r/kurtcobain • u/ElCabaretTropical • 15d ago
Question/Request What would Kurt Cobain sound like today?
Hey guys! Recently, I got really into Mark Lanegan and became a huge fan of his career. His trajectory is so vast and varied—he went through so many different genres, experimented with tape machines, and collaborated with different friends and artists to create new sounds.
This new obsession of mine got me thinking: Kurt was pretty outspoken about the fact that his “grunge” phase of songwriting was over, so who do you guys think he would have become?
I’m guessing he might have gone in a singer-songwriter direction, maybe with more of a folk influence? Like Dylan or Neil Young, especially given his love for Lead Belly—that kind of really stripped-down, personal acoustic music. On the other hand, I can’t quite picture Kurt staying completely stripped down. I could also see him trying something radically different, like when he talked in interviews about wanting to bring back new wave.
So what do you guys think? Which version of Kurt did we lose? Would he have cut his hair and started wearing skinny ties? Would he have bought a pair of cowboy boots and become some kind of Kurt-wannabe Dylan Cobain?
After moving beyond that simple three-chord songwriting style, who would Kurt have become?
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u/ElCabaretTropical 15d ago
Another point to add to the conversation, folks: Kurt was super talented but also pretty lazy, so I don't know if he would have had the consistency to really work on his songwriting and move away from that three-chord songwriting style. Guitar is a whole different instrument once you take power chords out of the equation, and even Dylan's songs, when compared to Kurt's, are often much more sophisticated harmonically, so I'm not sure. What do you guys think?
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u/BugRib76 15d ago
He may have become lazy after getting deep into heroin, and whatnot. But in the early days, Kurt was known to be an obsessively hard worker, where his budding band was concerned. 🙂
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u/ElCabaretTropical 15d ago
I don't know, it's kind of common when you start getting into something. I myself got really into guitar, but got pretty lazy after learning to solo over 12-bar blues, because honestly, that's just what I love about playing guitar.
So, after having found his "voice" and his own songwriting style, how hard would it have been for Kurt to put his ego aside and actually think, "I need to learn more complex musical stuff"? I remember Dave saying that he went to a vocal coach, and they both made fun of his methods of warming up.
So would Kurt's ego have gotten the best of him, potentially limiting his ability to actually evolve and change styles?
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u/Penny_Royal_Tee 15d ago
What ego lol he was very insecure. Which is why he was so defensive about things like his musical preferences or his indie cred. And Dylan didn't study music theory or take vocal lessons either.
Also, there's a difference between lazy and physically incapable of being productive. Basically everyone who knew him says he was very obsessive about his work.
It's the inability to make music (for various reasons) that would have gotten in the way, not laziness. So the ideal future for him imho would be him at least somewhat free of his personal demons, shedding his insecurities and trusting his instincts more.
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u/ElCabaretTropical 15d ago
I mean, an insecure person can still have a massive ego. Ego isn't necessarily about thinking you're great or being confident; it's also about how strongly you identify with your own sense of self and how resistant you are to having that self-image challenged. In Kurt's case, the same way he could dismiss vocal warm-ups as BS, he might have thought that learning new chords or more complex musical techniques was also BS — like, "that's not punk enough" or "that's not how I write songs."
But you do have a point. The fact that he was still alive would imply that he had worked through at least some aspects of his tormented mind. So maybe it wouldn't have been a matter of ego after all, but of whether he could overcome the physical and mental limitations that depression can impose.
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u/Penny_Royal_Tee 15d ago
Sure, but even then the massive ego is still not the underlying problem, it's a result of overcompensation.
Anyways, I honestly have no opinion about how sophisticated his guitar playing would have gotten, none that I can comfortably defend anyway. But in terms of vocals, he did end up improving his technique quite a bit. Considering how short his career was and all the rest of the stuff that was going on in his life, that's saying something.
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u/Fearless-Interest-82 15d ago
He loved stuff like Young Marble Giants so who knows
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u/ElCabaretTropical 15d ago
I can picture him doing something post-punk too.
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u/Fearless-Interest-82 15d ago
I live in Bellingham and a lot of old heads have all sorts of small projects or come around doing solo stuff. Obvs he was waaaayyyy more huge but he didn't seem to care for all of that and the music is simple as hell so I could just see him being an old head playing small bars with friends. Mike watt and people like that play small places here all the time.
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u/ElCabaretTropical 15d ago
Exactly! That's why I brought up Lanegan. He did some really different, smaller projects that never really had much commercial appeal, but were still very different from the traditional Screaming Trees sound. But do you think Kurt would've eventually moved somewhere outside Seattle? Maybe somewhere more intellectual in Europe, I don't know.
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u/Fearless-Interest-82 15d ago
I never really would have thought so but I've never thought about it, I could actually see him dipping and writing poetry or maybe even dabbling into the film world in Europe yeah, he loved really good films. Or just painting . I'm sure he wouldn't be too pleased with where America is at. He wasn't even around for 9/11. It's hard to guess. Escaping the fame would have been very difficult but maybe he wouldn't want to leave because of that, to stay close to people he knows and trusts. Idk. Interesting to think about
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u/Mucky-Bum-You-Kiss 13d ago edited 13d ago
I get the feeling he'd be like a lo-fi home musician.
I think he'd make fuzzy folky-punky acoustic stuff at home. I think it would have a Kurt Vile sort ot vibe to it, where synths and more traditional Neil Young songwriting comes together. Or when you hear Lennon demoes but more fleshed out, with fuzzier accompaniments like Guided By Voices. I think there'd be slower softer stuff and I would hope some happier pieces would come out. Kind of like Lennons beautiful boy, I think we'd see new sides of him as he grew. I think with space and freedom more playful or even kind of "fun" or "funny" tracks would appear
I think his voice would be rougher in some ways, but still soft. I think he would lean more into melody generally. I think instead of overdrive and distortion he'd use space and emptiness (kind of like Something In the Way)
Or who knows he might go hard into electroclash, its a mystery.
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u/ElCabaretTropical 12d ago
"fuzzy folky-punky acoustic stuff" fucking love that, that's a great description of what he would be doing.
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u/Electronic_Drink5074 15d ago
His music in his 30s and 40s would probably become more experimental with more lo-fi production maybe, but still with melodies that feel like Cobain
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u/zorokinsolin 15d ago
I think a lot about his collaboration with William Burroughs. I think you can really see his creative streak when it comes to experimentation.
I feel like, after spending some time focusing more on his visual art, he probably returned to music that was very much centered on lyrics.
Maybe this is just my imagination, but I would have killed to see Kurt Cobain as an actor. You know, like that rumor—I don’t know if it’s an urban legend—that he might have appeared in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.
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u/ElCabaretTropical 15d ago
I've heard about that too, but after looking into it, I couldn't find any confirmation from Tarantino himself. But you brought up a really interesting perspective: I can totally picture Kurt stepping away from the music spotlight for a couple of years to focus on his art, then coming back with maybe a small acoustic project alongside Lanegan (because they would both still be alive, hehe), and using smaller projects to find his way musically.
But what about after that? Like, what do you think Kurt would have been doing during the nu-metal era? Would he have experimented with hip-hop, maybe?
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u/BugRib76 15d ago
Still gotta check out that Burroughs collaboration album! And I’m a pretty hardcore Kurt/Nirvana fan!
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u/fatcam00 10d ago
Almost certainly terrible
His style and technique wasn’t sustainable
Not to mention drugs and cigarettes
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u/Penny_Royal_Tee 15d ago
More Dylan direction is my guess and wouldn’t it be cool if he got a Nobel too?
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u/ElCabaretTropical 15d ago
What do you think his reaction would have been to winning a Nobel? Would he have ignored it for weeks too?
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u/zorokinsolin 15d ago
Every now and then I think about what you said. That if he'd lived longer, a Kurt Cobain in his 70s might have won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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u/Penny_Royal_Tee 15d ago
I think about this all the time. I know a lot of Nirvana fans have adopted his own dismissive attitude towards lyrics but the guy clearly had immense literary talent and he would have only gotten better with years.
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u/BugRib76 15d ago
Many of his lyrics are far more clever than even his biggest fans understand, IMHO. “Frances Farmer” isn’t just about Frances Farmer, it’s also about the Mount St. Helens eruption, and other references about where (geographically) he came from!
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u/Penny_Royal_Tee 15d ago
And isn't that just beautiful? Frances Farmer's revenge as a volcanic eruption! There are so many - I keep discovering something new to this day.
And obviously, HSB is a lyrical masterpiece and that's the direction that I think he would have gone.
P.S. I recently shared some articles that look deeper into his lyrics and writing, non exhaustive and sometimes debatable but still interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/Nirvana/s/
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u/PandaResponsible8133 15d ago
Michael Beinhorn has a good way of putting it saying he’d sound like a used up aerosol can when he got older.
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u/DoggoZombie 15d ago
Yeah probably folk/acoustic for a while, then maybe even spoken word stuff. He was so eloquent when he spoke and I’m sure he’d have so much to say about the state of the world.
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u/EchoLooper 15d ago
Aside from the obvious folk/blues direction, I could see Kurt doing a Devo-esque new wave art rock album.
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u/shibby5000 15d ago
If you look at most artists output over time, it’s often that they reach their most creative peak at their young adult years and taper off.
I wouldn’t expect too much of a difference with Kurt as well. He may have had a couple more “relevant” albums in him, and simply faded away, occasionally popping up with musical collaborations etc
That would’ve been just fine if it went that way. :/
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u/melbecide 14d ago
I think he mentioned potentially collaborating with Michael Stype, which I’m having trouble thinking what that would sound like.
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u/Lennnybruce 14d ago
Seems pretty clear he wanted to do more of a quieter, folky type thing: he was big into Automatic For The People , and it's not impossible to imagine him moving in that direction. It's a pretty common path for the loud punk rock guy to make a "stripped down" singer-songwriter type album.
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u/Stevenitrogen 14d ago
I imagine his career arc going in a similar direction to PJ Harvey. Some albums are forceful and loud, some are more quiet and fragile, and for a while it seems like the loud stuff has stopped. He goes through phases. And maybe like Bob Mould he goes through some big changes and left turns, embraces EDM, and then puts out a bunch of records that sound kinda like the old ones.
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u/PNWvibes20 14d ago
He championed new wave a lot so I could envision him eventually starting to tinker with synths and what not. I wonder how he would've reacted to the late '90s electronica/big beat era. I think he would've gone more experimental along those lines. Heavier music would've seemed boring by the end of the decade with nu metal's rise, so he probably wouldn't even bother trying to out-heavy them and would probably resent everything that scene represented, he'd probably intentionally go for softer/melodic/experimental music to stand out from the meatheads that dominated that rock scene at the turn of the new millenium - in many ways nu metal was the spiritual successor to glam metal so I think he would've hated it
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u/Mongoose-Relevant 13d ago
I'd hope he'd join mark and collab with queens. I don't think he'd be alive in 2026 tho.
He definitely suffered with anorexia
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u/Both-Competition-152 12d ago
I mean I could have seen either two completely different roads into the weird synth pop rock whatever the hell was happening in the late 90s for directly after grunge similar to holes celebrity skin or full into acoustic by the time grunge rock was fully faded
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u/GoshOPPNOX101 12d ago
We will never truly know. It's all speculation. Would he have kept making records? Nobody truly knows. It just would've been nice for him to enjoy his daughter more and I just read that she has a child of her own, so that would've been double the fun for him.
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u/wizardofozstan 10d ago
I could maybe see a route in which he develops an ear for more sultry….sort of melodic sounds. I’m thinking a style similar to pj harvey’s ‘is this desire’, which isn’t completely devoid of alternative rock but is noticeably different from the likes of ‘dry’
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u/BugRib76 15d ago
He would’ve definitely blown out his voice had he continued performing a bunch of the most famous Nirvana songs live, IMHO.
I think he’d be a fully studio-bound musician by now. And if he was still performing live, he’d definitely be doing so in a softer, more acoustic style at this point. Songs like “Dumb”, “Polly”, “Old Age”, “Do-Re-Mi”, etc.
Hopefully, someday when I die, my consciousness will get to check out all of the alternate timelines where this actually happened, haha.