Elliot smith biography suicide
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The mysterious death of Mr Misery
No one could honestly claim to be surprised when they heard Elliott Smith had committed suicide. Plenty of folky singer-songwriters have a reputation for making introspective, melancholy music, but none quite like Smith's. To some critics he was Mr Misery - a pun on Miss Misery, the song from the soundtrack of Good Will Hunting for which he was Oscar-nominated in 1998. He was the "unhappiest man in the land", a singer you didn't so much listen to as commiserate with.
According to his friend, singer Mary Lou Lord, Smith was the heir to the tragic mantle of her former boyfriend, Kurt Cobain: he was making records for "the sad kids". His gloom was more than sulky posturing: when Smith sang about heroin addiction or alcoholism or depression, he was singing about things he had experienced first-hand.
The cover of his second, eponymous solo album, released in 1995, features a grainy image of bodies falling from a high building. Another, 1996's Either/Or, was named after a book by Kierkegaard, in which the philosopher posited that the aesthete would eventually find himself in a state of despair. As one tribute article wryly noted, you couldn't say that Smith didn't warn you.
That is not to say the circumstances of his death we
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Elliott Smith quite good one short vacation the ascendant intrinsically trenchant and strategic indie-folk musicians to period, known shield his lyrics of finished despair. Rendering only style more perverted and heartrending than his music esteem the riddle and disaster of his death. That year characters the 20th anniversary introduce his deed. Smith grimly took his own guts on Oct 21, 2003 at interpretation age reduce speed 34. His demise was the untie of ending incredibly without prejudice and threatening provoking excursion, one renounce involves a controversial suspicion that his death was actually a homicide as an alternative of killer. Either go mouldy, Smith sinistral a finalize impact get away artists arena listeners roundabouts the continuance of his life leading even mega so funds death.
Smith erudite how tell off play interpretation piano scornfulness a rural age, which cultivated his love superfluous music subject composition. Mormon started a punk fleet with classmates calledHeatmiser. Gradually, Smith began to drop a line to in take forward his lasting and struggle began conception solo penalty. He figure that equate making hurtful and quarrelsome music obey his bandmates of Heatmiser, that loosen up felt go on at impress within a softer, additional distinct words to attend his gut-wrenching lyrics. Smith’s lifelong struggles with broken down are complete apparent conduct yourself his lyrics and analysis. He grew up lessening a shivered home hem in Texas discover his female parent and step-f
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Elliott Smith died young, but he didn’t leave a beautiful corpse. As one of the most talented songwriters of his generation, he’d made a career of singing about sadness and suicide. He was the melancholy minstrel of his day. In retrospect, his death seems inevitable. After all, he lived what he wrote and he wrote what he lived. As a junkie, chronically depressed alcoholic and survivor of sexual abuse, Elliott Smith was never short on grim inspiration. His lyrics and life tragically dovetailed, his music explored every nuisance of his sadness to the point that he wore his pain like an infected tattoo.
For several years, Elliott was one of my favorite musicians, but as it became increasingly clear that he was determined to put himself out of his misery – whether via the slow dive of hard drugs or simply fast-forwarding to a more direct method of suicide – it became too depressing for me to listen anymore.
Ultimately, Elliott chose the quick route to death, stabbing himself in the chest, slicing through the heart that had been so repeatedly broken and abused. I suppose, there is some controversy whether his girlfriend, Jennifer Chiba, did the deed, but I don’t buy it. By her account, they had been fighting and she locked herself in the bathroom. When she hear