Today is the ten-year anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide. I bought Nirvana's Nevermind early, and listened to it often. I still believe "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is one the best pop songs of all time, but I don't listen to Nirvana very much anymore. Of the 300+ CDs in my collection, Nevermind probably makes its way into my stereo less than any other disc save a dozen or so.

My sense is that Nirvana is more talked about than listened to these days. The other groups that fall into this category (The Doors come to mind), usually seem to have a deceased member as a common denominator. We'll call this the JFK-effect--tragedy's inflation of one's greatness. The difference with Nirvana is that they really were great. Sure, blowing your head off is a sure-fire publicity coup. But I would still deem Cobain brilliant had he not taken that extreme step.

And that is among the reasons his death was so horrible. The music Nirvana made has an early-1990s vibe all over it. It's great, but with the exception of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" it's not timeless like The Beatles. Had Nirvana lasted, they no doubt would have transcended their times. With In Utero a better album then Nevermind, and the posthumously released "You Know You're Right" ranking as one of their best songs, there is every reason to believe that Nirvana would have improved as a band as time went on. We'll never know, though.

What great music did we miss out on because of one man's death? Would the 1990s still have evolved into a completely atrocious time for music by the end of the decade had Cobain not taken his own life?

My guess is that we missed out on a lot. My guess is that radio would have saved more space for quality, and less for Korn, Limp Bizkit, The Backstreet Boys, Eve 6, and other crap that made music so terrible by the end of the '90s.

RIP, Kurt Cobain.