Pop Star Selena Gomez Says She Was 'Obsessed' With Kurt Cobain

Pop star Selena Gomez admitted during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! that she was once “obsessed” with Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, so much so that she changed her appearance to look like him.

The actress-turned-singer became a teen idol after starring in the Disney Channel show Wizards of Waverly Place, but she’s also had a successful music career, which started in 2009 when she released the album Kiss & Tell as the band Selena Gomez & the Scene. She has a new song out called “Love On,” which she discussed on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

Kimmel asked if Gomez ever had a particular celebrity that she was a superfan of, which is when she named Cobain.

“My mom obviously would play all kinds of music for me growing up, and I kind of got obsessed,” she recalled, adding that she dyed her hair and cut it to resemble the Nirvana singer.

“I know a little too much,” she continued. “I would rewatch his interviews, I would watch his performances, I’ve seen his documentary like 12 times.”

See the interview clip below.

Though Nirvana are most closely associated with the Seattle grunge scene and punk rock, Cobain once said in an interview that he was a big fan of pop music — hence the pop rock nature of their 1991 album Nevermind that catapulted them to worldwide stardom.

“I’ve always loved pop music, it just so happened that most of the songs that we wrote at the time the Bleach album was coming out were more abrasive songs,” the frontman told Rapido TV in 1992 [via Live Nirvana].

“There were quite a few songs that were very pop, like the song ‘About a Girl,’ that were just left off the album. In fact, a few of the very pop songs on [Nevermind] were written at the time, if not before, the Bleach album came out. I think that releasing the ‘Sliver’ single was a good example of what Nevermind would have.”