All Apologies

Let’s play a game, Jazzpop. Count the number of times Kurt uses a misanthropic sentiment in his lyircs—ok, now count the number of times he uses a progressivist sentiment. I would imagine you see a disparity which automatically sets the tone of this argument.

Of course, you are right about one thing: Kurt was a really forward-thinking guy, on top of being supportive of women and LGBT. The issue is that his music didn’t touch upon those issues; Kurt dealt far more with feeling alienated from society, struggling with misanthropy, emotions, and mental illness.

That to me is just context though. The part that makes me doubt he was using gay in the literal sense here (and yes, it is often safe to assume a grunge artist is avoiding literality) is the fact that your interpretation would seem blatantly non-contextual in this song – this song is misanthropic, not all-accepting; “All in all is all we are” might seem to say, “You can be whatever you want” under your interpretation, but I see it far more as “I won’t conform to this saccharine bullshit; I will be myself.”

You might doubt that Kurt, (with how he felt about gay people/women) would use gay in the derogatory sense. But Kurt’s lexicon often opted for blatancy (“rape me”…”I think I’m dumb”…); so that, along with the fact that “gay” was unfortunately ubiquitous in its use which meant “overly sentimental / saccharine (I believe this is the way he meant to use it), “dumb”, or “lame”, erases any doubt in my mind that he would hesitate to use “gay” in that way. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting Kurt is being intentionally bigoted or derogatory towards gays here: he’s simply using the term in its slang usage to convey that he feels detached from many societal sentiments.

Furthermore, I find it intellectually lazy to assume I’m homophobic because I don’t believe a particular lyric has to do with LGBT. If somebody told you the Mona Lisa was transgendered, and you replied “I don’t think so…”, and that person thought you were transphobic, would that be fair? It’s a more ridiculous example, but I can imagine you can see why this sort of reply just comes off as really lazy rhetoric, and to be honest, a bit slimy. It also doesn’t get anybody closer to understanding the meaning of anything. This is a website about unraveling song lyrics: LGBT suggestions are not immune to being dismissed as unlikely, or unfounded. That said, I would also be a very uncomfortable homophobe living in the same home as my gay brother and his lover!

That said, despite the tone of my previous post, you are free to believe whatever you want, and we can discuss it with some civility. If I offended anybody who thinks I was attempting to squash LGBT issues, I apologize. I just don’t think that’s what this song is about.