurt was here” collection for suicide prevention nonprofit organization The Jed Foundation. In honor of Nevermind’s 30th anniversary, here are 60 quotes from Kurt Cobain.
Kurt Cobain quotes
- “If my eyes could show my soul, everyone would cry when they saw me smile.”
- “My mother encouraged me to be artistic. It was written in a contract at an early age that I would be an artist.”
- “I used to think when I was young, that I was adopted by my mother because they found me in a spaceship, and they let me out, and I was from a different planet. “
- “I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me.”
- “I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar–hide in the back and just play.”
- “I would like to get rid of the homophobes, sexists, and racists in our audience. I know they’re out there and it really bothers me.”
- “I’m disgusted by my own and my generation’s apathy. I’m disgusted at what we allow to go on, by how spineless, lethargic and guilty we are of not standing up against racism, sexism and all those other ‘isms’ that the counterculture has been whining about for years.”
- “I am not gay, although I wish I were, just to piss off homophobes.”
- “I have to admit I’ve found myself doing the same things that a lot of other rock stars do or are forced to do. Which is not being able to respond to mail, not being able to keep up on current music, and I’m pretty much locked away a lot. The outside world is pretty foreign to me.”
- “I don’t blame the average seventeen-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout. I understand that. And maybe when they grow up a little bit, they’ll realize there’s more things to life than living out your rock & roll identity so righteously.”
- “I would have been proud to be a New Wave-er 15 years ago.”
- “I really miss being able to blend in with people.”
- “We’ve always had a sense of humor, I don’t think it’s been translated well.”
- “Hope I die before I turn into Pete Townshend.”
- “Dreaming of the person you want to be is wasting the person you already are.”
- “I was tired of pretending that I was someone else just to get along with people, just for the sake of having friendships.”
- “A friend is nothing but a known enemy.”
- “I like to make people feel happy and superior in their reaction towards my appearance.”
- “I’ve always had a problem with the average macho man–they’ve always been a threat to me.”
- “What really needs to be done is teaching men not to rape. Go to the source and start there.”
- “I definitely feel closer to the feminine side of the human being than I do the male – or the American idea of what a male is supposed to be. Just watch a beer commercial and you’ll see what I mean.”
- “I’ve always been a really sickly, feminine person anyhow, so I thought I was gay for a while because I didn’t find any of the girls in my high school attractive at all."
- “We have to spend a lot of money to protect ourselves all the time, and it’s just stupid.”
- “Either I’ve accepted it or gone beyond insane, where I can deal with it emotionally.”
- “We’re not as popular as everyone thinks, and we’re not as rich as everyone thinks.”
- “I knew I was different. I thought that I might be gay or something because I couldn’t identify with any of the guys at all. None of them liked art or music. They just wanted to fight and get laid. It was many years ago but it gave me this real hatred for the average American macho male.”
- “There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life.”
- “We’re so trendy we can’t even escape ourselves.”
- “I’ve never been a very prolific person, so when creativity flows, it flows. I find myself scribbling on little notepads and pieces of loose paper, which results in a very small portion of my writings to ever show up in true form.”
- “Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want.”“It’s sad to think what the state of rock and roll will be twenty years from now. It just seems like when rock and roll is dead the whole world’s gonna explode.”
- “There is nothing in the world I like more than pure underground music.”
- “Music comes first; lyrics are secondary. Most of my lyrics are contradictions. I’ll write a few sincere lines, and then I’ll have to make fun of [them].”
- “We don’t mean to be really cryptic or mysterious, but I just think that lyrics that are different and weird and spacey paint a nice picture. It’s just the way I like art.“
- “I’m not well-read, but when I read, I read well.”
- “I just can’t believe anyone would start a band just to make the scene and be cool and have chicks. I just can’t believe it.”
- “I didn’t know how to deal with success. If there was a Rock Star 101, I would have liked to take it. It might have helped me.”
- “I mean I like to be passionate and sincere but I also like to have fun and act like a dork. Geeks unite.”
- “Thank you for the tragedy. I need it for my art.”
- “I like to have strong opinions with nothing to back them up with besides my primal sincerity. I like sincerity. I lack sincerity.”
- “I like to complain and do nothing to make things better.”
- “Words suck. I mean, everything has been said. Words aren’t as important as the energy derived from music, especially live.”
- “This song is dedicated to Frank Zappa, and River Phoenix, Fred Gwynne who played Herman Munster, Dixie Lee Ray, Thomas P, Tip O’Neil, and you, dumb [expletive], who just threw water on me.”
- “Grunge is kind of boring for us, it’s not something we can deny, we’re not gonna stop playing the old songs live, but our tastes are just changing so rapidly.”
- “I guess we don’t really talk about those kinds of things that are really important to us, because, I don’t want to be thought of as nothing more than a PC band you know? I mean, we’re entertainers.”
- “I’m a spokesman for myself. It just so happens that there’s a bunch of people that are concerned with what I have to say. I find that frightening at times because I’m just as confused as most people. I don’t have the answers for anything.”
- “I don’t think Courtney and I are that [expletive] up. We have lacked love all our lives, and we need it so much that if there’s any goal that we have, it’s to give Frances as much love as we can, as much support as we can. That’s the one thing that I know is not going to turn out bad.”
- “Holding my baby is the best drug in the world.”
- “We have no right to express an opinion until we know all of the answers.”
- “We don’t want to be too political…it’s just kind of embarrassing to do that.”
- “If you’re put in this position, what are you gonna do? Become a Republican or something? Just to protect what you’ve earned? Big deal.”
- “No one is afraid of heights, they’re afraid of falling down. No one is afraid of saying I love you, they’re afraid of the answer.”
- “I use bits and pieces of others’ personalities to form my own.”
- “Life isn’t nearly as sacred as appreciation of passion.”
- “Do your own thing. Others own their own thing. If you copy too much, you’ll find yourself in late-night cocktail lounge cover band limbo.”
- “To be positive at all times is to ignore all that is important, sacred and valuable. To be negative at all times is to be threatened by ridiculousness and instant discredibility.”
- “Drugs are a waste of time. They destroy your memory and your self-respect and everything that goes along with your self-esteem. They’re no good at all. But I’m not gonna go preaching about [them].”
- “I just hope I don’t become so blissful I become boring. I think I’ll always be neurotic enough to do something weird.”
- “There’s good in all of us and I think I simply love people too much, so much that it makes me feel too [expletive] sad.”
- “If you die you’re completely happy and your soul somewhere lives on. I’m not afraid of dying. Total peace after death, becoming someone else is the best hope I’ve got.”
- “I think we’re just easy scapegoats. It started with something and people just pick up on it and carry it along and we turn into cartoon characters… there’s nothing I can do about it, really, y’know?” Next, 75 Freddie Mercury Quotes on What Would Have Been the Iconic Queen Singer’s 75th Birthday
