My Aim:

Of all of the countless alternative musical led movements of the musical explosion of the 70-90s largely due to a post Beatles world, wanting to see how much they could experiment, grunge was by far and away one of the most ambiguous scenes of it's time. It had a definite fashion sense, central location, societal attitude and genre that didn't seem to have any sort of musical consistency but yet it is still hailed as a definitive part of the late 80s and 90s. Millions of Gen Xs constantly claim it was everywhere in the western alternative and musical world, but the question I want to answer here is, what the hell is grunge? There's a lot of discourse both online and within circles of people present within the times of grunge about whether it was a genre, movement, scene, fashion, politics or just a label for record and clothing companies to capitalise on the interest of the times.

 

Today by seeking out what the grunge identity was we can change the definition of how movements can be made musically which affect the world and attitudes socio-politically as grunge is a massive example of this, i'm not necessarily narrowing it down to a definition with this report, more so implying what the ambiguity of grunge means for the future of music industry, which may seem pointless as the scene has seen its peak rise and fall, but the unimaginable impact it has had on the alternative community worldwide shows that in essence that it never died and is crucial to understanding where that community is headed in an age of pop dominating the charts and right wing politics becoming more and more present again in western countries, on the musical side we can investigate grunge as a case of a movement being labelled and how that can improve but also kill that movement, this can help us with any future guitar scenes in a world that has a current lack of.

 

The aim of this investigation is understanding how to treat and label (if at all) alternative sub genres going forward and what's next for a world of alternative people not fitting in with the restrictive norms of current society, grunge is a just a time capsule with those same values which will be used as a case study of a sort.

 

So, was grunge ever a genre?

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The Formation:

The northwest of America, more specifically Seattle in the 80s, where guitar music was turning into speed hardcore punk bands like 'Minor Threat' and slow sludgy heavy and death metal bands like 'Possessed' and more popularly 'Metallica', people were looking for new sound and ended up fusing the elements of the speed of punk with the heaviness of metal as well as the quiet, loud, quiet dynamic which 'Pixies' popularised but despite this, there is still a lot of debate online as to how grunge even started.

 

From official publications online, I can find that the first use of the word grunge was actually in 1981 from Mark Arm, the lead singer of 'Mudhoney', he described a fictional band in his account of the Seattle music scene 'Loser' called 'Mr Epp and the Calculations' writing “I hate Mr. Epp and the Calculations! Pure grunge! Pure noise! Pure shit!” (Northwest Passage). Now this shouldn't be seen as the start of the movement as Mr Arm is only using the word 'grunge' descriptively and in context, the word grunge actually originates from 1960s meaning '"sloppiness, dirtiness," also "untidy person," 1965, American English teen slang' (Etymology Dictionary). So it is clear that the label of grunge wasn't exclusive to the movement, meaning that whatever the movement was, wasn't fully defined just through the term meaning this isn't the beginning of the grunge era of Seattle music.

 

Staying on the topic of Seattle, which is definitely the hotspot of grunge and where the scene began, just through basic google research, I was able to find that the common and popular opinion on who the first 'grunge' band was is that of 'Green River' . This has some major credibility to it, as they were the first group to be described as 'grunge' in an official publication as a way to describe their sound, Bruce Pravvit wrote “ultra-loose grunge that destroyed the morals of a generation” in a promotional copy for the band in 1987, this in turn caused the label 'sub-pop' known for their ties to the early grunge scene, to start using the term relentlessly arguably most notably in their press release for Mudhoney stating “ultra sludge, glacial, heavy special, dirty punk” (Northwest Passage). There is an argument to be made against this however, a lot of fans of the scene believe that grunge being slapped on everything alternative was an exploitative tool used by record labels to sell more, therefore making the scene having had started far before the popularisation of the term.

 

This led me to include the question of how grunge started on my form for primary research, by far the 2 most popular answers were: The release of Mudhoney's 'Touch Me, I'm Sick' (their 1st and biggest selling single) and The formation of Green River. For the Mudhoney answer, I deduced it down to being the fact that 'Touch Me, I'm Sick' was the first grunge song to get any real airplay or recognition outside of Seattle, but we have to remember that grunge all started in Seattle, and as Green River were the first of the two and spurred the first musical use of the word grunge, I see them as being the blueprint of all that followed in grunge.

 

My research lets me come to the conclusion that the formation of Green River in 1984 was the first successful instance of the scene's ideology and aesthetic to come through with the music they were contributing to the scene, they were the beginning of what is known as 'grunge'.

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Commercial Peak:

As grunge started to excel past Seattle, other people tired of the glam metal aesthetic of the 80s, and frail indie pop started to become attracted to the aesthetic and ideology of grunge.

 

Grunge showed people that there was beauty in being ugly and unapologetic, the fashion trends of the time being that of second hand, beaten up baggy jeans and flannel tops, it became an easy to access an identity many people felt they belonged to at the time, but what caused this sudden spike in the popularity of the movement?

 

The release of 'Touch me, I'm Sick' led to mass college radio airplay all across northwestern America, people began to realise that the music was catchy and had almost pop-esque hooks, but was drowned in distortion and wailed screeching for vocals, this made people realise they could identify with this movement of pushing away what was normal in the music industry at the time and replacing it with something almost similar but discarded and almost gross in nature. With the cold war looming over America and many teenager questioning how much the government was really telling them in a time of utter uncertainty and questionable treatment of human rights, this music became an outlet for that left wing speech, with many elements of the lyricism having speech that was advocating for 'equality and human rights “through their music and emotional, introspective lyrics wrapped up in aggression”' (Korac, 2014). The ideology opposed the mainstream in a time when such thoughts were taboo, this is part of what made grunge so attractive to a rebellious younger generation. 'Metal bands tend to write about “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll”, the devil, demons, and the apocalypse, while grunge bands focus on “negative feelings in general, like failure, boredom, [and] loneliness."' (Bailey Gomes, 2020).

 

As for musical popularity, Sub-Pop signing Nirvana, Soundgarden and Mudhoney to the same record label as well as Alice in Chains being signed to Columbia records, all bands that followed this previously mentioned attitude and all being Seattle based, helped trademark and commercialise the sound.

 

The explosion of grunge worldwide began with the release of Nirvana's 'Nevermind' love it or hate it, it catapulted straight to the mainstream, despite it's harsh and abrasive sound and lyrical themes as well as the provocative cover of a nude baby in a pool chasing a dollar bill (highly speculated to be a critique of the popularity of commercialism and capitalism at the time) it was mellowed out by the studio who assigned Butch Vig to be the producer of the album  who gave the sound a far more commercial viability about it, this in hand with the fact that Cobain's songwriting turned far more poppy with this record. It debuted at number 1 on the billboard top 200 charts, replacing Michael Jackson's 'Dangerous', this was a big deal, it was the first time the opposition to the mainstream became itself mainstream. It was such an impactful event that many people view it as both the birth and death of grunge, further promoting its ambiguity as a movement, and spent over 700 weeks on the billboard top 200. The lead single 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' became an anthem for all those young folk discontented with uncertainty of their life and the times, grunge made authority know that young people weren't satisfied.

 

There is also the argument that despite these affects, the song hurt grunge, by becoming so popular that the message was lost in a money making scheme by the record companies that upheld grunge which supported the very system that the movement refused and opposed, cracks were only just beginning to show.

 

With the inevitable popularisation and new widespread nature of the scene, extending beyond the scope of Seattle by now, record labels were calling all sorts of bands across the western world grunge, most notably 'Stone Temple Pilots' who were from California and were lumped in with the new 'Big 5' of grunge (Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Stone Temple Pilots). Groups as far as Australia (Silverchair) and the UK (Bush) began to form who were being labelled as grunge, it seemed the main criticism of commercialism was starting to become hilariously ironic. These bands still followed the ethos of grunge, with Stone Temple Pilots even bravely releasing 'Sex Type Thing' which was an anti rape anthem, very in line with grunge ideology. The musical consistency and direction of grunge was also put heavily into question, all bands seemed to reject the label of grunge and calling themselves a completely different genre instead. Nirvana heavily identifying as a punk band, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and Stone Temple Pilots clearly pulled from metal influences and Pearl Jam having classic rock roots. This is where the debate of whether grunge was a genre or just a movement being a product of its time came into question for debate.

 

I investigated this in my Primary Research, with only 7% of my respondents describing the big 5's music as being similar, the only real similarities people directly described were the raspy vocals, guitar distortion and lyrical themes of the times being seen as being consistent and only one of those three (lyrical themes) are exclusive to grunge, the others are found in an array of alternative rock sub genres.

 

The exploitation of grunge and its musicians was also incredibly evident through the record labels treatment of them, they were seen as a cheaper alternative compared to glam metal bands like Motley Crue, as grunge pulled from the punk DIY aesthetic of punk meaning it was cheaper to fund and there was more money to be made from its sudden boom in popularity, Steve Albini who recorded Nirvana's 'In Utero' is quoted in saying he was 'Jaw-dropped' due to how much the band members were being treated like '7-11 clerks' as opposed to musical celebrities and artists (Niemier, 2024).

 

In summary, grunge was peaking, it was everywhere and you couldn't escpae by the early 90's, but in all its effect of anti authority and letting a new generation define themselves in a way they couldn't before, it was still inevitably supporting the systems which it initially hoped to dismantle and criticise, grunge was becoming a paradox.

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The Fall:

With a growingly uncertain foundation and direction for what the movement of grunge meant, things became very commercially hectic within the scene, with many bands attempting escape their routes and popular favour of the scene coming into real question as the alternative paradise and hell that was the 90s ensued, everything was coming into question.

 

Although I've already discussed the formation of grunge bands all across the globe, one thing I haven't mentioned, is that more esteemed music critics viewed many of these bands such as Bush, Candlebox, Stone Temple Pilots and Collective Soul as being trend hoppers which heavily harmed the reputation of the movement. This is due to the fact that these bands weren't from the origin of the scene, Seattle, this is when the scene was it's most authentic and unapologetic and these bands were viewed as trying to make a profit off an ideological movement which forbade that but others view this as a shift in sound and widespread knowledge of the movement (Liveabout, 2019).

 

Through every alt rock outfit coming out in this mid 90s era, there was just so much fragility on grunge caused by a large series of events running from 1994 all the way to the early 2000s when grunge was out of the focus, lets go through these events and find out what really hurt grunge. The record labels? The ideology being lost? The trend dying? Or just public opinion turning once again through the world of commercialism? A hatred of the grunge school of thought from yonder ago.

 

The most well known of these events is the death of Kurt Cobain on April 5th 1994, Nirvana were the household name for grunge and by far the most commercially successful band to come out of the movement, Kurt Cobain being the forefront for Nirvana's songwriting and image became a figure of upmost influence and importance for the scene. When he passed on there was a major shift in the way grunge evolved, Kurt's death was in some ways, tragically poetic. Kurt was a troubled man, plagued with bouts of depression and drug abuse forming from his background and rockstar lifestyle, he became so isolated from the music he was writing and so in his own twisted head that it drove him to suicide, many view this as being representative of the grunge scene, losing sight of what was ideologically important, becoming obsessed with album sales and not the music itself which would lead to it's eventual collapse. In Kurt's death, grunge lost a staple of its identity, a martyr to rock music, but most importantly an icon lost in his own head, similar to how grunge was lost in identity. Kurt's death was not the death of grunge, but for sure a mortal wound.

 

Pearl Jam's boycotting of Ticketmaster in 1995 also led to what many argue as the commercial fall of grunge, it led to many grunge bands not being put in the forefront of promotion or the spotlight as a response. Despite grunge opposing everything capitalist, conformist and commercial, it was killed by the system going against in a response to showing this very ideology at a fragile time.

 

In terms of musical shift, that came in the form of Bush's 'Razorblade Suitcase' a 1996 album that teetered between the line of grunge and post grunge and led to musical changing of what did well in the charts at the time.

 

After Alice in Chains played their last performance with Layne Stayley in 1996 and Nirvana were completely disbanded following Kurt's death, one of the last surviving grunge bands originating from Seattle were Soundgarden, in 1997 due to growing tensions and creative differences the group split up which is viewed as symbolically ending the 'Seattle' era of grunge as it stopped the 'Big Four' of grunge from properly acting as a cohesive force.

 

I put all of these and more options on my 'Death of grunge' question on my qualitative form to see what common opinion was on the death of grunge, the majority seemed to think that post grunge going mainstream was the musical death of grunge which led to the scene slowly withering away in the years that followed it, other scenes began to besmirch its reputation as well.

 

So for as politically and musically monumental grunge was, it seems to have been nothing but a scene of it's times that had been washed away through popular music opinion, or so it seems.

 

Grunge has had a significant effect on all that followed it and this leads many to believe that the scene has never truly 'died', for me I agree with this way of thinking, I definitely thing much of the grunge attitude and music was obscured and twisted by the late 90s but the message that the ideology held has never truly faded, more just beaten and partially forgotten. 

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The Everlasting Influence:

The undeniable effect of grunge on adolescence following its commercial peak will be forever noticeable. There was a beauty in being ugly that was never truly lost with time, cheap and beaten up clothes were still a true staple of fashion in any alt rock genre following grunge. Grunge taught every generation that came after that they could be unapologetic and still stand the test of approval in mainstream society, it was a major act of rebellion against the conventional norms of society that every movement has mimicked ever since, left wing and alternative ideology has a lot to thank for grunge majorly contributing to it. Despite its self destructive nature, grunge was still echoing its message however it could through those who never quite found a way into society and its many guidelines.

 

There is also a very small amount of bands that still follow and take direct influence from the grunge greats and create music known as 'New wave Grunge', bands such as, Sap, Moon Rules Apply and The Jinns. This is why many consistently say to this day that grunge isn't dead, the aesthetic, ideology and school of thought has just changed form in many ways.

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So, What is grunge?:

Grunge was a seismic moment, a collection of bands and communities in northwestern America that weren't necessarily playing the same music as each-other, but suffered from the same woes and worries that a troubled growing generation in the western world was feeling, the music was not just an escape from the constant pressures of the modern world, but also an outlet to truly express an at the time taboo attitude towards authority and restrictions within society.

 

The message of this small community, which bravely opposed capitalism and commercialism emphasised through the quickly growing, sleazy fashion sense, began to resonate beyond Seattle and became a worldwide phenomenon with music as its highest talking point. With how much good grunge was doing for a lost generation, it also lost sight of what was important and with the passage of time, became a selling point that the industry tired of after it's repetitive success in the mainstream, this went completely against the original anti commercial message that the original movement was trying to commit to. Through this grunge lost identity further and further through deaths of iconic figures, new scenes emerging and overindulgence of the movement in bad habits. In short, grunge was never a genre, it was a movement and school of thought tied together by a shared passion for music which record labels took advantage of, this weakened the message of the movement and ended with the eventual collapse of everything important in the scene, the message it told however was too powerful to die with the movement commercially as it directly opposed that. It shines through today as a constant reminder to differentiate yourself and not be held back by the status quo.

 

Grunge was an idea, and idea that got too ahead of itself much like many of its stars at the time.

 

Grunge isn't dead.