Grunge Was the 90s Music Palate Cleanser, Not Its Highlight

John Buhl

John grew up in Connecticut and spent time in London, England before settling down in the Washington, DC area. A longtime writer and political geek, his many interests include football (soccer), all things music, and mixed martial arts (at least before the UFC ruined it). You can follow him on Twitter at @jbuhl35.

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81 Responses

  1. R2's Bad Motivator says:

    As a massive Pearl Jam/ grunge fan who spent most of the mid-late 90s in venues big and small, head banging my soul out to these bands I agree but hate you for it.

    The lyrics were deeper and a lot more complicated and made one really think about the meaning of their songs, like Neil Young does so damn well. Not like Crü left you thinking deeply about any of their music,lol.

    While I think you minimize their importance a bit too much, they were not the end all, be all of the 90s. Hip Hop exploded, like mentioned Dr Dre, Snoop, Tupac, Biggie, Beastie’s rebirth( Ill Communication) anyone focused on Hip Hop would have a treasure troves of talent laying down beats. To the end we saw Pop’s rise to power(broke my grungy heart) with Brittany Spears and the rest of that crowd.

    Also, I just have to say that today when Pearl Jam sells out multiple days of shows in a row at the same venue, there are a good amount of young people too, not just us olds,lol.Report

    • DensityDuck in reply to R2's Bad Motivator says:

      I usually have one of the local classic-rock stations on while I’m working in the field, and I’ve realized that most “classic” rock songs (the ones that get played on the radio 20+ years after they came out) fall into three categories:

      1) Playing rock music is awesome
      2) Being a rock star kinda sucks
      3) Let’s get it on

      And for whatever it’s worth, grunge music added “actually EVERYTHING kinda sucks” to that canon.Report

      • R2's Bad Motivator in reply to DensityDuck says:

        There was an element of “Everything sucked” summed up in every music magazine article with the same word, Angst.

        Some of that was due to a back lash of the,” Look how much fun Sex and Drugs are” crowd in the 80s music scene. Alice in Chains and Nirvana wrote songs about the realities of life on drugs and the negative effect from the view point of those who were swallowed by it. RIP Lane and Kurt.Report

  2. John Puccio says:

    Broadly speaking, has there ever been a generation that *didn’t* believe that the music that they listened to when they came of age was the pinnacle? For most people, music will never be as important to them as it is between the ages 12 and 22. It’s very hard to separate memory of time and place from the music you grew up with. It’s all so intertwined.

    That said, as someone who did come of age with grunge, I don’t much listen to it anymore. I’m not sure if that speaks to how it has aged as it does my boredom with it. Probably a bit of both.Report

    • DensityDuck in reply to John Puccio says:

      It’s surprising to me how I didn’t even really listen to music all that much when I was that age but I still like the music from that time better than most other things I hear.Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to John Puccio says:

      Counterpoint: I think it all started going wrong around the time I turned twelve.Report

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    • Chip Daniels in reply to John Puccio says:

      Right.
      Music peaked in 1974 when Terry Jacks recorded “Seasons In the Sun”.

      Critics debate why, but most agree because it was when a pretty girl asked Chip Daniels to roller skate and then flirted with him throughout that summer, but in the end ran off with a 9th grade dude.
      After that, recorded music never regained its ability to evoke genuine heartbreak.Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to John Puccio says:

      How does this track with multiple genres of music existing at the same time. When I was in Middle School through College; alternative rock and hip-hop, especially gangster rap, along with regular pop were in ascendence. Besides your Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Snoop Dog, Doctor Dre, Liz Phair, Mariah Carey, and Salt N’ Pepper; groups like Aerosmith, Guns N’ Roses, and of course the super star Madonna were still kicking around. Who was the pinnacle genre?Report

      • John Puccio in reply to LeeEsq says:

        I think it tracks with whichever genre(s) you and your social circle(s) listened to, with an emphasis on the artists/sub-genres you enjoyed the most. I think it can be as specific or expansive as a person’s taste.Report

  3. InMD says:

    I have been up front with my priors on this topic, that at some point around 1996 I started sinking into more underground and extreme types of rock, and therefore have never been particularly nostalgic about the era. That which had some merit I think has mostly survived (I am and will always be an AIC fan) but overall I would not look at it as a particularly noteworthy decade in music.

    One thing that I always find super telling is how any assessment of the 90s from any mainstream genre perspective seems to abruptly stop halfway through. I therefore submit a non-comprehensive list of things that happened in music no one wants to talk about:

    – the 5 seconds of neo ‘swing’ and mediocre proto pop-punk bands with brass sections
    -Puff Daddy remixes everything
    -over produced soft alt rock that everyone has already forgotten but used to be played thousands of times a day- calling Fastball! Where are you?
    -Rap about being excessively wealthy
    -Creed
    -Nu-Metal
    -Really bad second acts of 80s stars (think everything U2 did and Madonna techno albums)

    I could go on and on. Also I want to be clear this is intended to be lighthearted, not to hate on anything anyone loves. Everyone should like what they like and not take my internet comments seriously.Report

    • InMD in reply to InMD says:

      In more seriousness I think the 90s will always be looked at as a milestone in the sense that it may be the last moment we had a truly national popular culture. An end of a larger post-war era.Report

    • Slade the Leveller in reply to InMD says:

      Creed being on this list is going to crack me up all day.Report

    • Marchmaine in reply to InMD says:

      I think I can mark my exit from ‘formative music years’ almost exactly with Nirvana’s Nevermind in ’91… so I officially missed the 90s.

      This is a private forum, right? I confess I probably would have loved the ‘neo swing’ just as I liked the ‘neo ska’ in the new wave … I’m a sucker for brass in pop bands.

      Fun fact, my SIL is pals with Dave Pirner from Soul Asylum and was there during the whole Winona phase. Sadly so many divorces in that crowd has left everyone on irreconcilable factions. Is Soul Asylum ‘over produced soft alt rock’ ? I never bothered to find out.

      Speaking of over produced alt rock, PD Heaton managed to sell more records in the 90s than he did in the 80s and hit top of the charts in the ’00s and the 10’s and his last album hit #1 (in the UK) in 2020. Weird Alt niche guy whom I remember as an 80s band (Housemartins) but his real success happened in the 90s as The Beautiful South; oddly, I think his stuff since 2017 is better than all the rest. I wasn’t expecting that. But yeah, not grunge and definitely not in your wheelhouse.

      https://www.classicpopmag.com/2019/03/paul-heaton-interview/Report

      • InMD in reply to Marchmaine says:

        It is a judgment free zone at least as far as I am concerned. My recollection of the swing stuff was as kind of a strange momentary interlude that went out as quickly as it came in. Had kind of a disjointed, ‘wait were people actually asking for this?’ feel to it.

        I was thinking more 2nd half of the decade for my list so wouldn’t necessarily include Soul Asylum since IIRC they peaked before Kurt Cobain was dead. Either way you’re closer to (at least one-time) rock stars than I am or am ever likely to be!Report

        • Marchmaine in reply to InMD says:

          So this happened in 1998?

          Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Marchmaine says:

            It’s a very Gen-X song.

            It’s celebrating how much it loves the song while being too cool for the song at the same time. (See also Alien Ant Farm’s cover of Smooth Criminal.)Report

            • InMD in reply to Jaybird says:

              I don’t know that I ever saw the the Alien Ant Farm video before just now but check out the kid with the mask. It’s like a bizarre foretelling of the future. In fact there are several aspects of this you could say that about.

              https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CDl9ZMfj6aEReport

            • Marchmaine in reply to Jaybird says:

              Now I have an entire playlist of Take On Me covers.

              It’s like a Fine Art final exam where I showcase the musical genre’s of the post-New Wave evolution.

              Original
              OG Old Man Acoustic Remake
              90’s Ska Punk
              The Weezer Category
              Aughts Ukulele Girl x2 (this is very popular)
              Aughts Breathy Girl
              Teens Acapella
              Teens Rockabilly (timeless, really)
              Dubstep(-ish)
              80’s Neo-Ska Revival
              Bluegrass Revival
              Swing Revival
              Synth Symphony
              Milennial Ninja Sex Party *
              OG Acoustic MTV Unplugged

              In the future, all Rock Hall of Fame inductees will do an homage Take On Me cover as part of their set.

              * pro tip, remember to google with ‘party’ included.Report

              • Marchmaine in reply to Mike Schilling says:

                Nice!

                No. Way.

                Report

              • Slade the Leveller in reply to Marchmaine says:

                The vocals on this are unsurpassed.Report

              • InMD in reply to Slade the Leveller says:

                I saw that too. The band is serviceable but those vocals are really awesome. It’s like what everyone thinks they sound like singing along in the car except he is legitimately doing it, and doing it well.Report

              • Marchmaine in reply to InMD says:

                Just needs some Phil Spector ‘Ragtime Wall of Sound’ ™ production values.Report

              • Marchmaine in reply to Marchmaine says:

                I realize I had filtered out (owing to personal tastes) an entire sub-genre of Metal covers … the apex of which might be Metalica doing Take On Me *live* in a stadium sometime in the aughts.

                There’s even some proper grunge covers, or anyway grunge adjacent covers.

                Got me wondering on what the set of songs that almost every genre wants to cover. I mean, that’s gotta be a relatively small set, right?Report

              • InMD in reply to Marchmaine says:

                I think it is a truism that good music knows no genre but it is definitely interesting insight into what might be called the psychology of the music to look at seemingly recurring cross-genre covers.

                As the resident metal head I would (unscientifically) say a recurring cross-genre cover I see is metal bands covering Depeche Mode songs. I would also say some of the best metal covers I hear are from blue-grass bands. Something about the religious imagery and depressing subject matter plus instrumental prowess really translates.Report

              • Slade the Leveller in reply to InMD says:

                I’ve always held that punk was at its most imaginative when it covered non-punk songs.Report

          • InMD in reply to Marchmaine says:

            Heh sure did.

            Stuff like the below though is where I look back and think what was even happening?

            https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yS2IBMQIjDoReport

  4. R2's Bad Motivator says:

    Also, and I blame my self for this as well, no mentions of Nine Inch Nails becoming more popular in the 90s? Trent was also a mastermind of the Industrial wave of bands coming out of the 90s, Marilyn Manson, Stabbing West Ward and so many that popped up and phased out.

    Before I was a massive PJ fan, NIN was my favorite bad and the only band I’ve seen more than 5 time, other than PJ at 14 shows and counting.Report

    • InMD in reply to R2's Bad Motivator says:

      I have always thought NIN/Reznor was an interesting example of an act that seemed to get more popular even as their music became less accessible. Pretty Hate Machine sounds downright pop-y compared to anything since to say nothing of the more recent efforts.

      Maybe they were a predictor of things to come.Report

      • R2's Bad Motivator in reply to InMD says:

        It definitely was more poppy than Downward Spiral, which is to me the pinnacle of Industrial music albums.Report

        • pillsy in reply to R2's Bad Motivator says:

          Yeah and that was the one that got the big sales and critical reception.

          And it did a good job striking the balance between accessibility and being interesting and varied.

          The Fragile was considerably less accessible and popular.

          You saw a similar process with Tool.

          I think there’s a sweet spot between “sounds like everything else” and “most people will have no idea what they’re listening to”, and a lot of bands go past it during their careers for a lot of reasons, often just because they want to create and explore stuff and if it only appeals to hardcore fans they’re, on some level, cool with itReport

          • InMD in reply to pillsy says:

            It’s funny you mention Tool. I actually saw them in concert a month ago after basically skipping everything post Lateralus, which coincidentally, was the last time I saw them live (how the hell is that 20 years ago).

            The recent experience felt strangely dated which was funny since my recollection of seeing them in 2002 was that it was quite good. But to your point, the friend I went with who has followed them into their later work really loved it. An interesting point of comparison was that I randomly ran into one of my cousins there, who like me is a veteran of all kinds of metal and hardcore mosh pits. He did not really understand that Tool while capable of being heavier, is a bit different, and told me he found the whole thing disappointing/didn’t really get it.Report

            • R2's Bad Motivator in reply to InMD says:

              I had the same experience with Tool, saw them a few times on the Sober and Aenima tours but then saw them in 17 and unless they played a song from those two albums I felt lost,lol. It was ok but nothing like the earlier stuff.Report

  5. Jaybird says:

    I remember an interview with Mötley Crüe’s Vince Neil where he was complaining about Grunge.

    “Yeah, we already know that life sucks”, he said. “We’re aware.”

    That said, I think that it aged a little better than you seem to imply. Picking this or that Number One Hit is likely to give you something that you can’t listen to anymore, sure… but the albums? Temple of the Dog is still pretty good, even if Hunger Strike is going to show up in the next generation’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Siamese Dream is an *AMAZING* album even if Mellon Collie has “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” on it. Non-Black Hole Sun Soundgarden is really good. Spoonman, Fresh Tendrils, 4th of July, Like Suicide… hell, I think that “Half” is a brilliant and terrifying song (others tell me it sucks, though).

    The music seemed to say “We dodged the end of the world… how come I am still not happy?”

    Hey. Vince Neil might have something to say about that.Report

  6. Reformed Republican says:

    My wife and were talking about Grunge and 90s music the other day. I loved Nirvana back in the day. I can barely listen to them now. Maybe a song or two, but not a whole album (excluding Unplugged in New York). I feel like some of the other bands were so much better. Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden all stand up much better. STP even did what Kurt talked about, which is to move away from the grunge sound. Their later stuff sounded nothing like the stuff on Core.
    I think when people talk about 90s as The Grunge Era, they are lumping a lot of the miscellaneous alternative music in there.

    Here is some of my favorite commentary on Grunge: https://youtu.be/Iq73FAo4x38Report

  7. Pinky says:

    Grunge wasn’t the only music of the era, just like hair metal wasn’t the only music from ten years earlier. But the appearance of grunge marked a change in the sound. People forget how prominent the late 60’s / early 70’s stars still were up until 1991: Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, most former members of the Eagles, Genesis and most of its former/present members, Tom Petty, Rod Stewart, Peter Cetera of Chicago, and a bunch of others I’m blanking on. They all were successful up until grunge arrived. They could fit in between pop and rock because they had old-band cred. But all of a sudden, grunge became popular so the pop tentpole in popular rock didn’t matter. It was like the end of disco, where names that had been reliably on the charts were never seen again.Report

    • John Puccio in reply to Pinky says:

      I think that is typical of any era. If you look at the Billboard Top 100 of any given year, it’s full of songs that were huge hits that are not at all *representative* of what ‘s perceived to be the dominant culture(s) of the time.

      Here’s 1972 for example:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_singles_of_1972Report

      • Jaybird in reply to John Puccio says:

        Looking at that list, I’m kinda surprised. I was thinking “which still get radio airplay?” and there are a handful that might get played on the Easy Listening station (maybe 6 or 7 but not more than 10) and a handful that still get played on the classic rock station (but not as many as I had assumed going into a link talking about 1972… I’d say 6 or 7 but definitely not more than 10).

        It’s mostly ephemeral pop.Report

        • John Puccio in reply to Jaybird says:

          I’m sure someone, somewhere would argue to their death that “The Candy Man” by Sammy Davis Jr was a cultural touchstone.

          But I’m definitely not that person.Report

          • But this one is an all-time classic.

            Report

          • Jaybird in reply to John Puccio says:

            Going through the numbers for the 1950’s is interesting because you start with very, very adult songs for adults and by ’55 you get Bill Haley and his Comets with his big band song about rock and roll and then 1960 seems to be mostly goofy pop songs composed of novelty hits and adolescent love songs.

            Songs for grownups buying music versus songs for teenagers buying music.

            The occasional song sung by members of the Rat Pack or Herb Alpert show up in the top 100 here or there over the next decade… and I want to say that Sammy Davis Jr. was the last one. You’d get a Paul Anka here or there or a Neil Sedaka… but The Candy Man was the last gasp.

            And that’s it. After that there is only Cannonball Run.Report

      • InMD in reply to John Puccio says:

        That’s a great point. I just browsed through some of the 90s and you really don’t start seeing the kind of rock you’d associate with the era until into the 30s or even further and it definitely does not dominate.

        Number 1 for ’94 was Ace of Bass. I don’t have time for a comprehensive look but I bet the Macarena killed everything we’re talking about here in the charts.Report

        • Marchmaine in reply to InMD says:

          Yeah, I was just looking at historical charts in the 90s for my post above… and was reminded that all the ‘chart toppers’ are usually the strangest mix of past, present, and future. Like watching a flock of birds shifting directions seemingly without reason.Report

        • veronica d in reply to InMD says:

          Yeah. Back then “pop” music was still the most popular — it’s even in the name. However, I know in my friend circles we basically ignored that stuff. It’s almost like it somehow “didn’t count.”

          Like, the “cool kids” listened to pop music and went to certain parties, which I never went to those kinds of parties, not that I was invited anyhow. But somehow we lionize the alt-culture spaces. Like how all the John Hughes films featured 80-esque New Wave stuff. That wasn’t what most people listened to, but it felt like it was. Most of the girls I liked were into that stuff. By contrast, the girls into pop music were outside of my consideration — again, not that they would have been interesting in me anyhow. I had a green mohawk and a skateboard. I smoked.

          (Although oddly, in general my various g/f’s parents tended to like me a lot, which kind of goes against the pothead mohawked skate rat image I had cultivated. I think it was because I had a job and seemed honest, which for the most part I was.)

          Imagine a movie where the hero goes into a weird nightclub to case a crime lord. Are they playing Madonna, or is everyone dressed Goth and they’re playing Siouxsie? The latter, right? But why?

          I’d say for all of its success, Nirvana was still counter culture. Similarly, to me Sonic Youth was a popular band, but that was mostly because I didn’t really consider all the people in the world who would never be caught dead listening to Sonic Youth. They were into pop or country or whatever, so they didn’t count.

          To be clear, this isn’t good, and of course they count. I was a teenager, and thus stupid.Report

          • InMD in reply to veronica d says:

            Heh I agree in full, and like you I try very much not to romanticize myself or anything in particular I was into. I look back at most of the stuff to which I attached any sort of identity or extra meaning as being mostly about my own insecurities.

            I think your point about Nirvana, etc. still being counter-culture is a very insightful one. For one thing, there was actually still a ‘culture’ in a much more universal sense, which therefore allowed for a more visible, and more unified counter-culture. Like, I’m open to being told I’m just old, but what is the counter-culture now? Whatever it may be I feel certain there are way more than there used to be.Report

            • veronica d in reply to InMD says:

              Yeah I have no idea what the current counter culture is. I expect it involves Poppy vids or tiktok or something, but I can’t be sure.

              I remember when my friend’s parents would show up at a punk gig and tell us about their days following The Dead — which I assumed they meant The Dead Boys or something (really), but it turns out they meant this band “Grateful Dead,” who it turns out were really popular when they were young. Old folks are adorable.

              I assume I sound like that now. I’m okay with this.Report

              • North in reply to veronica d says:

                There isn’t one counter culture. There’re millions. The internet has changed everything. It’s all fragmented and niche now.Report

              • Pinky in reply to North says:

                They probably can’t be called “counter” any more, as they’re not a response or rebuttal to a mainstream culture. They probably can’t even be called “culture”, as that implies a group experience.Report

              • Greg In Ak in reply to North says:

                Everybody wants to be counter and a rebel. Nobody wants to think they are the establishment. Even the Establishment wants to play at being rebels. Very rich guys tout playing the blues and Senators bleat on tv about not being cancelled at their 7th media appearance that day.Report

          • LeeEsq in reply to veronica d says:

            I’d also argue that a lot of music credits do a lot of editing of the popular musical memory to reflect their taste rather than what people actually listened to. “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies, a band made up of cartoon/comic characters, was a very popular long in the late 1960s rather than some hippie rock.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to John Puccio says:

        There is a wikipedia for everything!

        I know about 10 songs from that list and about 24-30 of the artists on the list.Report

      • LeeEsq in reply to John Puccio says:

        That’s because a lot of what we see as the dominate form of music has to do with what the music critics think is important rather than what most people listened to.Report

  8. Saul Degraw says:

    I agree with your analysis grunge was a pallette cleanser compared to what came before it which was big stadium rock and hair metal. It was a return to basics. I don’t listen to much grunge now and in fact rather dislike Soundgarden (especially Black Hole Sun) and Alice in Chains but I was 13 in 1993 and grunge appealed to my adolescent self and led me down the road to discovery older alternative artists and to my current “indie” rock self.

    The album from the mid-1990s I listen to the most in The Magic City by Helium, followed by some of the Magnetic Fields stuff from that time like Get Lost and Holiday, and Different Class by Pulp. None of these bands were ever particularly big. Pulp is probably the most famous of the bunch but are indie darlings in America and bigger in their native U.K. I think 1997 is generally considered the starting point for modern indie rock because it is the release for If You’re Feeling Sinister and a lot of early Sleater-Kinney.Report

  9. Chris says:

    I think the most defining feature of grunge is that, musically, there’s nothing unique about it (as was often noted at the time). It’s a mixture of 60s melodies, 79s/80s alternative/punk/post-punk styles (to the point of pastiche, as in Smashing Pumpkins), etc. Many of the artists were pretty up front about this too (like, reading the ’92 Cobain Rolling Stones interview, in which he just lists out the bands). The only thing that’s original about it is how relentlessly depressing ang angsty it tends to be.

    Don’t get me wrong, I still think some of the more mainstream stuff, like Soundgarden through Badmotorfinger, Siamese Dream, In Utero, the early Screaming Trees stuff, Mundhoney, those first couple Hole albums, and a few others are still worth listening to now and then, but most of the early 90s mainstream grunge is utterly forgettable, and, I think, led to a dysfunctional music culture that got you death, ridiculous snobbery, and an insufferable reaction in the form of the late 90s awfulness.

    In that sense, then, the palate cleanser was the late 90s awfulness, which made was so bad that everyone decided we should be able to do good music and have it be popular.Report

  10. veronica d says:

    I spent the mid-80’s listening to hardcore punk, so when grunge came along I was reasonably pleased. However, it didn’t really feel like it was “shaking things up,” at least not to me. Honestly, by the early 90’s I was big into the shoegaze stuff, mostly because I was getting older and a bit burned out with punk. (Plus I’m trans lol!)

    Anyway, I recall catching this band one time, probably on the tour they mention in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Jhm8q6TRRw

    So, that was about 1987. I bought their cassette and listened to it until it wore out. I don’t know if it counts as “early grunge.” It’s probably more just garage punk or something. I dunno. Genre is confusing. But when I first heard Nirvana it seemed like a similar sort of thing. It’s just that a small punk band from Gainesville FL wasn’t going to break out in 1987 the way the Seattle crowd managed to do in ’91.

    Anyway, I’m actually glad I found that video, even if the sound quality is kind of trash. I haven’t thought about that band in decades. There is probably no way in heck I could find any of their material, as they only released an EP and it mostly got sold at shows. But I’ll never forget how much I loved them at the time.Report