An Ode to "I Hate Myself and I Want to Die"

“I Hate Myself and Want to Die” is the name of a Nirvana song, first released (funnily enough) on the big Beavis and Butthead compilation album. It was also intended as the B-side to the single version of “Pennyroyal Tea,” but after Kurt Cobain’s suicide in 1994, these plans were understandably scrapped. The song is, as the kids say, mid in the context of the Nirvana discography. If you Google the phrase - and, for the record, for aesthetic reasons I much prefer adding the second I, that is, “I hate myself and I want to die” - that’s what you mostly get, that song. And yet I know that as a 10 or 11 or 12-year-old, before the song was released, I used to mutter the phrase under my breath, and I know other people who did too. I think kids in “Gen Alpha” who have never heard of Nirvana walk around, ready to say it, looking for a reason to say it, wanting to say it. I think, in fact, that “I hate myself and I want to die” bubbles up from the adolescent subconsciousness and follows us aroun

“I Hate Myself and Want to Die” is the name of a Nirvana song, first released (funnily enough) on the big Beavis and Butthead compilation album. It was also intended as the B-side to the single version of “Pennyroyal Tea,” but after Kurt Cobain’s suicide in 1994, these plans were understandably scrapped. The song is, as the kids say, mid in the context of the Nirvana discography. If you Google the phrase - and, for the record, for aesthetic reasons I much prefer adding the second I, that is, “I hate myself and I want to die” - that’s what you mostly get, that song. And yet I know that as a 10