Nirvana And Their Music example essay topic

Kurt Cobain look Into the Life and Career of a Legend; A Proposal Kurt Donald Cobain was the lead singer / songwriter of the band Nirvana, until April 5 1994 when he committed suicide. Troubled by depression, chronic stomach problems, and an addiction to heroin, his ailments in his personal life showed through in his music. His music evolved from the hard 'punk's sound of their first album, to the intelligent 'tell all' tales of his fourth and final album In Utero. Through his music he changed an era of "lost souls", to generation with a vision of who they were. The songs he wrote and played captured the attention of the world, but also brought him the fame and fortune that led to his downfall. The pain and the hate of his life filled the lines, tough hidden under his sarcasm.

He couldn't take the voices in his head that had plagued him all his life, that compiled with his dislike of the fame caused him to end his own life. The life that gave him no joy. The first time I heard Nirvana they changed my life. I was sitting in class and one of my friends tapped into the P.A. system. He hooked it up to his Walkman and started playing Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana's first single. Was sitting in class day dreaming and suddenly I was pulled out of it by this amazing sound.

A few seconds later the principal shut off the song, but by that time I was hooked. Later that day I went to the record store and bought their second first and second album. I took them him and threw them into the CDplayer and fell in love. Finally I could identify with music, the words that poured from the speakers spoke my life. Until that moment I had no direction and felt alienated from the rest of the kids my age. But Cobain's music touched on what I was not able realize at my age, that being yourself is all right no matter what the 'trendy' junior high school kids thought.

Though I would not understand the impact of his music or what his words meant to him, and that those songs would pull me through the hardest times in my life. Research Question How did his depression influence his music, and how did it show up in his work? Outline and Source Summary Since the first time I heard Nirvana and their music, it had an impact on my life. Though I never stopped to think about the meaning behind the actual words that were spoken.

From the time that Nirvana started back in 1986, they have changed faces both on the inside and the outside. Kurt Cobain was born ina small town in Aberdeen, Washington in 1967 (Wilson 2). He grew up in a broken home and had many problems along the way, because of his hyper-active nature nobody in his family wanted him (Wilson 2). He was passed around from aunts and uncles, to his grand parents. He started his creative process first through art (Wilson 2-3).

Where by later he turned down two art scholarships to art school, and never did finish high-school. Then when he was 15 he started playing the guitar, also he found the underworld of drugs (Wilson 3-4). He played the guitar and did drugs by himself until the age of 18, when he joined his first band (Wilson 15). I intend to show how the events of his early life influenced the course his life took, and how it would later be found in his music. Also the actual words from the songs hold a great deal of insight to his life.

Also the progression of his first band's, to the final trio that would make history. Have three different kinds of research resources; a book, video, and the lyrics to all of his songs. All of these give different looks at the life of Cobain and what exact events lead to him committing suicide. In my opinion out of the resources I have the lyrics of his songs paint the clearest picture; which also are open to individual interpretation.

The words along with the knowledge of his life, will be the instrument on how to gauge his depression from the basic "punk" sound of his early material, through the "pop-rock" phase, to the "story telling" of his later work. His forceful sound and his forceful stage performances, or only one side of him musically. As evident in the intense acoustic performance that he did for the MTV "unplugged" series, he proved to everyone that saw the show that he had such a love for what he did. Though it was evident that he looked in pain, whether it was from his stomach pains or his depression is unsure (Wilson 60). My research has been focusing on the way Cobain's life has shaped his music from the early years up until his death. I also want to focus on the severity of his heroin use and depression, and prove how the increase of both of these affected what he wrote, and what was the source of the depression.

My research so far has led me to believe that these two symptoms increased from his view of the hope and sincerity during that point in life. Because the biggest points of drug abuse occurred after he dropped out of high school, during the fame of Nirvana's album Nevermind, and after that he had tried to clean himself up in re-hab, to no avail (Wilson 11). I am using all of these resources to find out the common thread that ties together his depression, to his sarcasm in his writing, and if the sarcasm was his way of making fun of himself for feeling the way he did. I want to put all of these questions about his depression and the hidden meaning of his lyrics together to show the how the depression he felt made its way to his music, and how the fame of his music fueled his desire to end his life in April, 1994.