There have only been a few times where I looked at the title of a song and said, “This is going to be a good one.”  Usually, song titles are pretty innocuous and if you were to give me a list of titles from a band’s latest album, I’d shrug.  The song’s called “Stay?”  Well, that could mean anything.  But like I said, every once in a while, I see “Raining in Baltimore” or “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” and pay a little more attention to what it might be about.

Such was the case with “Interstate Love Song.”

When Purple was released in early June 1994, I had been waiting in anticipation for a couple of weeks.  “Big Empty” had been playing on the radio and in commercials for The Crow, and “Vasoline” had made its debut a week before.  Couple that with the fact that Core was still in regular rotation in my CD player and I didn’t need anything else to be sold.  I’m not sure if I bought the album the week it came out or if I picked it up a few weeks later.  All I know is that one afternoon, I came home from the mall (probably Sam Goody) with copies of Purple and 10,000 Maniacs’ MTV Unplugged.

One of my friends, who was the self-appointed authority when it came to all things music, wasn’t too hot on the album because it wasn’t as heavy as Core; however, I actually preferred Purple, and my co-purchase of the 10,000 Maniacs album should have been a sign that I had different tastes (the number of times that girls I knew borrowed said 10,000 Maniacs CD should have also been a sign that I was on the right track).  Purple wasn’t exactly a revelation in the way Dookie would become later that year, but in hindsight, it was a sign that the alternative music scene was lightening up a little.  “Big Empty” was the “this is the same as Core” track; “Vasoline” was a little different but still had guitars and speed the way I thought guitars and speed should be in a song.  But “Interstate Love Song?”  I looked at the title and wanted to listen to it because it sounded like a great title, even if a love song–which was more suited to people like Jon Secada–did not fit the criteria for a “good” song among my friends and I.  I mean, we listened to metal, not love songs.

Okay, my friends listened to metal and I was only listening to it so I could fit in.

Even so, that title drew me in.  I wanted to know more.  So after binging on “Big Empty” and “Vasoline,” I skipped ahead to track #4 and almost immediately, Purple’s status above Core as the better of the two albums, was established.  The tune hooked me in, which is perfect because I couldn’t understand what the hell Scott Weiland was actually singing about anyway.

By the way, it’s heroin.  He’s singing about heroin.

Okay, that’s not entirely true, although his heroin addiction–which was common among musicians of the early 1990s alternative scene–is something he’s cited in interviews as an inspiration.  The song’s also about honesty, and touches upon how relationships are inherently complicated.  Having not been in a relationship yet when I was sixteen, I didn’t know anything about this.  But I understood, on some level, the song’s sense of longing and of hoping for something (albeit pessimistically).

“Interestate Love Song” would eventually receive the highest of honors when it came to my musical tastes–I put it on a mix tape for a girl.  Granted, I had completely misinterpreted the song and had it mean something about long-distance relationships (I guess I took the title a bit too literally), but in that misinterpretation, the song wound up fulfilling the purpose of a mix tape anyway–it was repurposed by a listener.  And that’s usually why it’s one of those songs that reminds me of being a teenager, with the contradiction between its tune and its meaning recalling the conflict between youth and burgeoning adulthood and the struggle between longing and ultimate fulfillment.

So it’s been twenty years since Kurt Cobain’s suicide.  I suppose that I’m not the only person writing a piece about it today (although I’m definitely one of the least important people writing about it).  Truth be told, if I wasn’t spending much of this year looking at 1994, I might not have even noted it beyond recognition upon seeing a Facebook post or something.

His death didn’t affect me very much–celebrity deaths rarely do.  However, when I was sixteen, I wasn’t that much of a fan of Nirvana.  Oh sure, I’d enjoyed the songs I’d heard off of albums like Nevermind, but I didn’t own any of them and was more into stuff like Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, and Metallica.  I suppose that might all have been different had I access to MTV on a daily basis but I can’t exactly write about something that wasn’t true.

What was true is that my friend Brendan called me up on April 8 and told me he saw something on MTV about Kurt Cobain having been found dead (Cobain’s autopsy would later reveal that he’d died on April 5).  We made some jokes about it adn then talked about something else.  It was probably hockey or school.  That night, I went to a meeting for the People to People Student Ambassador group for the trip to Europe I was scheduled to take that summer.  One girl, whose name I think was Tammy, was wearing a Nirvana T-shirt and I innocently asked if that was because of the news.  She replied that he wasn’t dead and that wasn’t completely true about the heroin overdose.  I apparently then became the person who first told her about Cobain’s suicide.

Beyond that, life went on.  I listened to other bands and explored other genres.  I did noticed that other people were more upset.  My sister’s friend, who had a flair for the dramatic, seemed pretty insistent on proclaiming that every lyric on every Nirvana album was a clue to his suicide.  There was at least one piece in the student newspaper about it.  And T-shirt stops at the mall seemed to be selling a lot more Nirvana T-shirts.

As the grunge of the early 1990s gave way to the fluorescent pop of the late 1990s, I began to see the significance in his death, culturally if not personally.  Cobain’s suicide is almost a dividing line between the two decades, establishing a Nirvana/Britney Spears divide between Generations X and Y (for lack of better terms, anyway).  It also winds up establishing Nirvana as a near-perfect band.  Okay, I’m not a fan of In Utero but the group has that Beatles-esque achievement of ending before they could really suck, whereas Pearl Jam was more like the Stones–slowly fading with diminishing returns and occasional flashes of brilliance.

Had Cobain not taken his own life, how would things have been deifferent?  Would we have gotten another Nevermind or would they have been put out Binural?  Would Kurt and Courtney have continued to be a trainwreck of a couple or would they look like Gavin Rossdale and Gwen Stefani (well, before they broke up)?  Would Nirvana’s continued presence prevent the rise of The Goo Goo Dolls, Marcy Playground, Third-Eye Blind, Smashmouth, Fastball, and a host of other “Where are they now?” bands from the late 1990s and early 2000s?

Such speculation is both fun and frustrating.  So are overwrought odes to dead artists and pretentious think pieces.  At least on a day like this, we can take the time to appreciate his contributions to music.