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

Narecet, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The first handful of notes of Alive by Pearl Jam is usually enough to make the hair on the neck of any Gen Xer or elder millennial stand at attention. Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice in Chains … heck, anything from Seattle? Coming of age around 1991 was a special time with flannel shirts and catchy guitar riffs, minus the Eddie Van Halen mind-melting guitar solos that would cause less ambitious guitar players to give up in disgust (Hey, that was me!)

Here’s the thing, though. Even some people who grew up in that era mistakenly think that music was the pinnacle. But it wasn’t. Whether you define success by songwriting brilliance, pushing the envelope and inspiring a new generation of followers, or just commercial stats and record sales, Grunge wasn’t the be-all and end-all. Much like Van Halen started a wave of hard rock guitar energy that pushed disco to the curb, Grunge pushed hair metal aside and kicked a door open. But what really stormed through was an amazing patchwork of diversity, weirdness and experimentation still influencing things today.

Sorry, But Grunge Wasn’t THAT Amazing

Before getting to that, we need to address the mythical aura that still clouds the minds of many about the four bands above and a few others. Great music ages well and stands the test of time. Alive, Smells Like Teen Spirit, Black Hole Sun and Rooster are more akin to my achy, middle-aged joints. Sometimes I’ll grab a basketball and head over to my local hoop to take some threes and free throws, and perhaps for a split second I’ll forget my age. As soon as I go in for a layup I remember, no, I’m not in high school anymore.

The same goes for the Grunge era’s greatest hits. Instead of aging with grace, they’re the old dude in the stands at high school sporting events trying desperately to relive his youth. It’s not a good look. When those songs come on the radio, I generally cringe and change the channel. Unlike 80s rock, which inherently seems comfortable with what it is and almost willing to poke fun at itself, Grunge is going in for a dunk despite not having the vertical and being unaware of one’s surroundings.

To be clear, I have no axe to grind here. I still appreciate all those bands and what they did. I still sometimes strum those riffs on the guitar that I picked back up some years later with more realistic goals in mind. But the obsession with putting those groups in the upper pantheon of musical greatness clouds a lot of much more important work that deserves at least some of that recognition.

Let’s Get Weird…and Make Money!

Grunge solidified that commercial success didn’t need to follow the basic formula record label execs had been following. But some of that was good timing. In the early 90s, the record industry started using available technology to track sales in real time, right around when the seminal Grunge classics were poised to launch. The 1991 releases of Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s Ten gradually fought toward the top end of the Billboard charts and the rest is history.

Without that change in sales tracking, who knows how open record labels would’ve been to any experimentation? In the age of streaming, we know that not everything has to be a network sitcom. A gritty, edgy show for a smaller and more dedicated audience can produce something great and still manage commercial success. The World Wide Web would’ve eventually pulled down those barriers, but another musical genre or sub-genre might’ve been put on the mantle Grunge currently holds.

And even if commercial success is the standard, a lot more was happening outside of Seattle than some would lead you to believe. In 1992, Rage Against the Machine appeared out of nowhere with a self-titled debut that exposed many to grittier punk and rap sounds they would’ve never encountered otherwise (yes, they also paved the way for Limp Bizkit and 311; sorry ‘bout that). It’s hard to fathom how this song came out the same year Def Leppard released Let’s Get Rocked and Iron Maiden issued album number nine.

And reader, that was just the tip of the iceberg. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Faith No More, Primus, No Doubt, Sublime and countless other genre-bending acts enjoyed commercial notoriety that would’ve been hard to fathom under the pre-1990s musical regime. Heck, Perry Farrell (who doesn’t get near enough credit for his imprint on things) launched an entire traveling music festival that embraced weirdness and ought to be held up as the true 90s flagbearer—Lollapalooza. How else would we have known about Ween, a band that I literally cannot explain in the slightest?

Music Television, Not to be Confused With MTV

The road to success for the not-just-grunge 90s might’ve been paved much earlier. About a decade before record labels started better measuring sales and realizing a niche, cult following could make them dollars, new TV networks started appearing thanks to the growth of cable. It probably sounded counterintuitive at the time, but a few people figured they should play music on television 24 hours a day with visuals. It worked, and unlike terrestrial radio stations, MTV played any kind of music you could think of instead of following a one-genre format.

Now it’s a cesspool of reality television, but in its 1990s heyday, MTV launched many careers in rock, rap and everything in between. Again, Grunge played a big role in the music video rotation, but so did Mariah Carey, En Vogue, Destiny’s Child (who included one Beyoncé Knowles), Weezer, Green Day, Blind Melon, R.E.M., post-Licsense to Ill era Beastie Boys, Radiohead and (following the tragic death of Kurt Cobain) the Foo Fighters.
One of the more dominant MTV forces came just a few weeks after RATM’s debut, when former NWA member Dr. Dre put out The Chronic. Go through that record and ask yourself, “Is the 90s really about Grunge?”

Kids these days also won’t know the wonderful weirdness that is having Beavis and Butthead pick musical winners and losers. Psychedelic metal wizards White Zombie actually rose to prominence thanks in large part to a cartoon duo that played frog baseball and thought fire was pretty cool.

So when I argue that Grunge was just one small piece of the 90s music scene, I don’t just mean that specific styling of music was overrated—although it is. Calling the 90s the Grunge era does a massive disservice to the generation’s wide range of quality and influential minds that really set the tone.

What Grunge Got Right

Before I get too much hate mail, Grunge was musically important. It helped recalibrate the focus of rock music for the better. The 80s had some great music but the rock rhythm sections were boring, to put it politely (with a few notable exceptions like Elvis Costello drummer Pete Thomas).

I know, you’re probably yelling, “Bro, Tommy Lee was f***ing awesome!!!!” I’m begging you, go give that era of rock a re-listen. I enjoy AC/DC as much as the next guy, but the extremely predictable 1-2 punch of the pedal-snare drum sequence and lack of creativity among many of the bass players is hard to get past.

The virtuoso guitar solos, while impressive, aren’t much better. A couple years ago, Alabama Shakes lead singer Brittany Howard told podcaster Marc Maron about how she gravitates to the rhythm section when listening to a band. I think she’s onto something, based on the usual suspects crowding my playlists. I enjoy a guitar freak every once in a while, but good musicians like Neil Young learned an important secret: great music is often about what note to play and when, not how many notes you can squeeze into one bar of a song.

Whether it was the punk influences or an eye toward writing better music, Grunge artists understood those two tenets. They got rid of guitar solos for solos sake and gave the drum and bass a bit more freedom to build out a fuller sound. For that, we should be extremely grateful. But the 1990s wasn’t the Grunge Era. It was an experimental regrouping that reshaped the following decades. Grunge was just along for the ride.