Meaning
The song tells the story of a rock star who is destroyed by fame. For years, Marshall refused to comment on the commonly-held theory that it was written about Kurt Cobain, the late singer, songwriter and guitarist of the American rock band Nirvana, who committed suicide in 1994. When asked who the song was about in an interview with Helter Skelter, she replied, "You'll have to take a guess." When asked specifically if it was about Cobain, she replied, "It could be anybody!"
In a 2012 interview with The Guardian, however, Marshall confirmed that the song was about Cobain. "I've never told anybody this," she told interviewer Hermione Hoby, "but that is about Kurt Cobain. It's about him blowing his head off."
Years before confirming it was about Cobain, Marshall offered a less specific explanation of the song's meaning. "I'll never tell you what that song is about," she told Salon in 2006. "That feeling of not being understood, but supposedly being understood by everyone ... being inside of a spectacle, it's like being a prisoner of war. I don't know if that makes sense. It would be like being in an insane asylum, where you are who you are, and the only person you've ever been is yourself, but then they want you to be someone else."
Read more about this topic: I Don't Blame You
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