It took two writers to come up with the worst lede you may ever read.
This is the actual beginning to an actual CNN article about a re-opened investigation into Kurt Cobain’s 1994 suicide.
(CNN) — “And I swear that I don’t have a gun.”
— Kurt Cobain, “Come As You Are”
Despite the pledge in those lyrics that went around the world in the early 1990s, police in Seattle say that Kurt Cobain did have at least one gun.
A shotgun. And he killed himself with it at age 27, their case concluded. Nothing has changed about that assessment 20 years after his death.
Naturally, this ridiculous beginning has inspired a whole bunch of morbid (and funny) copycats. From Deadspin:
“What else should I be? / All apologies.” Well, you can start by not being dead, Kurt Cobain. Apology not accepted.
“Monkey see, monkey do,” Kurt Cobain once pondered on “Stay Away.” Cobain must have watched a monkey commit suicide, because he did, too.
“What else should I say?” asked Kurt Cobain, who was probably unable to say much after the speech center of his brain was splattered onto the wall.
And the glorious Twitter hashtag #CNNLedes:
“Gimme some truth” sang John Lennon in 1970. Well, the sad truth is he was shot to death. #CNNLedes
— Stuart Henderson (@henderstu) March 21, 2014
#CNNledes Johnny Cash once sang he had shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, but the only people who watched Cash die were his family
— Chris Ward (@iamchrishello) March 21, 2014
“We’ve only just begun to live” sang Karen Carpenter, except she had just begun to die from an eating disorder. #CNNLedes
— JAA (@innajunglestyle) March 21, 2014
“‘Scuse me, while I kiss the sky.” But Jimi Hendrix couldn’t kiss anyone, because he had aspirated his own vomit. #CNNledes
— David A. Graham (@GrahamDavidA) March 21, 2014
“Polly wants a cracker. Think I should get off her first.” But Kurt Cobain couldnt get off her, because he was dead. #CNNledes
— Devin Gordon (@Devingo913) March 21, 2014
“It’s a-gettin’ closer,” sang Buddy Holly, and in a very real sense, relative to the plane in which he was flying, the ground was. #cnnledes
— Oliver Burkeman (@oliverburkeman) March 21, 2014