Nirvana- “In Bloom”
From their album Nevermind

It’s easy to call Kurt Cobain one of our darkest and most pessimistic rock stars. He compared his wife’s umbilical cord to a noose, he sang about wanting to be raped, he claimed that everything was his fault, and he even wrote a ditty called “I Hate Myself and Want to Die.” Also, people with sunny dispositions don’t shoot themselves in the head.

The easy reading of his story is: a) Shy Washingtonian from a punk background captures lightning in a bottle; b) Only to find himself guilty and confused by that success; and c) He self-medicates with heroin and escapes that conflict by ending his own life. That conventional history of Cobain ignores one simple fact: Kurt Cobain wanted to be famous.

By Krist Novoselic’s and Dave Grohl’s accounts, Cobain was a perfectionist and tyrant, insisting upon multiple takes, pushing them to tour, and micromanaging every aspect of the band. If you read the published journals of Cobain, you would see brainstorming for videos and doodling of potential band logos. This was never a man satisfied by a small following in the northwest. He had more in common with Prince than he did with Ian MacKaye.

The more accurate way to portray Cobain’s relationship with fame and fortune is that he wanted it on his own terms, and the way he dictated that desire actually makes him perversely idealistic, if not optimistic.

Nowhere is that desire more evident than on “In Bloom,” which, in theory and execution, is probably the quintessential Nirvana song. From the sludgy yet vibrant introduction to the cord-cutting slide at the end, it’s a dazzling waltz of tension and release. Lyrically, lines like, “Sell the kids for food / Nature changes mood” nail the enigmatic, atmospheric brand of deist hand-wringing that Cobain trademarked. And, of course, it fits the quiet-loud-quiet structure that Cobain admittedly co-opted from the Pixies, a structure that spotlights a mammoth, inescapable chorus.

That chorus is the most direct statement Cobain ever made about his fans: “He’s the one / Who likes all our pretty songs / And he likes to sing along / And he likes to shoot his gun / But he don’t know what it means…” For a grown man, Cobain had a lot of hang-ups with the people who picked on him in high school. Here, he casts his own fans as the gun-toting philistines he supposedly left behind in Aberdeen. This contemptuous casting of the listener shows that no matter how he expressed himself, Cobain was still haunted by redneck fratboys; even though he shaped culture, he couldn’t change it. He couldn’t demand how his songs were received, and offering sophisticated work for superficial consumption is the nightmare of any controlling artist. At the very least, Cobain could control his own side of the dialogue. If  bimbos were going to misinterpret his work, they should ridicule themselves while they were doing it.

Furthermore, the chorus hints at exactly the kind of fan he would want: himself. If only everyone else could read zines and pore over Melvins lyrics and buy up all the Raincoats’ seven-inches he could, Nirvana could do its real duty. It wasn’t enough for someone to think Nirvana sounded cool. He also needed to understand every line of Cobain’s enigmatic, atmospheric brand of deist hand-wringing. Famously, Cobain resisted playing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” live—he played it abnormally fast when he did—because he suspected part of the audience came only for that song. They weren’t real fans, dude.

You know what? He was right. Some people listen to only what’s on the radio, some people go to a concert for only one song, and some people like music without ever really interpreting what it means. To believe that the world of entertainment would or should ever replicate himself as the ideal listener was completely unrealistic of Cobain. It shows how little he actually understood about popular music. It goes without saying that a number one record brings that “wrong” kind of fan. How could he expect everyone to become a wide-eyed college DJ overnight? In that way “In Bloom” is not the jaded kiss-off, the sarcastic puppet show suggested by its video. It’s charmingly naive for  him to believe that his music could change all of that baggage.

Looking back on “In Bloom,” it seems like the perfect response to “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” If the latter was an eager introduction, the former was an uneasy backing up after the handshake. It belongs near the top of the history of songs about dealing with getting bigger than you ever expected. The only problem with this, of course, is that the songs were written at the same time and collectively appear on Nevermind. Like F. Scott Fitzgerald before him and Drake after him, Cobain wrote about the perils of being rich and famous before being either of those things. Being conflicted about fame was as much a part of the plan as the fame itself. It’s for this reason that we can never really call Kurt Cobain an idealist: He could not only see the future; he could see that it sucked.