Kurt Cobain was a contrarian, not a radical and his 50 favourite albums prove that
There are two outsider albums on Kurt Cobain‘s 50 favourite records list. They are the two most famous outsider albums of all time. You can read a lot into that.
The presence of Daniel Johnston and The Shaggs, outsider music’s two most talked-about stars, holds a mirror to the same paradox that Cobain himself represented: he was the mainstream outsider. He was the low-key megastar, the anti-industry commercial smash hit, the martyr without a clear mantra. He was, in essence, a contrarian rather than a radical, and there’s a marked difference.
When discussing his early drive to be a musician, Cobain famously commented, “I wanted to have the adoration of John Lennon but have the anonymity of Ringo Starr. I didn’t want to be a frontman. I just wanted to be back there and still be a rock and roll star at the same time.”
The ‘anonymity of Ringo Starr’ is a notable oxymoron akin to wanting the easy life of a President. The drummer even recently became the first celebrity to ban all fan mail, such was the doting influx. He was simply the least famous of the four most famous men in history. That’s the strange position that Cobain aspired to: the popular pariah, the iconic iconoclast.
But that doesn’t make the Nirvana frontman a fool or a liar; it just reveals something fundamental about his philosophy. You see, he didn’t want to be Don Van Vliet of Captain Beefheart, someone inventing their own form. It’s self-evident that he always did desire to be mainstream enough to hold sway over the direction of culture. And he knew that in order to attain that, you have to be populist enough to appeal to the masses. He didn’t want to be an outsider; he wanted to cause a stir from within the fold.
Kurt Cobain’s curious, contradictory love of The Beatles’ early days?
Perhaps the most revealing album on this front is the fact that Meet The Beatles features among his all-time favourites. It seems foregone that Cobain would’ve hated this record had he been around for its release. At that point in time, the Fab Four were pretty much a boy band. ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’, ‘All My Loving’, and ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ are a world away from tracks like ‘Territorial Pissing’, ‘Rape Me’, and ‘Drain You’.
The groovy Liverpudlians were, at that point, the proverbial ‘Radio Friendly Unit Shifters’ that Nirvana subsequently rallied against. But every rockstar chooses Revolver. So, in a bid to always be different, it seems Cobain championed a hit record elementally at odds with his own music and murky views, even when professing his love for the biggest band ever, such was his proclivity for provocative ambiguity.
His favourite albums reveal just how murky those provocative views were, too. Alongside forgotten oddities by the likes of Saccharine Trust are mainstream misfits like Aerosmith’s Rocks. While on the surface, you could consider Marine Girls sitting between the giants David Bowie and Public Enemy on his hand-written list as a mere indicator of an eclectic taste, but as devout music fans, we pore over such matters – Cobain most certainly knew that, he was one himself – and it seems to convey more than just eclecticism.
In truth, they convey the same dichotomy that made Nirvana so captivating for so many fans. Beneath the grovelling distortion and angry asocial manner, there was more than a hint of Meet The Beatles in the grunge group’s catchy hooks. For all the middle fingers to the industry and orchestrated disruption, there were massive marketing campaigns that made them engrossingly accessible. They took the sweetness of The Vaselines to an almost soppy degree and paired it with the punch of Bad Brains in the very next moment. They were an assault of joyous contradictions.
Cobain even proclaimed that Joy Division were one of his favourite bands, despite the fact that he had never listened to them. Figure that one out. At his core, he was simply a contrarian. He didn’t have one single radical message; there wasn’t as much design to his outlook as that.
He swam against the stream / he didn’t climb ashore. His goal was not to transform or overhaul through direct, linear action. Instead, he looked to provoke thought and test assumptions through ambiguity. His convictions were not that of a concrete outlier, but that of a fringe figure looking to distinguish themselves. Consistent ideology was shunned in favour of creative interaction.
If his war was with the mainstream, then he’s not a man you’d follow into battle – you doubt he’d even follow himself – but he might just prompt you to be a defector of your own cause, too. What did he stand for? Well, to say that someone took his chair feels just as apt as appraising his multifaceted, generalised indifference. But that’s an entirely different matter from what he meant, and what he represented.
As his 50 favourite albums prove, he might have been confused and unclear, but he was cool and singular.
Kurt Cobain’s 50 favourite albums:
- Iggy & The Stooges – Raw Power (1973)
- Pixies – Surfer Rosa (1988)
- The Breeders – Pod (1990)
- The Vaselines – Dying for It (1988, listed as Pink EP)
- The Shaggs – Philosophy of the World (1969)
- Fang – Landshark! (1982)
- MDC – Millions of Dead Cops (1981)
- Scratch Acid – Scratch Acid (1984, listed as 1st EP)
- Saccharine Trust – Paganicons (1981, listed as 1st EP)
- Butthole Surfers – Pee Pee the Sailor (1983)
- Black Flag – My War (1984)
- Bad Brains – Rock for Light (1983)
- Gang of Four – Entertainment! (1979)
- Sex Pistols – Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols (1977)
- The Frogs – It’s Only Right and Natural (1989)
- PJ Harvey – Dry (1992)
- Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation (1988)
- The Knack – Get the Knack (1979)
- The Saints – Know Your Product (1978)
- Kleenex – “anything by:” (1978–1983, collected on 1993’s Kleenex/LiLiPUT anthology)
- The Raincoats – The Raincoats (1979)
- Young Marble Giants – Colossal Youth (1980)
- Aerosmith – Rocks (1976)
- Various Artists – What Is It. (1982, erroneously listed as What Is This?)
- R.E.M. – Green (1988)
- Shonen Knife – Burning Farm (K Records version, 1985)
- The Slits – Cut (1979, listed as Typical Girls)
- The Clash – Combat Rock (1982)
- The Faith/Void – The Faith/Void (1982)
- Rites of Spring – Rites of Spring (1985)
- Beat Happening – Jamboree (1988)
- Tales of Terror – Tales of Terror (1984)
- Leadbelly – Leadbelly’s Last Sessions Volume One (1953)
- Mudhoney – Superfuzz Bigmuff (1988)
- Daniel Johnston – Yip/Jump Music (1983)
- Flipper – Album – Generic Flipper (1982)
- The Beatles – Meet the Beatles! (1964)
- Half Japanese – We Are They Who Ache with Amorous Love (1990)
- Butthole Surfers – Locust Abortion Technician (1987)
- Black Flag – Damaged (1981)
- Fear – The Record (1982)
- Public Image Ltd – The Flowers of Romance (1981)
- Public Enemy – It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988)
- Marine Girls – Beach Party (1981)
- David Bowie – The Man Who Sold the World (1970)
- Wipers – Is This Real? (1980)
- Wipers – Youth of America (1981)
- Wipers – Over the Edge (1983)
- Mazzy Star – She Hangs Brightly (1990)
- Swans – Young God (1984, erroneously listed as Raping a Slave)
