Last week marked the 15-year anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s tragic suicide. This extremely talented but challenged musician died at the very young age of 27. Had it not been for that dreadful day back in 1994, Kurt Cobain would still be alive at the age of 42.

I take that back. The heroin addiction that led to his life spinning out of control might have killed him first. If not, from what is known about Cobain’s personality, he might have gotten antsy and done the awful deed anyway. Maybe it could have been prolonged though, giving him enough time to further his music career.

While his shotgun shot inducted himself into the famed “27 Club” with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Jopin, he left behind a promising career. Whenever discussing the 1990s, it is hard not to mention how Nirvana emerged as a grunge band that really didn’t care about what people thought of it. Those obnoxious shows VH1 airs featuring the 100 best songs of an era rank Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as the best song of the decade.

As pioneering and influential as Nirvana’s music was, the culture they were associated with strikes fear in conservatives to this day. The thought of casual drug use was enough to have Nirvana lose support of adults and thereby gain the respect of a new counterculture.

Teachers and parents alike still complain about how Cobain’s suicide prompted ill-informed teenagers to take their own lives simply because an up-and-coming musician did. In fact, I once had an English teacher who broke up an otherwise meaningful conversation to complain about how senseless Cobain was.

I beg to differ.

Where others see a musician who killed himself to get away from a drug addiction and other self-inflicted problems, I see a tragic artist who was so overwhelmed by the fame he never asked for that he ended the suffering the only way he knew how.

The greater part of the last five years of my life has been filled with a fascination for the Nirvana frontman. The main reason that I, along with many others, can find a person like him so captivating is because of the mysterious psychological force that drove him to live his life the way he did. Obviously Cobain knew he was making a serious end-all decision.

Fifteen years later, his legend lives on. Some of us may look to him as one of the most powerful artists from the 1990s who dared to do something different and not care about what resulted from his actions. Others simply think of him as another druggie musician who took the easy way out.

It’s your call. Love Kurt Cobain or hate him, the grunge and punk counterculture is still alive and well.