Once again, Dame Helen Mirren is using late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain to comment on how weird aging is. Cobain tragically passed away in 1994 at the age of 27, rocking the nation and music lovers alike.
“I always say, it’s so sad that Kurt Cobain died when he did, because he never saw GPS,” Mirren told The Evening Standard. “GPS is the most wonderful thing, to watch my little blue spot walking down the street. I just find it completely magical and unbelievable.”
“If you’re lucky, you get to be older. And then there you are. Oh my God, I’m 79! I never thought I’d be 79. And then you say, OK, well this is it. This is what 79 is. And it’s kind of OK. It’s not brilliant, but it was not that brilliant to be 25 either.”
Mirren’s Previous Comments
Bringing up the departed rock star to make a larger point about how fast technology progresses may seem weird. But, it gets weirder since this is far from the first time Mirren has used Cobain specifically to make this point.
“Look at Kurt Cobain — he hardly even saw a computer,” she exclaimed to Oprah Winfrey in 2014. “The digital stuff that’s going on is so exciting. I’m just so curious about what happens next.”
“I was thinking about Kurt Cobain the other day and he died without knowing the internet, and I’m totally blown away by that,” she said to Cosmopolitan that same year. “The internet is a huge movement in the history of humanity – it’s maybe even more important that the creation of the printing press. If the price I have to pay to see the future is getting older than so be it!””
“If I’d died at 27, the age that Kurt Cobain [of rock band Nirvana] died in 1994, I’d never have even known there was an internet! Incredible things are happening all the time and I can’t wait to see what comes next,” Mirren told the Daily Mail in 2016.
So her recent quote about Cobain is just the latest in a long string of references to the deceased singer. This is a trend we honestly don’t know how to interpret. A lot of people passed away before computers and GPS were pervasive. Maybe try picking someone besides Cobain next time? May we suggest Henry VIII or Nikola Tesla?
