Kurt Donald Cobain (pronounced IPA-enko??be?n, IPA-enk??be?n; February 20, 1967 - c. (Circa) April 5, 1994) was an American singer-songwriter and musician, best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the rock band Nirvana (Nirvana (band)).

With the lead single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from Nirvanas second album Nevermind (1991), Nirvana entered the mainstream, popularizing a subgenre of alternative rock, euphimistically titled grunge. Since their debut, Nirvana, with Cobain as a songwriter, sold over 25 million albums in the United States alone, and over 50 million worldwide.

The success of Nevermind provided numerous Seattle bands such as Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden wider audiences, and as a result, alternative rock became a dominant genre on radio and music television in the United States during the early-to-middle 1990s. Nirvana was considered the "flagship band of Generation X", and frontman Cobain found himself reluctantly anointed by the media as the generations "spokesman." Cobains uncomfortableness with the media attention received, placed his focus on the bands music, believing the bands message and artistic vision to have been misinterpreted by the public, challenging the bands audience with its third studio album In Utero (1993).

Cobain struggled with heroin addiction, illness and depression. On 8 April 1994, Cobain was found dead at his home in Seattle, the victim of what was officially ruled a suicide by a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head. The circumstances of his death (Death of Kurt Cobain) have become a topic of fascination, debate, and controversy.