By R. Scott Nolen
In the cosmic logic of things, it's fitting that Seattle, the hometown of guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, is the birth place of a musical genre and social movement that continues to resonate two decades later.
As a musical phenomenon, "grunge" was a short-lived countercultural movement characterized by heavy guitars and angst-filled lyrics that wedded the chill-hippie attitude with punk-rock rage. That anger was mostly inwardly directed, but there was still plenty of leftover ire to rail against society's shortcomings as well.
Bands like Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and, of course, Nirvana, which, as purists are quick to point out, was not a Seattle band (they hailed from Aberdeen, Wash.), gave a face to a fresh sound that, for a brief time, transformed Seattle from a vibrant music scene to a rock mecca.
Grunge also epitomized a lifestyle. "The music preceded the wheat grass and large glasses of espresso and milk, the laid back, good-coffee cafes, and easy-going sloppy clothes (ripped jeans, long johns, and long greasy hair)," Dean Borgman of the Center for Youth Studies wrote about the grunge movement.
"Grunge" is said to have first been used in 1981 in reference to music by Mark Arm of the bands Green River and later Mudhoney. In a letter to a Seattle magazine, Arm used the word to actually criticize his band at the time.
Eventually, the term was accepted into popular usage to describe the "Seattle Sound" that had been brewing in the area throughout the '80s. But it was the September 1991 release of Nirvana's "Nevermind" that made grunge a commercial juggernaut.
With chart-topping hits like "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Come as You Are," and "Lithium," Nirvana took grunge mainstream, ending the era of big-hair bands and ushering in a movement that made pessimism, flannel shirts, and lattes cool.
Spin magazine ranked "Nevermind" as the greatest album of the '90s. Rolling Stone magazine listed it as No. 17 on its top 500 albums of all time. And in 2004, "Nevermind" was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry.
Ironically, the commercial success the grunge counterculture so despised is what many argue led to the musical genre's undoing. By 1993, the postmortems on grunge were already being written. Criticized for selling out, Nirvana front man and reluctant grunge poster boy Kurt Cobain responded with a letter to Rolling Stone. "I don't blame the average 17-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout," Cobain wrote. "Maybe when they grow up a little bit, they'll realize there's more things to life than living out your rock and roll identity so righteously."
Cobain committed suicide in April 1994.
The end of the '90s was marked by the rise of post-grunge bands like Bush and Candlebox, who began taking over the air waves. At the same time, "Britpop" emerged from across the Atlantic as a rejection of grunge's dour attitude, with Oasis and Blur leading the way.
Grunge bands that had blazed so brightly onto the national stage began burning out. Nirvana split up after Cobain's death. Alice in Chains gave the last of their final performances in 1996 as lead singer Layne Staley struggled with addiction. He died in 2002 of a drug overdose. For several years, Pearl Jam's war with Ticketmaster overshadowed the group's music. Soundgarden later split up.
The soul of grunge didn't yearn for fame or mainstream approval—in fact, it was the opposite. As with all counterculture movements, grunge was fueled by rejecting those norms and values. Many of grunge's luminaries struggled with fame and feelings of hypocrisy when society did, in fact, hail their talent. Sadly, some of them lost the battle.
Grunge was never meant to take center stage, and in the end, its decline may have been one of its purest moments. If he were still around, Cobain's reaction to it all might best be summed up by a line from the lyrics of "Smells Like Teen Spirit": Oh well, whatever, nevermind.
