“I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I'm not.”
— Kurt Cobain
Kurt said this in multiple interviews throughout his career. It was not a slogan. He had grown up invisible in Aberdeen and then became the most visible person in music overnight. He watched the industry try to package him as a grunge spokesman and pushed back at every turn. For Kurt, being misunderstood honestly was survivable. Being understood for the wrong reasons was not.
He wrote a song in five minutes and it made him the most famous musician on the planet. He hated every second of it. He wore thrift store clothes to magazine shoots. He wrote 'corporate magazines still suck' on his shirt for a Rolling Stone cover. When MTV asked him to play his biggest hit acoustic, he refused and played five covers instead. He recorded his follow-up album with the noisiest producer he could find, deliberately trying to scare away casual fans. The album went to number one anyway. Kurt Cobain spent his whole career trying to be less popular, and every time he pushed people away, more came. He was not performing authenticity. He was allergic to the alternative.