R.I.P. Kurt Cobain

Today is the 16th anniversary of when Kurt Cobain's body was discovered in his Seattle home. I will always remember this date partly because I was a huge Nirvana fan, but also largely because his body was discovered on my 19th birthday. I remember my mom called to wish me a happy birthday and she also asked me how I was doing with Cobain's death. She knew I was a big fan and wanted to make sure I wasn't too upset. [She would make a similar phone call when Dimebag Darrell was murdered on stage many years later.] I was a freshman in college and I wasn't crushed by his death, but I was weirded out tremendously. Here was this guy who had created these incredible albums, seemed to be on top of the world and yet he had taken his own life. I remember very clearly watching MTV News' Kurt Loder starting to cry as he reported on Kurt's death. When a young celebrity/rockstar dies too early it always seems surreal.

I wonder what Nirvana's career would have been like had Kurt not killed himself. Would Kurt have let Dave Grohl have more songwriting responsibilities in the band and what would those songs have sounded like? Would Dave still have formed the Foo Fighters (one of my favorite bands)? Would Courtney Love have turned into the absolute train wreck that she has become? What would Kurt say about being labeled the "killer of hair metal"? All questions that aren't worth pondering much because we'll simply never know. We have Nirvana's music and that will never die (Nevermind, In Utero and MTV Unplugged In New York all have such strong memory associations for me).

Here are four of my favorite Nirvana songs:

"In Bloom"



"Sliver"



"Heart Shaped Box"



"The Man Who Sold The World"