Video Premier: Shamarr Allen’s “Kurt Cobain”

It’s been just over 20 years since Nirvana lead singer and grunge era icon Kurt Cobain took his life, and now New Orleans trumpeter Shamarr Allen has released a video called “Kurt Cobain” drawing on Cobain’s death to express his own dark feelings.

In the song, Allen talks about following in Cobain’s footsteps during dark times as the song begins with the words “Sometimes I feel like Kurt Cobain, I wanna leave my brains on the chair.”

The video begins with Allen in a dingy apartment, and as he sings, he acts out Cobain’s final minutes, holding up a shotgun shell while singing “this will make it all ok,” going through the motions of a heroin injection, grabbing a shotgun and placing it beneath his chin.

Footage from the early MTV reports of Cobain’s death plays as the song and video continue. The second part of the video deals with Amy Winehouse, the troubled British singer who died of a drug overdose at 27, the same age as Cobain, and the video follows suit with news footage from just after Winehouse’s untimely death and Allen sings about overdosing on pills.

Throughout it all, Allen’s song returns to a much more hopeful chorus of “I got too much to live for,” and images of Allen playing basketball with his children on a sunny day provide a counterpoint to the much darker images of suicide and drug overdose.

Check out the video for Shamarr Allen’s new song “Kurt Cobain,” and let us know in the comments what you think of the song and video.