Kurt Cobain Birthplace — Aberdeen, Washington

Kurt Donald Cobain was born on February 20, 1967, at Grays Harbor Community Hospital in Aberdeen, Washington, and grew up at 1210 East 1st Street in a small house near the Wishkah River — a working-class logging and fishing town on the rainy Olympic Peninsula, two hours southwest of Seattle. His parents divorced when he was nine, an event he described as profoundly destabilising. He lived between relatives, slept under a bridge, and spent his adolescence feeling profoundly out of place in a conservative small town that had no framework for who he was. He left Aberdeen for Olympia, Washington, in his late teens and eventually found his way to the Seattle music scene.

Cobain formed Nirvana in Aberdeen and Olympia in 1987 with bassist Krist Novoselic, eventually recruiting drummer Dave Grohl. Their 1991 album "Nevermind" — released on DGC Records — became one of the most consequential records in rock history, displacing Michael Jackson from the top of the Billboard charts and announcing that alternative rock had become the dominant form of American popular music. Songs like "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Come as You Are," and "Lithium" captured a generation's alienation with a directness and energy that radio had never previously heard from music of this character.

Aberdeen has gradually come to embrace Cobain's legacy after years of ambivalence. A welcome sign on the approach to town now reads "Come as you are" — the title of the Nirvana song. The Kurt Cobain Landing park at the Young Street Bridge — reportedly the bridge where he slept as a teenager — has a life-size bronze statue and is a major pilgrimage destination. The 1210 East 1st Street birthplace house is privately owned but regularly visited by fans from around the world.