By Ng Dawin (25A01D)
It’s been 30 years since Kurt Cobain sold the world at his feet.
Just who could have seen it coming? The frontman of the biggest band in the world in 1994, with 3 hit albums. A father to a newborn daughter and role model to legions of young fans who couldn’t help but headbang every time “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came up in the mall.
Yet pathetically he lay, sprawled out on a bathroom floor, high on heroin with a shotgun shell through his head. Like Morrison. Like Winehouse. Like Hendrix. They all lived fast and died young.
Or so we thought.
I don’t believe in reincarnation, but I’m starting to question my beliefs. When the dead still hold such a strong influence on the living – faces popping up on wall murals, online threads along the lines of “What would Tupac have thought about the modern rap industry”, talk about the “27 club” in media circles—it all gets me wondering: Did god seriously resurrect Kurt Cobain as a sweaty T shirt?
With these musicians, the tragic circumstances of their death can’t be ignored. They self-imploded at the height of their superstardom, unable to cope with the fame their talents brought them and our remembrance of them remains at their artistic peaks: eternally young and never ageing. One can only wonder whether Selena or Aaliyah would still hold as much cultural relevance today had they been allowed to age into obscurity like Janet Jackson. As overused as it is in the music industry, you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
The main problem with our uncanny obsession with the dead is that we aren’t remembering them for their music. Rather, we start seeing them as tragic heroes, a beacon of unfulfilled potential robbed from us by their early deaths. And because they’re dead, they (obviously) can’t communicate with those consuming their art. Fans will only see the artists from the perspectives of their untimely demise, thinking that everything that they produced was but a lead up to their deaths.
And in the face of such intense emotions, their lyrics speak out to us and a connection is seemingly formed. Their pain becomes the catharsis for our pain, and we think we can relate personally.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a parallel case in point from the Catcher in the Rye.
In the character of Holden Caulfield, J.D. Sallinger created a one-off protagonist completely resentful at the “phoniness” of the world—an issue so relatable to us ordinary citizens that empathy feels the natural reaction. And to the millions of teens worldwide watching Holden hobble his way through New York, one singular thought might be racing through their minds: Damn, that’s basically me. Sure, it’s nice to see your own problems be reflected in popular media, but to reduce someone else’s existential anguish to a consumable, mass produced tablet, swallow it ourselves then complain “O woe is me”—doesn’t it feel rather cheap?
Even three decades after Kurt Cobain’s suicide, he still lives on. But he isn’t the Aberdeen boy who strummed guitar anymore. To the edgy teenager, his music with Nirvana is the heart shaped box that holds teenage angst. To the clothing company, he is the money-printing design on a T-shirt whose popularity will always be in bloom. To the average person, he’s the anti-establishment icon who made “Smells like Teen Spirit”, the pretty song we all like to sing along to when we’re sick of modern pop music. Simply put, Kurt Cobain has become the Caulfield-like everyman, a projection of our inner desires.
One of the oldest tropes in media, the public has always been mystified by the concept of the “tortured genius”. People want to believe that these artists were able to produce high art that challenged norms as they had become disenchanted by what life offered, and their non-natural deaths only enhanced this mythos of the self-destructive artist.
What many don’t realise is that this “disenchantment” with life isn’t just a value-based system that anyone can relate to. Instead, it’s an unholy concoction of talent, experience and anguish that only the artist has been through—and their music is a method for them to sublime this unbearable pain. Would Clapton be able to write “Tears in Heaven” if he just read about someone else’s kid tragically falling out of a window from newspaper filler? Would Ian Curtis of Joy Division be able to write “Love Will Tear Us Apart” if he wasn’t watching his marriage crumble away as he fell deeper into the abyss of epilepsy?
Much too commonly, the pain behind these musician’s music was too much to handle, spiralling them down the paths of drugs or depression—so who are we to think that their art is speaking directly to our pain?
Yet, this doesn’t mean that you need to think about Sinead O’Connor’s divorces every time you listen to“Nothing Compares 2 U”. That’d be plain philistine. These people turned their pain into great music, and they probably wanted to be remembered for their art, not the tragic circumstances leading up to it.
If you are to take away one message from this article, let it be this: Be thankful that your favourite artist lived, not relate to them in their death. For all you want, fantasise Whitney Houston jamming it out with Prince, Taylor Hawkins and Buddy Holly in heaven.
Heck, you could even dream about Biggie and Tupac collaborating up there as brothers in arms. Just don’t project your ideals onto them and imagine either of them commenting on the Kendrick-Drake beef today with “sissy” or “not part of the hood”. Those two literally got killed by the hood.