As someone who was a teenager in the Midwest during this era, I can say that GRUNGE was my gateway to so many other bands that I wasn’t aware of outside of the rock spear I was raised in.
@@Ungrievable I used to love to hear him talk but as these videos go on and on it now grown to dislike him and this video has made me unsub to him. He just thinks he is Jesus himself and knows it all and if your not on his side he makes you feel like your shit.
I always liked the hippy look. Ripped jeans and sleeveless shirts. I was like that in the 80s and still in 2021 I still dress the same. No long hair . I am bald . I loved metal but the hair spray and make up was a turn off. Kiss did it right however.
@@Capronice Extreme metal kinda rejected 'the look' well before grunge did. Look at old thrash metal and death metal bands, they mostly dress pretty normal. T-shirts and jeans.
I'm 48 and have a 16 year old daughter. When she discovered "grunge" it was just as impactful on her as it was on me when I was 18. The music (the good stuff) has never lost its relevance or felt dated. As someone who lived thru this as a 18-23ish year old, I think you pretty well nailed it. Nice work once again!!
So glad your daughter discovered grunge. My 21 year old nephew recently discovered Nirvana and bought me their Unplugged album on vinyl for Christmas. It almost made me shed a tear.
To be fair: it's prolly because she had a great musical influence in the form of her father. 😉 I'm only 25. My dad showed me a lot of cool music, and named me after Layne Staley. It was inevitable. Haha
Man, I just recently got into Alice in Chains and honestly Dirt gotta be one of the best albums ever recorded. Also, if you count Siamese Dream as a grunge album, also one of the best ever.
I was a teenager in the 90s and Grunge quickly became my favorite music. I am still a fan of Alice in Chains and Soundgarden and it was great because it helped me transition to other genres of music that inspired Grunge.
And I think AIC’s music has always felt the most real. When I saw my parents struggling with drugs and drama, AIC and Mad Season were like the soundtrack
I miss the Layne Staley AIC. I’m sure the new stuff is okay, but I never could listen to it not knowing he wasn’t a part of it. I do know that they were mostly written by Jerry Cantrell, or he gets writing credit for most of their song’s.
New Alice In Chains, especially Black Gives Way To Blue connected to me as deeply emotional, as their older stuff did. You just gotta give it a chance.
Grunge music was such a creative anomaly. Where as Soundgarden and AIC brought soul and heart to their music which inspired some already established metal bands to realize heavy sounds can be achieved by slowing down, drop tuning, and authentically singing your pain.
Kurt leaving this world definitely affected the movement but it didn’t die until a few years after that. Also, “Soaked in Bleach” shows a lot of pretty compelling evidence that Kurt didn’t pull the trigger. Not to mention, the case has been reopened. Of course, everyone is entitled to believe what they want…
@@robwalsh9843 let's put it that way pearl jam released an album in 1996 in which they changed their sound very much screaming trees released their last album soundgarden released their last album before hiatus alice released their last album and played their last concert before hiatus and layne's death stone temple pilots also left the typical "grunge sound" around 1995 when their Tiny Music came out i really think 1996 would be a clear point to draw when considering the complete death of grunge and its disappearance
Us "watching the self destruction" of these people for entertainment unfortunately hasn't ended, Chester Bennington is a prime example of that. Back in the day we all loved his lyrics for they're raw emotion, now I can't help but hear his cries for help.
Crazy to think that grunge had such a short life but is one of the most revered forms of music there is. At least in California, we have radio stations that are still dedicated to playing the stuff and you can’t go anywhere and not find a Pearl Jam fan. They were real, real people who talked about their very real problems and you got to watch them evolve or fall apart. That kind of music just hits different.
Petal Jam Ten was soooooo good. To this day I’ve never felt an emotional charge from any music as much as from that album. Unfortunately, Pearl Jam never captured that intensity since then. I think there are two main reasons. First, the original singer died (heroin overdose), so they must’ve been deeply affected by that tragedy. Second, Eddie Vetter brought lyrics that he wrote as a troubled teen, and we all know those years are emotionally charged and can never be replicated. The combination was pure magic. The whole album is incredible. The closest thing to it I think is Temple of the Dog, but nothing Pearl Jam did afterwards interests me in the slightest.
@@SketchEtcher ..I think, that pearl jam aged well..I liked the second one musically and lyrically more, although my first contact with pj was ten..and this had a huge impact on me..until today, they're one of my favourite rockbands..
We loved grunge when it first hit because it was a blend of punk, metal and hard rock that was performed by guys who knew how to write memorable songs.
I can personally attest to that shift. In mid 1991 I went into the military. Total isolation while in boot camp for 3 months. Before I left everyone in my peer group were long haired and wearing parachute pants and into the heavy metal glam rock scene. I came home near the end of 91 and just like that they all were not into that anymore. It's like a switch was flipped and it felt like a different world. Many have cut their hair and all were not wearing the heavy metal t-shirts and parachute pants anymore. For me the shift was very abrupt and mind blowing. Before I left, heavy metal was cool, come back and now it wasn't.
Soundgarden dropped superunknown in 1994 so it was still very relevant. Especially considering that was their most successful album.The pumpkins dropped Mellon Collie in 1995 which we could argue whether it’s grunge but it’s definitely the alternative rock sound and that album hit number one. Point being the alternative rock scene was still hitting hard through at least 1996.
Thank you for bringing up the smashing pumpkins, I feel like everyone leaves them out of the conversation either because they are British or post-cobain. I truly do believe they fit the grunge mold, and they show that grunge still existed in mainstream thought throughout the 90’s
Yeah, to me grunge really died in 1996, after Soundgarden broke up, off course the death of Kurt was the fatal hit, but Superunknown was huge, maybe the last huge album of grunge (Nevermind, Ten, Dirt and Superunknown), as much i love Down on the upside.
@@Kondomonium Smashing Pumpkins are from Chicago. Bush were the British band who went for the American grunge sound and were more popular in the US than the UK.
I remember the first year out of my years at college (1993) grunge had pretty much hit its peak but it was still going strong until Kurt Cobain's suicide. Then things tapered off. By the time of my senior year, you could tell that things had really changed because Korn was the most popular band with a lot of the students. Quite a big change.
There's no one "Seattle Sound". Nirvana doesn't really sound like Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains doesn't really sound like Soundgarden. It's all just hard rock from one area.
@jetmac 47. Alice In Chains and Soundgarden do sound very similar, not only that but Gruntruck and My Sister’s Machine also sound very similar to Alice In Chains and Soundgarden.
Yeah I would say that they all actually sound different with AIC & Soundgarden sounding the most alike but Nirvana is more punky and PJ has a bit of a folksy side while AIC definitely is more metal
@@jetmac4790 I was there back in the day...either way meeh. If your interested check out a band called the Pixies if you haven't heard of em. Its a large part of where Nirvanas loud quiet loud style of music came from
I remember going to a Pearljam concert and how magical it was to hear Eddie Vedder sing: "Rmrn mrrwromm hurr dur merrr eeem a bruuuh bor ma bee, hr mur dee bor bree ah see mrmr urr ma murr." Absolutely amazing. The strange thing is, to this day, I almost never hear dudes say anything about Pearljam, just chicks. I wonder what that's all about.
Grunge’s impact on the rock scene is super visible to me when I look at Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell’s friendship. I would say that both artists were at the ceiling of talent in their respective genre’s and were so close of friends that after Chris’s suicide, Chester took his life a couple months later on Chris’s birthday
I live in Australia and the impact of the music and fashion was huge here. I was in high school and I remember where I was when I heard that Kurt Cobain was dead - it was that massive a deal to us. The ripples of those days still resonate with me and many of my friends.
I live In Poland, and It was same here. Grunge culture was really strong here, although No band would even consider play a concert In our country back than. I guess we were Seattle of Europe XD
I know I'm being "legalistic" but Soundgarden and Alice in Chains were already making a name on the scene with Jesus Christ pose and Man in the box before Nirvana released Smells like teen spirit. However, Nirvana ate definitely the ones that blew it up.
The amount of people that took up playing an instrument as a result of the grunge movement is absolutely staggering. Kurt Cobain likely inspired more people to pick up a guitar and start a band than the Beatles or Jimi Hendrix, which is a massive legacy, and why Nirvana DNA still is still visible in rock music 30 years later.
Don’t forget, Dave was originally from the DC area & Was actually the drummer in scream. He had actually flown from DC to Seattle to Trey out on drums for Nirvana, and when he saw the crowds there for a local band like Nirvana, he had only seen that before at a Fugazi concert. And for Dave to have come from one community to another was literally howundergrounds of punk and hard-core blended together for those backing influences in grunge.
in our circles here we find MBA good, always informative enough to get your own head going when the topic caught you interest - or had it already. On 'grunge' - MBA here inspires us to add the things that are rarely said - see what you think: 1. Industry established the word 'grunge' for one part maybe in lack of a better word - but cause each time there's something happening they need a name for it - to sell it. 2. In fact the 'Seattle big 4' standing for the word grunge - here in MBA's video too - were very different bands - musically, and from different backgrounds. 3. MBA's description of the overall music we though find good: punk, indie, and metal moved into the next decade - that is what those bands have in common. 4. If that is grunge - a step up and a merge of the earlier foundations just mentioned - then Babes In Toyland, L7, and many more were serious grunge bands of the time too. They never get mentioned in the context. Thanks MBA inserted footage of Babes In Toyland. Informative again. 5. Tragic though that the industry 'delivery packet'-word grunge puts all those artists in a .. 'packet - in a corner - where they can be consumed as such, and now be declared to be past - in a packet. They all were artists of the time. Africans in America built and invented what is our rock culture - Elvis, (Bob Dylan?), The Beatles, The Ramones/The Sex Pistols, and Nirvana were effective key-turner in 20th+21st century culture. 6. Nirvana in the corner of grunge might be misplaced, restraint. On of the many ongoing effects of Nirvana are Deftones, Slipknot, Korn, System Of A Down, .. , - Nirvana broke the stagnation - opened doors to new very wide imagination of artists - broke the barriers .. psychologically for everybody else who plays organic handmade music - then and since. They dissolved old rules with what they did, musicians suddenly felt they could do what they want - and it would just work. They still do. /
Dirt by AiC is still my favorite all time rock album. Also, riot grrrl is a very underrated genre imo. Bikini Kill and to a lesser extent Hole are rad!
This was a great synopsis. I got to the US in 91 and Nirvana was one of the first rock bands I listened to before moving on to punk and hardcore. I was watching Beavis and Butthead on MTV when Kurt Loder came in with an MTV news brief and gave the news. it was around 1030 at night. "Rock got 90 percent less douchy thanks to grunge" perfectly. said.
Hey your avatar reminds me of the guy from “What we do in the shadows”. YouToob blocked me cos somebody could not stand being called a snob out here. 😩. Yes. You do! Nice to meet yous! 🤝 🧛♂️
STP’s Core has to be one of my favorite debut albums ever. Absolutely love it and fascinated with the band’s history. Pearl Jam, though, is my absolute favorite band ever.
Tad, Screaming Trees, Candle Box, Gruntruck, Malfunkshun, Green River, My Sisters Machine to name a few more unmentioned. It's no biggie because the subject of the video is focused on the commercial success of the Seattle sound whereas most of these bands I just listed I could hardly pull out of my head and are all disbanded likely forgotten by most.
While I was in the Navy, I ended up in Bremerton in late '95 for a few months. And I was excited to be so close to Seattle -- the grunge scene, of which I was a fan, was still very much a part of my musical intake and I couldn't wait to see it up close. But, major disappointment was in store. The entire scene was just gone by then. And I started hearing a similar refrain -- there's a hole in Seattle where the music scene used to be. Great video, man! Brought back a lot of memories.
@Soy Orbison I would have LOVED to have seen Candlebox but they were starting to develop a reputation for canceling shows too often -- which earned them the hilarious nickname "Cancelbox". As it was, I ended up catching Soul Asylum at the Paramount. Not a Seattle band and certainly not grunge but still really cool to catch some live music in Seattle. Radiohead was supposed to open but I have no memory of them actually playing. Great show, though.
To this day, no other celebrity death hit me as hard as when Kurt died. I remember coming back from school one day and on my local version of MTV was this VJ giving us the sad news. His voice was wrenched with sadness he was failing to hide. I remember being so shocked, in complete disbelief. Every year, that passes, I still wonder what couldve been if Kurt didnt die. I imagine what he would look like as a middle aged man, what direction his music wouldve taken. He now has been dead for as many years as he was alive and that fact seems surreal to me. I follow his daughter Frances Bean on social media and it makes so emotionnal to see that she's also a great artist in her own way but also the fact that she looks so much like her father. I like to think a part of Kurt is still alive, through his daughter and that's the only comfort I can get because even though he died when I was only 13, it still hurts my heart when I think about it.
The only celebrity deaths that ever bummed me out were John dunsworth (Mr lahey from trailer park boys), Trevor Moore, and rush Limbaugh. Judge me all you want for that last one, I enjoyed his radio broadcasts and I don't give a fuck what anyone else thinks.
@@who_cares848 Hey, guy. Rush never my thang, & was indoctrinated 2 hate him n '90's Marxist indoctrination camp (college) b4 I pulled my head out my ass, but saw a doc on the late, great Leonard Cohen at Mount Baldy, & while he's doing his Zen thang he's listening 2 none other than ur boy Rush on the radio. So ur n great company! F**k the sheep! ✌😎❤
If most music industry celebrities are programmed for self destruction, it was 10x worse in the grunge scene. Imagine a genre, a cultural movement where torturing yourself IS the point. Figuring out anything in life and appreciating is heresy in that scene...What a waste.
I was a Christian, married woman with small children, and a corporate America career to maintain when Scott Weiland passed. I felt as though my best friend died. I’m still mourning. I’m embarrassed to admit how an artist I’ve never met had such an impact.
Awesome video! Seriously great analysis! I would have also mentioned the rise of BritPop and post-grunge bands. The latter of which commercialised the sound (especially vocals!!) even more to the point of saturation by the late 90’s to early 2000s: Live, Bush, Puddle of Mudd, Nickelback, Godsmack, Creed and Matchbox 20!!!
"Grunge Forever" is still my most played Spotify playlist. That era of music was when I graduated high school and was trying to figure out what my purpose in life was. Lots of fantastic and tragic memories.
Here's a fun topic you can cover in the future: "Grunge's Hidden Family" So this is probably going to be a very "Sir, this is a Wendy's" comment but I really just wanted to mention this here that I've been delving deep into music history for about five years now, just really getting down and dirty into the subterranean underground and having my fun with noise rock, freakbeat, d-beat, and whatnot. And one of the things that just really brings my piss to a boil is when people completely and utterly fail to realize something that's surprisingly controversial: *_grunge and stoner rock are sister genres_* I don't get why. If you listen to them back to back, certainly you could hear it. And IIRC there was a comment made by I want to say Kim Thayil that mentioned that the only real difference between grunge and stoner rock is that grunge was the one that had its season in the sun and became mainstream. Like "university courses on it" mainstream. I personally have multiple playlists that consist of both styles, and even I can tell you that I often struggle to say where grunge ends and stoner rock begins. There's a whole family of sounds here, one lost on people nowadays for some reason. It wasn't just these two. I dub this "heavy rock," a style which harkens back to the explosion of blues-riffed music (hard rock, acid rock, guitar R&B, proto-punk, proto-metal, etc.) between roughly 1967-1974. We tend to call that style "70s heavy rock." Groups like The Who, Blue Cheer, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Cactus, Deep Purple, Grand Funk Railroad, Sir Lord Baltimore, Lucifer's Friend, The Stooges, Alice Cooper, MC5, and so on. This was also the era of the blues look and counterculture, so these artists (before they became mainstream and flashy) would usually just sport long shaggy hair and whatever clothes they had lying around. Well looking back at it, I can definitively say there is such a thing as "90s heavy rock" and its timing is even analogous: between 1987 and 1994. It was a similarly throwback style obsessed with riffs and fuzz, but filtered very heavily through punk rock. So this is where you got your entire family of bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Kyuss, Rage Against the Machine, Jane's Addiction, Butthole Surfers, Sleep, Primus, The Melvins, Alice in Chains, Mudhoney, Smashing Pumpkins, Tool, and so on. I mean fuck, they even had a similar look: the long shaggy hair and basic proletarian clothes. Before them, you had hair metal which.... And after, you had the cavalcade of Douche Age-era edgelord alternative and post-grunge which went with either looking like sadomasochistic gangsta clowns or trying WAY too hard to be "down to Earth, share a beer." There was a bit of a family there ranging from heavy indie rock to stoner rock because, up to around '95 or so, *it was all considered the same thing.* It really wasn't until around '95 that this throwback heavy rock-ish style started fading and bands started developing a more "modern alternative" style as we understand it to be. Compare rap rock! Rage Against the Machine's first two albums are basically "Run DM-Sabbath", very funky and very guitar-driven, very retro. Rock *and* rap. Then go to Limp Bizkit's _Significant Other._ It's really more of a rap album that just happens to have guitars on it. Very basic riffing, no real funk, no guitar focus, and the wangst! This might even be why people only remember the alternative/indie roots of grunge nowadays. I'd sooner say that Fu Manchu and Atomic Bitchwax have more to do with the grunge sound than any Tik Tok #grunge group or Arctic Monkeys (who have bizarrely been the "face" of modern grunge throughout the 2010s for some buttfuckingly baffling reason). Yet at the same time, I'd also say Soundgarden is closer to stoner rock than what we popular imagine grunge as being in retrospect (to the point I regularly throw them and the Melvins into the canon). It might be that grunge and stoner rock differed in a very important way. Both stemmed from 70s heavy rock and punk. So one part heavy rock, one part punk rock. But whereas grunge took that and used its third part on alternative influences (for the most part), stoner rock took that last third and went to a more space-rock and acid rock influence. Because "retro" definitely fell out of style in the alternative scene (at least for a while), that might be the cause of this split. Because otherwise I can't in good faith understand why people don't list the likes of Kyuss and Monster Magnet alongside Alice in Chains and Smashing Pumpkins when talking about 90s heavy rock groups. It really was all the same sound, and I just wish more people realized it, but no one ever talks about it. I'll also take a Baconator fries. That shit's addictive.
I still don't understand why rap rock went in the direction it did either. Between Rage Against the Machine, Faith No More, and Biohazard, earlier rap rock bands certainly had a strong punk/hardcore root, but were very much '70s rock influenced and it worked. Funk, hip hop, and heavy rock is a winning combination. Imagine Sly and the Family Stone jammed with Jimi Hendrix while Public Enemy provided the rhymes. THAT sounds epic. And it was when Rage Against the Machine did it. But then nü metal happened, and... I just don't get it. Ever since, rap rock has basically been synonymous with shitty quasi-hardcore screaming, grown men acting like tough guys but whining like children that mom just doesn't understand so they're going to slit her throat and fuck the wound, and basically trying to be the biggest douche imaginable. With no virtuosity, no interesting use of instruments, nothing. Just chugging. Chugga-chug-chug, motherfucker. Heck, even though it's still a RATM album, _The Battle of Los Angeles_ was definitely leaning into this style and is my least favorite album of theirs for that reason (musically; lyrically it's the best). Nü metal basically saw groove metal and said, "This is great, but fuck these riffs and guitar solos" and fucked rap rock in the ear for the rest of time. Gimme back Funkified Black Sabbath.
That’s a quality comment. I always said that Soundgarden sounded like Sweet Leaf by Black Sabbath became a band and made its own music. Died by AIC as well sounds a lot like Sabbath. To be fair, AIC have a few hair inspired songs like Real Thing and Can’t Have You Blues. Nirvana I thought was much more indie and punk inspired, covering songs by the Vaselines, sounded like heavy Lou Reed. I forget who said About a Girl sounded like the Beatles on Thorazine.
@@Yuli_Ban you’re so right about Rage being heavy metal funk, that’s very apparent from Renegades of Funk. Limp Bizkit was low on riffs, their appeal was how tight and clean Wes Borland made the guitar sound. Comparing even Three Dollar Bill to Significant Other the guitar work is so sharp and tight. Those simple riffs don’t sound complicated but they’re very hard to play that clean.
@@Yuli_Ban you’re right about TBLA it’s really their worst album. I like some of their songs but there is no bounce, no slick rhythm, no funk really. The riffs sound like they could have been interchangeable with Audioslave.
I'd add that Kurt Cobain's death was more of an *international* tragedy; I'm from a small village in the UK & I & the friends I had who were into Grunge, Nirvana & just music generally (all boys, no other girls, oddly) were *devastated* when he took his own life. It was a personal tragedy for those who knew & loved him, for whom he was family, but it was also generally sad for kids who saw him as an icon.
Have you watched the BBC doc “When Nirvana came to Britain”? Really one of the best docs on Nirvana available (imho) and reveals just how big they were there - far before the US discovered them here beyond Seattle - and how critical the UK was in their meteoric rise.
@@jeffreyhanc1711 No, I haven't heard of it actually but thanks for recommending it; I'll definitely add it to my list of things to watch. I think it does get overlooked to some extent just what a profound effect Nirvana had in the UK. They genuinely were something we'd never seen & heard before & the impact they had was huge, even on us in our middle of nowhere rural backwater. We really did emulate them from the music we'd play in our teenage bands to their ethics & ethos & even their sartorial look. So yeah, thank you, I'll look it up for sure.
@@julietarossetti7426 Np. Yeah in many ways it reinforces the general sociocultural rock theory that when a subset of Americans make a new style of cool music - be it African-Americans with blues and original rock from the South, or individual maniacs like MC5 or Ramones with punk, or Seattle 90s - you can rest assured the Brits will get it , appreciate it and celebrate it first long before the rest of America does! Smdh
Krist wearing the SDD shirt was at the December '93 Live n' Loud, not the '92 VMA's where he hit himself in the head with the bass. Also, Cobain never said PJ were "false grunge." He said they were no where near as independent minded/indifferent yo fane as they made themselves out to be. That they were closer to GnR than the punk. Pointing to the fact that Green River split up (basically one half became Mudhoney, the other PJ) exactly *because* Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament and Mike McCreedy *WANTED* to sign a major label deal. The whole thing was overblown and got put to bed *very* soon after it started. Kurt and Vedder not only hung out a few times but often spoke on the phone and left eachother answering machine messages (that Vedder still has).
that was me maria. I loved the post grunge scene too, I listen to music more for how it sounds, not for song meanings. I was just the mtv music video dude.
Grunge was my life in middle school and high school. Grunge is what made me decide to pursue a career in music. “Superunknown” is the first album I ever bought, and Soundgarden was the first band I saw in concert. The music still sounds amazing today.
There were still major grunge albums released in 1994, Superunknown by Soundgarden and Purple by STP being the biggest two that come to mind. I'd say 1995 was the first year without a grunge album dominating the charts.
Nevermind might be one of the most important and music defining albums ever. It literally changed the way people listened to music. There are definitely bigger albums and ones that have sold more but maybe besides Hybrid theory and The Marshall Mathers LP, Nevermind was definitely the most game changing album ever.
Great video. I love looking back. I got bit by the nostalgia bug in 2020. I would also add that Korn coming on the scene in 1994 was also the nail in the already dead Grunge genre. I would say Korn is as important and game changing as Black Sabbath, Nirvana and Metallica.
@@IzunaSlap none of those bands have any incling of grunge influence. That was like such a far reached ignorant comment haha. Thats a completely different genre all together of literally mainstream rock.
Grunge was a term used by the mainstream record industry to sell records. It was never a subculture. Worst concert I ever went to was seeing Pearl Jam, Nirvana and RHCP on New Years Eve of 1991. My friend and I looked punk/deathrock and had magenta and red bright hair. We had normal looking people messing with us the entire night. Seriously, jock types were physically threatening us. It was horrible. EDIT: There was both goth and punk bands out during that same time, so there was other music besides bad pop and hair metal being made when grunge came along.
Thats what I've heard as well. Normies took over in a way that was unbearable. Pretty sure it was depressing to those guys. Especially bands like Alice in chains. Where they're talking about some dark heavy stuff and people aren't really focused on that. Just focused on how "hot" Layne was. Kind of like a RATM situation where they're talking about serious things and they look out in the crowd and its just jocks there to slam and mosh. Its crazy how 3 out of the 4 big front men died due to horrific reasons. My moms favorite singer was Chris Cornell.
@@rokch1ck I was never a huge fan of the music, I was more of a goth and punk kind of gal. I went to that show because I owed a friend a ride so decided to go with her. That audience was filled with the kind of people who would have beat Kurt up if he wasn't famous. I honestly think one of the reasons why he killed himself was because he couldn't deal with the type of people his fandom was filled with.
So many people forget that when grunge was HUGE and filled with "normies," industrial rock was also big and mainstream (for a coupe of years) but didn't have that problem. KMFDM, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Chemlab, and Nine Inch Nails started going gold at the same time Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains was going platinum. I always thought "Head Like a Whole" was the industrial rock equivalent of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Kids in my school would say "I'd rather die than give you control" to their parents and teachers all the time.
@@rumrunner8019 I love Skinny Puppy and old Ministry, but I could never get into NIN. I always considered them to be a radio friendly version of Skinny Puppy.
Before Microsoft and Amazon moved in Seattle was a blue collar town dominated by Boeing and the timber industry. I don’t think working class genre like Grunge could explode in a hipster gentrified place like Seattle these days
Grunge died so quickly because the bands that made it had already been bands since the mid 80's, Screaming Trees, Green River ,Tad, Soundgarden, Alice n Chains, and mother love bone were all struggling to make it since 3-7 years before grunge broke.
Everything in this video is, as usual, balls-on accurate. Even the super weird things like how Pearl Jam was simultaneously left out and yet was the "other" face of it. After TEN was the final bullet for Hair Metal, they clearly didn't like how commercialized/"polished" it was and which shows in how they produced, released, and DIDN'T promote Vs and Vitology. I remember when STP came out and even Mad Magazine ripped on them for being PJ rip offs but "Interstate Love Song" set them apart and was backed-up by "Big Empty." Green Day/Dookie in 1994 was def another killer of Grunge; the dark shit, the drugs, and deaths was too much to be sustainable so Billie Joe Armstrong flinging mud at people at Woodstock and The Offspring making almost weird-al type songs seemed like a heavy load lifted. Also: *man the 80s/early 90s was such cheesy campy shit, everyone saw through it and was thankful grunge killed it* - Finn *hey you guys, you really need to start liking today's music instead of the old shit. This tik-tok synthetic shit is really fucking good, deal with it* - Also Finn
@@ThePunkRockMBA I don't understand how most of your videos are about how shit died yet the current trends are here to stay, especially since one of the main trends is how bad things are to the point we have to rely on old shit. Time will tell, and in 20 years I don't see Tik-Tok/Trap reunion tours or remember when viral videos.
I've never been a fan of Grunge, and never understood its importance, but your thoughts/comments in this video gave me a new perspective on why it is considered an important movement in music. Thank you, I really enjoy your videos.
"And then Bush came along and ruined it for everybody." I remember reading a guitar magazine article on this topic. It talked about how Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and STP were blowing up, and making great changes in music and culture.... "and then Bush came along and ruined it for everybody" I still chuckle when I think of that line.
@@The-Mediator I hear you. Actually didn't mind a few of the hits that Bush had -- derivative or not. As for the Cranberries, i liked their sound and their lyrical/songwriting approach to their art. Dolores' passing was a sad, sad day.
Seattle becoming what it is today is 100℅ because of grunge. Anyone there before the 90s knows this is true. No one came for the scenery before it was cool.
Now that's some big facts right there, nowadays it looks as if it were on the future but way back then it looked almost like a rural town in the midst of nowhere
@@OGGOAT23 Yup. Bruce, Kim and Hiro are from Park Forest Illinois which is like 2 towns away from me. Kim’s mom was a teacher in this area also. A friend of mine also met his mother at a record store in the area back in the 90s.
The very word GRUNGE makes me cringe. It was and IS some of the best music. Alice in chains IS in my opinion the best and most underrated band to rise out of the Seattle scene. THANK YOU LAYNE, CHRIS,ANDREW AND KURT FOR THE GIFT YOU GAVE US!
120 minutes. I forgot about that show. It was incredible. I was in college when cobain passed and our whole campus of 20k students felt like we had lost our idol. Still hurts. Rock on 🤘🏻
Grunge isn’t a sound, it was a movement. And also real grunge IS metal. Obviously AiC is pretty damn metal, Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger is metal, 4th of July is Sludge as fuck. Nirvana’s Bleach was basically half pretty sludgy metal, half punk. Also Melvins are metal as fuck. Pearl Jam were the main guys that weren’t metal at all, and that’s also probably why they were some of the most popular, because their stuff was a bit more sonically accessible for the average audience.
Alice In Chains was a metal band and still is. Their geographical location shouldn’t change that. Also I love these bands. Also in 1990 and 1991 both Megadeth and Metallica released their best selling albums so metal, good metal, was still there. We got the albums like 2 or 3 years late in the middle East and it was so taboo to even listen to this back then here. But at least we could find the cassettes. God I feel old.
Grunge was killed by the monetization of grunge, full stop. The culture grew out of a DIY ethic where the bands were doing what they wanted, but as the SubPop promotion machine and the move of major labels in to 90's alternative were happening, it ratcheted tension in the scene. I was a music director at a college radio station at the time and Smells Like Teen Spirit caused a major identity crisis. We knew that it was still out music, but as it was pushed further into the mainstream and everyone tried to sound 'grungy', where is the line. I think this is a major reason that bands were so interested in promoting their influences and other bands they loved. The media machine didn't look for good or genuine, only marketable. Bands saw the bad bands like Candlebox and their ilk that were being pulled along on their coattails and genuinely hated it. That whole media frenzy to pick the bones of the mid 80's to 90's Seattle scene drove the good actors away and left shills, cynics, and those that managed to escape and find somewhere else to do their thing.
STP were copycats. Mark Arm: "What most people were talking about was a handful of bands that started in Seattle, and then maybe afterwards there were sort of copycat bands around the world - Bush in the UK, Stone Temple Pilots in California, and Silverchair in Australia."
I've never commented on any TH-cam videos, but I loved this one. Your videos are both informative and interesting. Also entertaining (if you're a bit nerdy like me I suppose) Thank you for your hard work, it's appreciated here.
If you weren't from Seattle, grunge lasted a little longer, I guess. Alice in Chains had some traction before Nirvana with Man in the Box. I remember seeing them open for Van Halen in September 1991. You're right about the music of 1990 being very weak.
I wasn’t a kid when Nevermind hit. I was a mid-twenty something, going to clubs and bars, right in the middle of all this. I realize the commercialization of what Company’s thought “grunge” was all about was ironic, But in the music and Clubb seen it wasn’t dying. What started killing it was the slow progressive deaths of the people that were essentially leading the cause. Kurt dying, Shannon Hoon, and the disassociation from his band when Layne could not handle his addiction anymore, Left the door open for the genre to slowly fade. I still remember when Siamese dream came out and I was bouncing a club in downtown St. Louis, and when the band would play ANYTHING from that album the crowd would go completely nuts. We had crowd surfers and stage divers in a little basement bar, I’m sure we’ll beyond capacity, but it was an absolutely awesome time. I feel that down in the trenches like that, grunge was still strong until the music faded away. No one cared about the commercialization or any of that stuff in that environment. We just wanted to have fun and listen to good music. It wasn’t over at that point, and the music still meant a lot to those of us that were stuck in a melancholy and depressed state of mind. I remember thinking it was the beginning of the end, the day I learned that Kurt killed himself; I knew it would start to fade away. I could not have been a bigger fan and grunge is mostly what I listen to still to this day
People always say Grunge killed Glam Metal, but the way I saw it Grunge was connected to Glam. If you listen to Mother Love Bone's album or the early Alice In Chains you can clearly hear glam influences. I was a Thrash Metal guy back in the day but I also loved some Glam Metal bands like Ratt or Dokken who had just awesome guitar solos and I always loved the euphoric 80s vibe of Glam Metal. The thing in the early 90s was that the scene got over saturated and I do admit at that point I was a bit sick of those bands taking most of the playtime of shows like Headbanger's ball. On the other hand I did appreciete some Grunge. Honestly I thought back in the day that Nirvana wasn't even Grunge. I believe Kurt said they were kind of Alternative Rock, but I was surprised just recently when I saw his early interview from before Nevermind era and he said they were Grunge Rock so whatever. I liked Soundgarden's Bad Motor Finger because of the vocals. I liked Temple of The Doga's album and I liked all albums from Alice in Chains. I also listened to Nirvana. I liked MadSeason and some other stuff, but I wasn't like super into it. I do think that the music that happened in that 1990 - 1995 era was special and really cool.
"grunge" literally got its name from Rolling Stone calling Kris Novoselic in the morning waking him up asking him to describe his genre of music. As he was wearing day old clothes and felt dirty he said "Grunge". They asked him about the Grunge fashjion and he literally just started talking about stuff in hi room. It was just what regular guys were wearing then in Washington, Rolling Stone had a whole article about the "Grunge Scene" basically off a joke by Novoselic. There was the post-punk scene in Seattle, but generally there were lots of diverse rock genres at the time that were out of the mainstream rebelling against Hair metal that incorporated punk influences without really being a punk sub-genre, and the phenomenon of Nirvana and "Grunge" which was marketed as a return to rock's roots after the Hair Metal/excess/sex drugs rock/deacdence thing was already becoming passe. Of course there was plenty of alternative music around the country, it just wasn't getting much play on MTV. It was true there was a phenomenon where bands who had moved to LA to find success were moving to Seattle, and arguably Kurt's hatred of fame, the lfestyle it demanded, and his legacy as far as being surronded by this and pereptuating it was a major cause of his sucide, but he had always been a guy who struggled with chronic pain, depression, and addiction.
that's a great way to put it. same for Nirvana Unplugged, it was like, less than six months before he was dead. those videos were still in rotation. horrible.
I find myself often in the position of “old guy trying to explain the impact of grunge on EVERY FUCKING THING” to kids. Now, I can just direct them to this video.
In 8th grade I was a loser than grunge became popular and everything changed. Funny thing I never liked Nirvana much but I often say Nirvana changed my life even though I was never a fan. Skating, hardcore, being dirty became cool and I was ahead the curve. I went from weird kid to kid that knows all the weird music and people wanted to know where I got all my skate company clothes and band shirts. The early 90s were nuts
^^ this old guy used to play Final Fantasy with his friends on Nintendo ("NES classic" that is) while listening to either Vanilla Ice or Nitzer Ebb (we were also big fans of Nirvana and 120 minutes). Memories are clear as day. Turned 13 in 1990. We were at Lollapalooza 92 and 93. Interesting side note on the 1992. If you are familiar with the band Front 242 (we as teens were very into the industrial scene), Layne Staley came on stage during "Religion" and sang with them. It was awesome.
I'm now boring kids with stories of how awesome the early 90's were the way my parents' generation bored me with stories about how awesome the late 60's were. Achievement unlocked!
@@robwalsh9843 HAHAHA yeah. I find myself doing that too. Only, my kids realize how everything sucks now. Music, movies, shows, etc. And if you notice, there's a flock of teens listening to 90s music more than modern. So, I think that speaks volumes over our parents music. Of course The Doors, Beatles, Violent Femmes, Zeppelin and all the others I'm forgetting...still rock. Sorry for the ramble.
The grunge era was, pretty much, completely synced to when I was in college (92-96) and it was great, while it lasted. The mortality rate of rock frontmen was staggering at that time.
Energy like that ,by it's nature, burns out faster than average. The Seattle musical influence is still very relevant. Lads now are interested in that era from a music standpoint. That whole scene epitomizes "Burning the candle at both ends, I burns so bright. But does it have enough to make it through the night?"
Big music labels can't make money from kids who dress in jeans and ratty old flannel. Moreover, the oligsrch's can't have kids hearing harrowing songs about the evils we face. They need us listening to messages that degenerate society, leading kids into gangs, drugs, violence, and risky sex.
yeah he's wrong.grunge was alive and kicking in 94. superunkown, vitalogy, purple. the death knell was actually 96. or maybe 95 after alice in chains self-titled
It was essentially a blend of heavy 60's/70's rock with punk, post-punk and art rock elements. Soundgarden were frequently compared to Black Sabbath, for example.
Grunge started to feel kind of phony after a while, Steve Albini said as much. It's that kind of movement that could only happen in a decade like the 90s where not much of anything happened, after the 2000s though I just can't take all that angsty whining seriously anymore. Nu Metal at least was more interesting through it's mix of hip-hop and use of sampling in many of its bands.
@@jadedheartsz Grunge felt phony when all the wannabes came into the fold, that's something that everyone agrees upon, including grunge bands themselves. Also, a lot of nu metal was very whiny and way too many bands were being really unoriginal and borrowing everything from the Korn/Ross Robinson playbook.
Nevermind actually knocked MJ's Dangerous album off the top of the charts when it came out. I think that perfectly highlights how impactful and important that album was.
Dangerous is a work of art. 10 million spentvto create. The album cover is also a work of art. Michael was a musical genius, his sense of rhythm was impeccable. Nice guy too.
True. Then again I was around for Fear Innoculum pushing Lover off of #1. As you can expect, one finished 110 places behind the other in the year end chart... Gauging the commercial success or cultural impact of an album is surprisingly hard, and can't be done based on any one chart metric.
Remember when the New York Times contacted Sub Pop to do an article about grunge slang and Sub Pop supplied them with a completely made-up list of grunge slang terms? Trolling before there was trolling!
Hair Metal/ LA Glam might be the only sub genre of rock n roll that I hate all the way through. Hell even a few National Socialist hardcore songs have catchy riffs despite them being garbage. Hair metal is just watered down blues rock made in a paint by numbers fashion.
You're 100% correct about the artists using their platform to promote their influences, their peers & the stuff they were into. Krist Novoselic took every opportunity to mention Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Melvins, Soundgarden etc during interviews. Everyone was so supportive of each other.
It's one of the best parts of Nirvana IMO. There is a list somewhere of Kurt Cobains top 50 albums, most of it pretty obscure and most of it really good. Stuff like the Vaselines and the Pastels are my favourites. Just kinds weird off kilter Scottish indie pop.
The “what killed (blank) genre?” And “how did (blank band) get so big?” series’s are my absolute favorite from you Finn! Keep up the good work, productivity is off the charts lately! 💪🏼
I was 16 yrs old when Nirvana blew up and I can say that everything changed literally overnight. In jr. High I was really into hair metal but by the time I went into high school I, and everyone around me were bored and stuck in a rut with the music out there. When grunge came out we not only dressed different, we thought and felt differently. We felt like we were finally being heard through this music. Before this, rock stars and their lifestyles felt unattainable and outrageous. At least to our adolescent selves these guys felt authentic and real. Mainstream killed so much of that amazing and stripped down feel. Trying to make something that was so anti- everything become cool and the way to be. We wanted this colossal wave to be for us, to be our own; not for the media and mainstream to try and latch on to it like a parasite. But they didn’t kill grunge, Kurt died and no one wanted to go on with it. I still can feel what I felt on that day he died.
Nutshell is one song that really gets me when I listen to it now. That song is basic Layne Staley crying for help and it's so sad that he never got any
It's even more sad that his friends and family did try to help him, but in his last years he withdrew and did not accept help from anyone, even his bandmates.
@@nosyhobbit I don't get why anyone is allowed to refuse help that way. There was absolute proof he had a problem. There should've been some way to banish him to some rehab clinic on an otherwise deserted island from he'd not bee allowed to leave until proven clean for a few years at least. Tough love, but he'd be alive.
@@tempest411 it would have been nice. At the end of the day though, you cannot take away another person's free will. The person has to be willing to accept help.
@@nosyhobbit At some point they are no longer able to make valid decisions concerning their well being. If you're even a little buzzed you are not considered qualified to drive a car safely, so it's reasonable that a drug addict is not qualified to conduct their own affairs in life.
He got plenty of help, a lot of rehabs, therapies etc. He was just one of thoes hopeless cases: nothing was working for him or he wasn’t working on his self enough. yes, going clean demands work from addict.
I just _love_ the story that Kurt Cobain's mother tells, of the very 1st time she heard their album 'Nevermind' sitting in her living room. She asked the boys if they were _really, truly_ ready for what was about to happen to them? She _knew_ it was amazing & unlike anything she'd ever heard before & that this was gonna be IT for them. This was gonna make them all _huge,_ rock stars... whether they liked it or not.
@Digitalhunny given how she treated Kurt during his teen years make me more inclined to believe that she didn't really give a shit about his music and especially Nevermind AT ALL. After Kurt died, there was a sense of 'Oh, we knew he was a rockstar from the start, we knew he would be successful' that kind of stuff. I was like, nah bitch, you used him and his sister as pawns in your divorce, don't try to act like you were with him all this time
To me, grunge was the last time that rock music took over the world (in the UK would be britpop). After 1997, rock became a really weird time in my opinion and rap, R&B, pop started to takeover rock.
The last of rock music being a big thing was that last big wave of scenecore music like bmth and stuff, like big warped tour bands. About after 2015 that wave started dying down and rock wasn't as heard of at all since then til recent lol. But in underground terms, the underground is still alive and never died so theres that ofc
@Call Me, BLEGH Me, If You Wanna Reach Me I think you probably know what people mean when they say "emo", there's no need to be pedantic. I am aware of "real emo" but when I say "emo" to a normie they know I mean MCR and Fall Out Boy, even though all those bands are just pop-punk.
Jane’s Addiction were ahead of the curve for an eighties band as were Pixies and Sonic Youth. Although none of these were from Seattle I feel grunge would have been very different without them.
I agree. Kurt definitely plugged Sonic Youth a few times as a band he looked up to, that was how I first listened to them, I think they toured together at one point too. Definitely Sonic Youth and Jane's Addiction were super important at that time because they were doing some of the more weird and arty stuff in the alternative scene.
Never forget the Buthole Surfers and the song Pepper doesn't count. Electric Larry Land is a good album if you take out that song and everything before that is drug fueled gold.
@@ronaldowens5025 Butthole Surfers as a band were absolutely ahead of the curve and an influence on both Nirvana and Jane’s Addiction but the song Pepper was from 1996.
Join my Discord! discord.gg/dpKTrW9Q4R
Paint my chicken coup
As someone who was a teenager in the Midwest during this era, I can say that GRUNGE was my gateway to so many other bands that I wasn’t aware of outside of the rock spear I was raised in.
Wow that’s hilarious how you talked about montly crue but yet you showed a picture of Def Leppard. Smdh thought you knew it all.
@@Ungrievable I used to love to hear him talk but as these videos go on and on it now grown to dislike him and this video has made me unsub to him. He just thinks he is Jesus himself and knows it all and if your not on his side he makes you feel like your shit.
@@thabugman9433 I love most music. Grunge, glam, electronic, rap, whatever.
"WHAT *ACTUALLY* KILLED GRUNGE?"
Heroin.
Totally.
I always liked the hippy look. Ripped jeans and sleeveless shirts. I was like that in the 80s and still in 2021 I still dress the same. No long hair . I am bald . I loved metal but the hair spray and make up was a turn off. Kiss did it right however.
@@Capronice
Extreme metal kinda rejected 'the look' well before grunge did. Look at old thrash metal and death metal bands, they mostly dress pretty normal. T-shirts and jeans.
Ozzy : pathetic
Hahahaha before I watched the video I swear I said the exact same thing.
I'm 48 and have a 16 year old daughter. When she discovered "grunge" it was just as impactful on her as it was on me when I was 18. The music (the good stuff) has never lost its relevance or felt dated. As someone who lived thru this as a 18-23ish year old, I think you pretty well nailed it. Nice work once again!!
So glad your daughter discovered grunge. My 21 year old nephew recently discovered Nirvana and bought me their Unplugged album on vinyl for Christmas. It almost made me shed a tear.
Yo I discovered grunge last year when I was into hip hop/trap stuff(16M) now I'm more of a Alt dude but man, these are just something
I found my 11 year old daughter listening to Pearl Jam's Ten. It was a proud moment.
To be fair: it's prolly because she had a great musical influence in the form of her father. 😉
I'm only 25. My dad showed me a lot of cool music, and named me after Layne Staley. It was inevitable. Haha
Man, I just recently got into Alice in Chains and honestly Dirt gotta be one of the best albums ever recorded. Also, if you count Siamese Dream as a grunge album, also one of the best ever.
I was a teenager in the 90s and Grunge quickly became my favorite music. I am still a fan of Alice in Chains and Soundgarden and it was great because it helped me transition to other genres of music that inspired Grunge.
So awesome! Check out our Music
And I think AIC’s music has always felt the most real. When I saw my parents struggling with drugs and drama, AIC and Mad Season were like the soundtrack
I miss the Layne Staley AIC. I’m sure the new stuff is okay, but I never could listen to it not knowing he wasn’t a part of it. I do know that they were mostly written by Jerry Cantrell, or he gets writing credit for most of their song’s.
New stuff is fantastic. Black gives way to blue is just as emotional, just in a different way.
New Alice is really good, give them a listen some time if you can.
New Alice In Chains, especially Black Gives Way To Blue connected to me as deeply emotional, as their older stuff did. You just gotta give it a chance.
@@mockingslur6945 even the devil put dinosaurs here is pretty great.
Grunge music was such a creative anomaly. Where as Soundgarden and AIC brought soul and heart to their music which inspired some already established metal bands to realize heavy sounds can be achieved by slowing down, drop tuning, and authentically singing your pain.
Grunge died in the mainstream when Kurt took his own life,Aic unplugged was the last heartbeat.
'96 was the year grunge disappeared completely, left only maybe in our hearts
Kurt leaving this world definitely affected the movement but it didn’t die until a few years after that. Also, “Soaked in Bleach” shows a lot of pretty compelling evidence that Kurt didn’t pull the trigger. Not to mention, the case has been reopened. Of course, everyone is entitled to believe what they want…
@@southernladyish when was it reopened?
When Kurt died, grunge had already burned out. Soundgarden and Screaming Trees also had final hurrahs.
@@robwalsh9843 let's put it that way
pearl jam released an album in 1996 in which they changed their sound very much
screaming trees released their last album
soundgarden released their last album before hiatus
alice released their last album and played their last concert before hiatus and layne's death
stone temple pilots also left the typical "grunge sound" around 1995 when their Tiny Music came out
i really think 1996 would be a clear point to draw when considering the complete death of grunge and its disappearance
Us "watching the self destruction" of these people for entertainment unfortunately hasn't ended, Chester Bennington is a prime example of that.
Back in the day we all loved his lyrics for they're raw emotion, now I can't help but hear his cries for help.
Crazy to think that grunge had such a short life but is one of the most revered forms of music there is. At least in California, we have radio stations that are still dedicated to playing the stuff and you can’t go anywhere and not find a Pearl Jam fan. They were real, real people who talked about their very real problems and you got to watch them evolve or fall apart. That kind of music just hits different.
Petal Jam Ten was soooooo good. To this day I’ve never felt an emotional charge from any music as much as from that album. Unfortunately, Pearl Jam never captured that intensity since then.
I think there are two main reasons. First, the original singer died (heroin overdose), so they must’ve been deeply affected by that tragedy. Second, Eddie Vetter brought lyrics that he wrote as a troubled teen, and we all know those years are emotionally charged and can never be replicated. The combination was pure magic. The whole album is incredible. The closest thing to it I think is Temple of the Dog, but nothing Pearl Jam did afterwards interests me in the slightest.
@@SketchEtcher ..I think, that pearl jam aged well..I liked the second one musically and lyrically more, although my first contact with pj was ten..and this had a huge impact on me..until today, they're one of my favourite rockbands..
@@SketchEtcher idk pearl jam was alright.. the voice of eddie vedder always kind of turned me off lol
Exactly. This stuff totally changed my life.
We loved grunge when it first hit because it was a blend of punk, metal and hard rock that was performed by guys who knew how to write memorable songs.
I can personally attest to that shift. In mid 1991 I went into the military. Total isolation while in boot camp for 3 months. Before I left everyone in my peer group were long haired and wearing parachute pants and into the heavy metal glam rock scene. I came home near the end of 91 and just like that they all were not into that anymore. It's like a switch was flipped and it felt like a different world. Many have cut their hair and all were not wearing the heavy metal t-shirts and parachute pants anymore. For me the shift was very abrupt and mind blowing. Before I left, heavy metal was cool, come back and now it wasn't.
Soundgarden dropped superunknown in 1994 so it was still very relevant. Especially considering that was their most successful album.The pumpkins dropped Mellon Collie in 1995 which we could argue whether it’s grunge but it’s definitely the alternative rock sound and that album hit number one. Point being the alternative rock scene was still hitting hard through at least 1996.
Third Eye Blind/Blink 182/ Eve 6/Matchbox Twenty came around with the PopRocks that kind of ended grunge in 1997 give or take
Thank you for bringing up the smashing pumpkins, I feel like everyone leaves them out of the conversation either because they are British or post-cobain. I truly do believe they fit the grunge mold, and they show that grunge still existed in mainstream thought throughout the 90’s
Yeah, to me grunge really died in 1996, after Soundgarden broke up, off course the death of Kurt was the fatal hit, but Superunknown was huge, maybe the last huge album of grunge (Nevermind, Ten, Dirt and Superunknown), as much i love Down on the upside.
@@Kondomonium they're not British
@@Kondomonium Smashing Pumpkins are from Chicago. Bush were the British band who went for the American grunge sound and were more popular in the US than the UK.
For me grunge has never died ✌️
Same here.
"We show them that human spirit is still alive".
Not just for you. Grunge has never died, nor will it ever!
Sorry to hear that
I listen to grunge every day for at least 10 years so it ain't dead for me lol
DAMN STRAIGHT 👊🏼
I remember the first year out of my years at college (1993) grunge had pretty much hit its peak but it was still going strong until Kurt Cobain's suicide. Then things tapered off. By the time of my senior year, you could tell that things had really changed because Korn was the most popular band with a lot of the students. Quite a big change.
There's no one "Seattle Sound". Nirvana doesn't really sound like Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains doesn't really sound like Soundgarden. It's all just hard rock from one area.
@jetmac 47. Alice In Chains and Soundgarden do sound very similar, not only that but Gruntruck and My Sister’s Machine also sound very similar to Alice In Chains and Soundgarden.
This is very true but when it all came out at the same time, it sounded all the same.
@@kayceeyou I would also like to point out I wasn’t alive during that time (unfortunately), so my view might be different than someone’s who was
Yeah I would say that they all actually sound different with AIC & Soundgarden sounding the most alike but Nirvana is more punky and PJ has a bit of a folksy side while AIC definitely is more metal
@@jetmac4790 I was there back in the day...either way meeh. If your interested check out a band called the Pixies if you haven't heard of em. Its a large part of where Nirvanas loud quiet loud style of music came from
They were all huge stars. And Eddie Vedder is the only one left Alive..
Everyone hates Courtney Love but she was part of that scene too, Hole was a great band, like it or not.
@@Blisteryn hole kept me sane for like 6 months
AWWW IIIIII OOOOOOOH IM STILL ALIVE YEAHHHHHH
@@Blisteryn so true, I feel like 90s folk hated her out of jealously of her ending up with Kurt
Cant forget the riff lord Cantrell
But for real, there’s a movie called “Hype!” And I 100% recommend it.
My favourite Grunge documentary.
Such a great documentary, I like how it really focused on a lot of the smaller acts like Crackerbash and Tad.
It's free to watch on tubi fyi
@@daviddr115111 I have the DVD.
@@zombiesatemyfriend6282 That’s fancy and I’m jealous! Mine is on a “hard to watch after all the years of watching” vhs tape
I remember going to a Pearljam concert and how magical it was to hear Eddie Vedder sing: "Rmrn mrrwromm hurr dur merrr eeem a bruuuh bor ma bee, hr mur dee bor bree ah see mrmr urr ma murr."
Absolutely amazing.
The strange thing is, to this day, I almost never hear dudes say anything about Pearljam, just chicks. I wonder what that's all about.
Grunge’s impact on the rock scene is super visible to me when I look at Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell’s friendship. I would say that both artists were at the ceiling of talent in their respective genre’s and were so close of friends that after Chris’s suicide, Chester took his life a couple months later on Chris’s birthday
I live in Australia and the impact of the music and fashion was huge here. I was in high school and I remember where I was when I heard that Kurt Cobain was dead - it was that massive a deal to us. The ripples of those days still resonate with me and many of my friends.
I live In Poland, and It was same here. Grunge culture was really strong here, although No band would even consider play a concert In our country back than. I guess we were Seattle of Europe XD
I know I'm being "legalistic" but Soundgarden and Alice in Chains were already making a name on the scene with Jesus Christ pose and Man in the box before Nirvana released Smells like teen spirit. However, Nirvana ate definitely the ones that blew it up.
You are correct! Nirvana is overrated AF
Also, Tad's 1990 video for Wood Goblins was refused by MTV for being too ugly.
Smells Like Teen Spirit blows up a year later.
The amount of people that took up playing an instrument as a result of the grunge movement is absolutely staggering. Kurt Cobain likely inspired more people to pick up a guitar and start a band than the Beatles or Jimi Hendrix, which is a massive legacy, and why Nirvana DNA still is still visible in rock music 30 years later.
Don’t forget,
Dave was originally from the DC area & Was actually the drummer in scream.
He had actually flown from DC to Seattle to Trey out on drums for Nirvana, and when he saw the crowds there for a local band like Nirvana, he had only seen that before at a Fugazi concert.
And for Dave to have come from one community to another was literally howundergrounds of punk and hard-core blended together for those backing influences in grunge.
No song will ever portray sadness and anger like "Jeremy" by Pearl Jam. Grunge still lives in us late 30yr olds haha
Lol... aka the mainstream grunge sad anthem? Yea... no. Jeremys got nothing on Staleys material in Dirt.
No way..... I thought you guys were pussies. Us total badasses listened to shit like Wreck or The Cows.
Anything with Layne and Jerry will.
👎
@@nycriotgrrrl6110 Thanks for your single emoji reply, you must have spend all day coming up with that one!
in our circles here we find MBA good, always informative enough to get your own head going when the topic caught you interest - or had it already. On 'grunge' - MBA here inspires us to add the things that are rarely said - see what you think: 1. Industry established the word 'grunge' for one part maybe in lack of a better word - but cause each time there's something happening they need a name for it - to sell it. 2. In fact the 'Seattle big 4' standing for the word grunge - here in MBA's video too - were very different bands - musically, and from different backgrounds. 3. MBA's description of the overall music we though find good: punk, indie, and metal moved into the next decade - that is what those bands have in common. 4. If that is grunge - a step up and a merge of the earlier foundations just mentioned - then Babes In Toyland, L7, and many more were serious grunge bands of the time too. They never get mentioned in the context. Thanks MBA inserted footage of Babes In Toyland. Informative again. 5. Tragic though that the industry 'delivery packet'-word grunge puts all those artists in a .. 'packet - in a corner - where they can be consumed as such, and now be declared to be past - in a packet. They all were artists of the time. Africans in America built and invented what is our rock culture - Elvis, (Bob Dylan?), The Beatles, The Ramones/The Sex Pistols, and Nirvana were effective key-turner in 20th+21st century culture. 6. Nirvana in the corner of grunge might be misplaced, restraint. On of the many ongoing effects of Nirvana are Deftones, Slipknot, Korn, System Of A Down, .. , - Nirvana broke the stagnation - opened doors to new very wide imagination of artists - broke the barriers .. psychologically for everybody else who plays organic handmade music - then and since. They dissolved old rules with what they did, musicians suddenly felt they could do what they want - and it would just work. They still do. /
Dirt by AiC is still my favorite all time rock album.
Also, riot grrrl is a very underrated genre imo. Bikini Kill and to a lesser extent Hole are rad!
Hole is NOT rad.
Dirt is a great rock album....that was released in the grunge era
The legacy of Grunge is still alive and kicking in this household.
Glad I don't have your beta outlooks.
#NPCs
This was a great synopsis. I got to the US in 91 and Nirvana was one of the first rock bands I listened to before moving on to punk and hardcore. I was watching Beavis and Butthead on MTV when Kurt Loder came in with an MTV news brief and gave the news. it was around 1030 at night. "Rock got 90 percent less douchy thanks to grunge" perfectly. said.
Hey your avatar reminds me of the guy from “What we do in the shadows”. YouToob blocked me cos somebody could not stand being called a snob out here. 😩.
Yes. You do! Nice to meet yous! 🤝 🧛♂️
@@Ungrievable I just looked up the show to get the reference. Hahaha !! are you saying I look like a vampire?
@@Ungrievable LMAO Rock gained a ton of the Douchyness back with bands like Creed and FFDP.
STP’s Core has to be one of my favorite debut albums ever. Absolutely love it and fascinated with the band’s history. Pearl Jam, though, is my absolute favorite band ever.
Core was so bad ass !!!!!!!
STP is similar to both Pearl Jam and AiC heavily,no secret but I do still enjoy them.
Then there's also Tad of whom is always forgotten in the mix
Tad, Screaming Trees, Candle Box, Gruntruck, Malfunkshun, Green River, My Sisters Machine to name a few more unmentioned. It's no biggie because the subject of the video is focused on the commercial success of the Seattle sound whereas most of these bands I just listed I could hardly pull out of my head and are all disbanded likely forgotten by most.
While I was in the Navy, I ended up in Bremerton in late '95 for a few months. And I was excited to be so close to Seattle -- the grunge scene, of which I was a fan, was still very much a part of my musical intake and I couldn't wait to see it up close. But, major disappointment was in store. The entire scene was just gone by then. And I started hearing a similar refrain -- there's a hole in Seattle where the music scene used to be. Great video, man! Brought back a lot of memories.
@Soy Orbison I would have LOVED to have seen Candlebox but they were starting to develop a reputation for canceling shows too often -- which earned them the hilarious nickname "Cancelbox". As it was, I ended up catching Soul Asylum at the Paramount. Not a Seattle band and certainly not grunge but still really cool to catch some live music in Seattle. Radiohead was supposed to open but I have no memory of them actually playing. Great show, though.
@Soy Orbison Better than what was to come 5 years later (Staind, Creed, Godsmack, Nickelback)
@Soy Orbison Were you in Seattle for that Soul Asylum show? If so, then we were at the same show.
To this day, no other celebrity death hit me as hard as when Kurt died. I remember coming back from school one day and on my local version of MTV was this VJ giving us the sad news. His voice was wrenched with sadness he was failing to hide. I remember being so shocked, in complete disbelief. Every year, that passes, I still wonder what couldve been if Kurt didnt die. I imagine what he would look like as a middle aged man, what direction his music wouldve taken. He now has been dead for as many years as he was alive and that fact seems surreal to me. I follow his daughter Frances Bean on social media and it makes so emotionnal to see that she's also a great artist in her own way but also the fact that she looks so much like her father. I like to think a part of Kurt is still alive, through his daughter and that's the only comfort I can get because even though he died when I was only 13, it still hurts my heart when I think about it.
The only celebrity deaths that ever bummed me out were John dunsworth (Mr lahey from trailer park boys), Trevor Moore, and rush Limbaugh. Judge me all you want for that last one, I enjoyed his radio broadcasts and I don't give a fuck what anyone else thinks.
@@who_cares848 Hey, guy. Rush never my thang, & was indoctrinated 2 hate him n '90's Marxist indoctrination camp (college) b4 I pulled my head out my ass, but saw a doc on the late, great Leonard Cohen at Mount Baldy, & while he's doing his Zen thang he's listening 2 none other than ur boy Rush on the radio. So ur n great company! F**k the sheep!
✌😎❤
If most music industry celebrities are programmed for self destruction, it was 10x worse in the grunge scene. Imagine a genre, a cultural movement where torturing yourself IS the point. Figuring out anything in life and appreciating is heresy in that scene...What a waste.
I was a Christian, married woman with small children, and a corporate America career to maintain when Scott Weiland passed. I felt as though my best friend died. I’m still mourning. I’m embarrassed to admit how an artist I’ve never met had such an impact.
What killed grunge? The major labels and the media.
grunge killed grunge
@@KillforKickz Yep! Because it got absolutely ridiculous. The song Tangerine by The Flaming Lips immediately comes to mind.
Nah. It was heroin.
@@johnconti1329 ew nooo. please don't mention the flaming lips x/ lol thank make me puke. my band writes better songs than that X)
@@Johncornwell103 say no to drugs kids
Awesome video! Seriously great analysis! I would have also mentioned the rise of BritPop and post-grunge bands. The latter of which commercialised the sound (especially vocals!!) even more to the point of saturation by the late 90’s to early 2000s: Live, Bush, Puddle of Mudd, Nickelback, Godsmack, Creed and Matchbox 20!!!
Give me hair metal any day over that drab and plodding crap. Rock has mostly sucked since the early 2000's.
"Grunge Forever" is still my most played Spotify playlist. That era of music was when I graduated high school and was trying to figure out what my purpose in life was. Lots of fantastic and tragic memories.
Actually it's pronounced Courtney Love
Here's a fun topic you can cover in the future: "Grunge's Hidden Family"
So this is probably going to be a very "Sir, this is a Wendy's" comment but I really just wanted to mention this here that I've been delving deep into music history for about five years now, just really getting down and dirty into the subterranean underground and having my fun with noise rock, freakbeat, d-beat, and whatnot.
And one of the things that just really brings my piss to a boil is when people completely and utterly fail to realize something that's surprisingly controversial: *_grunge and stoner rock are sister genres_*
I don't get why. If you listen to them back to back, certainly you could hear it. And IIRC there was a comment made by I want to say Kim Thayil that mentioned that the only real difference between grunge and stoner rock is that grunge was the one that had its season in the sun and became mainstream. Like "university courses on it" mainstream. I personally have multiple playlists that consist of both styles, and even I can tell you that I often struggle to say where grunge ends and stoner rock begins.
There's a whole family of sounds here, one lost on people nowadays for some reason. It wasn't just these two. I dub this "heavy rock," a style which harkens back to the explosion of blues-riffed music (hard rock, acid rock, guitar R&B, proto-punk, proto-metal, etc.) between roughly 1967-1974. We tend to call that style "70s heavy rock." Groups like The Who, Blue Cheer, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Cactus, Deep Purple, Grand Funk Railroad, Sir Lord Baltimore, Lucifer's Friend, The Stooges, Alice Cooper, MC5, and so on. This was also the era of the blues look and counterculture, so these artists (before they became mainstream and flashy) would usually just sport long shaggy hair and whatever clothes they had lying around.
Well looking back at it, I can definitively say there is such a thing as "90s heavy rock" and its timing is even analogous: between 1987 and 1994. It was a similarly throwback style obsessed with riffs and fuzz, but filtered very heavily through punk rock. So this is where you got your entire family of bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Kyuss, Rage Against the Machine, Jane's Addiction, Butthole Surfers, Sleep, Primus, The Melvins, Alice in Chains, Mudhoney, Smashing Pumpkins, Tool, and so on. I mean fuck, they even had a similar look: the long shaggy hair and basic proletarian clothes. Before them, you had hair metal which.... And after, you had the cavalcade of Douche Age-era edgelord alternative and post-grunge which went with either looking like sadomasochistic gangsta clowns or trying WAY too hard to be "down to Earth, share a beer."
There was a bit of a family there ranging from heavy indie rock to stoner rock because, up to around '95 or so, *it was all considered the same thing.* It really wasn't until around '95 that this throwback heavy rock-ish style started fading and bands started developing a more "modern alternative" style as we understand it to be. Compare rap rock! Rage Against the Machine's first two albums are basically "Run DM-Sabbath", very funky and very guitar-driven, very retro. Rock *and* rap. Then go to Limp Bizkit's _Significant Other._ It's really more of a rap album that just happens to have guitars on it. Very basic riffing, no real funk, no guitar focus, and the wangst!
This might even be why people only remember the alternative/indie roots of grunge nowadays. I'd sooner say that Fu Manchu and Atomic Bitchwax have more to do with the grunge sound than any Tik Tok #grunge group or Arctic Monkeys (who have bizarrely been the "face" of modern grunge throughout the 2010s for some buttfuckingly baffling reason). Yet at the same time, I'd also say Soundgarden is closer to stoner rock than what we popular imagine grunge as being in retrospect (to the point I regularly throw them and the Melvins into the canon).
It might be that grunge and stoner rock differed in a very important way.
Both stemmed from 70s heavy rock and punk. So one part heavy rock, one part punk rock. But whereas grunge took that and used its third part on alternative influences (for the most part), stoner rock took that last third and went to a more space-rock and acid rock influence. Because "retro" definitely fell out of style in the alternative scene (at least for a while), that might be the cause of this split. Because otherwise I can't in good faith understand why people don't list the likes of Kyuss and Monster Magnet alongside Alice in Chains and Smashing Pumpkins when talking about 90s heavy rock groups. It really was all the same sound, and I just wish more people realized it, but no one ever talks about it.
I'll also take a Baconator fries. That shit's addictive.
I still don't understand why rap rock went in the direction it did either. Between Rage Against the Machine, Faith No More, and Biohazard, earlier rap rock bands certainly had a strong punk/hardcore root, but were very much '70s rock influenced and it worked. Funk, hip hop, and heavy rock is a winning combination. Imagine Sly and the Family Stone jammed with Jimi Hendrix while Public Enemy provided the rhymes. THAT sounds epic. And it was when Rage Against the Machine did it.
But then nü metal happened, and... I just don't get it. Ever since, rap rock has basically been synonymous with shitty quasi-hardcore screaming, grown men acting like tough guys but whining like children that mom just doesn't understand so they're going to slit her throat and fuck the wound, and basically trying to be the biggest douche imaginable. With no virtuosity, no interesting use of instruments, nothing. Just chugging. Chugga-chug-chug, motherfucker. Heck, even though it's still a RATM album, _The Battle of Los Angeles_ was definitely leaning into this style and is my least favorite album of theirs for that reason (musically; lyrically it's the best).
Nü metal basically saw groove metal and said, "This is great, but fuck these riffs and guitar solos" and fucked rap rock in the ear for the rest of time. Gimme back Funkified Black Sabbath.
Dave Grohl said in a video that Kyuss was the future of grunge music
That’s a quality comment. I always said that Soundgarden sounded like Sweet Leaf by Black Sabbath became a band and made its own music. Died by AIC as well sounds a lot like Sabbath. To be fair, AIC have a few hair inspired songs like Real Thing and Can’t Have You Blues.
Nirvana I thought was much more indie and punk inspired, covering songs by the Vaselines, sounded like heavy Lou Reed. I forget who said About a Girl sounded like the Beatles on Thorazine.
@@Yuli_Ban you’re so right about Rage being heavy metal funk, that’s very apparent from Renegades of Funk. Limp Bizkit was low on riffs, their appeal was how tight and clean Wes Borland made the guitar sound. Comparing even Three Dollar Bill to Significant Other the guitar work is so sharp and tight. Those simple riffs don’t sound complicated but they’re very hard to play that clean.
@@Yuli_Ban you’re right about TBLA it’s really their worst album. I like some of their songs but there is no bounce, no slick rhythm, no funk really. The riffs sound like they could have been interchangeable with Audioslave.
I'd add that Kurt Cobain's death was more of an *international* tragedy; I'm from a small village in the UK & I & the friends I had who were into Grunge, Nirvana & just music generally (all boys, no other girls, oddly) were *devastated* when he took his own life. It was a personal tragedy for those who knew & loved him, for whom he was family, but it was also generally sad for kids who saw him as an icon.
Have you watched the BBC doc “When Nirvana came to Britain”? Really one of the best docs on Nirvana available (imho) and reveals just how big they were there - far before the US discovered them here beyond Seattle - and how critical the UK was in their meteoric rise.
@@jeffreyhanc1711 No, I haven't heard of it actually but thanks for recommending it; I'll definitely add it to my list of things to watch. I think it does get overlooked to some extent just what a profound effect Nirvana had in the UK. They genuinely were something we'd never seen & heard before & the impact they had was huge, even on us in our middle of nowhere rural backwater. We really did emulate them from the music we'd play in our teenage bands to their ethics & ethos & even their sartorial look. So yeah, thank you, I'll look it up for sure.
@@julietarossetti7426 Np. Yeah in many ways it reinforces the general sociocultural rock theory that when a subset of Americans make a new style of cool music - be it African-Americans with blues and original rock from the South, or individual maniacs like MC5 or Ramones with punk, or Seattle 90s - you can rest assured the Brits will get it , appreciate it and celebrate it first long before the rest of America does! Smdh
I love that you included Layne Staley’s cat ❤️
Also a major influence for emo rap. Lil peep had a song called Cobain and compared himself to Kurt Cobain
Krist wearing the SDD shirt was at the December '93 Live n' Loud, not the '92 VMA's where he hit himself in the head with the bass.
Also, Cobain never said PJ were "false grunge." He said they were no where near as independent minded/indifferent yo fane as they made themselves out to be. That they were closer to GnR than the punk.
Pointing to the fact that Green River split up (basically one half became Mudhoney, the other PJ) exactly *because* Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament and Mike McCreedy *WANTED* to sign a major label deal.
The whole thing was overblown and got put to bed *very* soon after it started. Kurt and Vedder not only hung out a few times but often spoke on the phone and left eachother answering machine messages (that Vedder still has).
I realized grunge was dead when the same people started buying that Hootie and the Blowfish album.
that was me maria. I loved the post grunge scene too, I listen to music more for how it sounds, not for song meanings. I was just the mtv music video dude.
Get that was a good album ......
Hoodie was great
lol
@@nonyobussiness3440 Hoodies are great.
Grunge was my life in middle school and high school. Grunge is what made me decide to pursue a career in music. “Superunknown” is the first album I ever bought, and Soundgarden was the first band I saw in concert. The music still sounds amazing today.
Grunge got me into “alternative rock” and introduced me to punk/hardcore. Music peaked when punk - hardcore became mainstream 2000-2010
There were still major grunge albums released in 1994, Superunknown by Soundgarden and Purple by STP being the biggest two that come to mind. I'd say 1995 was the first year without a grunge album dominating the charts.
AIC’s self titled album went #1 in 1995
Nevermind might be one of the most important and music defining albums ever. It literally changed the way people listened to music. There are definitely bigger albums and ones that have sold more but maybe besides Hybrid theory and The Marshall Mathers LP, Nevermind was definitely the most game changing album ever.
Great video. I love looking back. I got bit by the nostalgia bug in 2020. I would also add that Korn coming on the scene in 1994 was also the nail in the already dead Grunge genre. I would say Korn is as important and game changing as Black Sabbath, Nirvana and Metallica.
Nu metal and grunge kinda blended together to some extent. Bands like Staind, Cold, Breaking Benjamin and Stone Sour were hybrids of the two.
@@IzunaSlap none of those bands have any incling of grunge influence. That was like such a far reached ignorant comment haha. Thats a completely different genre all together of literally mainstream rock.
Grunge was a term used by the mainstream record industry to sell records. It was never a subculture. Worst concert I ever went to was seeing Pearl Jam, Nirvana and RHCP on New Years Eve of 1991. My friend and I looked punk/deathrock and had magenta and red bright hair. We had normal looking people messing with us the entire night. Seriously, jock types were physically threatening us. It was horrible. EDIT: There was both goth and punk bands out during that same time, so there was other music besides bad pop and hair metal being made when grunge came along.
Thats what I've heard as well. Normies took over in a way that was unbearable. Pretty sure it was depressing to those guys. Especially bands like Alice in chains. Where they're talking about some dark heavy stuff and people aren't really focused on that. Just focused on how "hot" Layne was.
Kind of like a RATM situation where they're talking about serious things and they look out in the crowd and its just jocks there to slam and mosh.
Its crazy how 3 out of the 4 big front men died due to horrific reasons.
My moms favorite singer was Chris Cornell.
@@rokch1ck I was never a huge fan of the music, I was more of a goth and punk kind of gal. I went to that show because I owed a friend a ride so decided to go with her. That audience was filled with the kind of people who would have beat Kurt up if he wasn't famous. I honestly think one of the reasons why he killed himself was because he couldn't deal with the type of people his fandom was filled with.
So many people forget that when grunge was HUGE and filled with "normies," industrial rock was also big and mainstream (for a coupe of years) but didn't have that problem. KMFDM, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Chemlab, and Nine Inch Nails started going gold at the same time Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains was going platinum.
I always thought "Head Like a Whole" was the industrial rock equivalent of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Kids in my school would say "I'd rather die than give you control" to their parents and teachers all the time.
@@rumrunner8019 I love Skinny Puppy and old Ministry, but I could never get into NIN. I always considered them to be a radio friendly version of Skinny Puppy.
Your thoughts encapsulated my feelings on 90s music. This GenXer really appreciated this vid!
Soundgarden was an amazing band up through Badmotorfinger. Best of the scene IMO.
I love L7! They opened up my 1st concert with Marilyn Manson and being in Nebraska, mtv and cd shops were our only outlet
That's awesome man. L7 rocked!
Always enjoy these trend breakdowns my dude!
Before Microsoft and Amazon moved in Seattle was a blue collar town dominated by Boeing and the timber industry. I don’t think working class genre like Grunge could explode in a hipster gentrified place like Seattle these days
Grunge died so quickly because the bands that made it had already been bands since the mid 80's, Screaming Trees, Green River ,Tad, Soundgarden, Alice n Chains, and mother love bone were all struggling to make it since 3-7 years before grunge broke.
Ah yes…. Mother love bone. Man I miss the good old days 👍
Everything in this video is, as usual, balls-on accurate. Even the super weird things like how Pearl Jam was simultaneously left out and yet was the "other" face of it. After TEN was the final bullet for Hair Metal, they clearly didn't like how commercialized/"polished" it was and which shows in how they produced, released, and DIDN'T promote Vs and Vitology.
I remember when STP came out and even Mad Magazine ripped on them for being PJ rip offs but "Interstate Love Song" set them apart and was backed-up by "Big Empty."
Green Day/Dookie in 1994 was def another killer of Grunge; the dark shit, the drugs, and deaths was too much to be sustainable so Billie Joe Armstrong flinging mud at people at Woodstock and The Offspring making almost weird-al type songs seemed like a heavy load lifted.
Also:
*man the 80s/early 90s was such cheesy campy shit, everyone saw through it and was thankful grunge killed it* - Finn
*hey you guys, you really need to start liking today's music instead of the old shit. This tik-tok synthetic shit is really fucking good, deal with it* - Also Finn
TikTok kids are super authentic and creative. There is no discrepancy here.
Tbh most popular music is now 100x times better than 10 years ago. Trap and pop has lot of good shit. Or at least that's my humble opinion.
@@ThePunkRockMBA I don't understand how most of your videos are about how shit died yet the current trends are here to stay, especially since one of the main trends is how bad things are to the point we have to rely on old shit. Time will tell, and in 20 years I don't see Tik-Tok/Trap reunion tours or remember when viral videos.
I've never been a fan of Grunge, and never understood its importance, but your thoughts/comments in this video gave me a new perspective on why it is considered an important movement in music. Thank you, I really enjoy your videos.
19:21 holy fuck Sean Kinney predicted “LOOK AT THIS PHOTOGRAPHHHH”
"And then Bush came along and ruined it for everybody."
I remember reading a guitar magazine article on this topic. It talked about how Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and STP were blowing up, and making great changes in music and culture.... "and then Bush came along and ruined it for everybody" I still chuckle when I think of that line.
I love Bush. They helped stretch the “grunge” sound out longer, gave it more longevity. Them and the Cranberries.
@@The-Mediator I hear you. Actually didn't mind a few of the hits that Bush had -- derivative or not.
As for the Cranberries, i liked their sound and their lyrical/songwriting approach to their art. Dolores' passing was a sad, sad day.
@@laxbro7ify
Yes, the Cranberries had great music, instrumentally and melodically. I hope Delores has finally found peace and happiness.
Seattle becoming what it is today is 100℅ because of grunge. Anyone there before the 90s knows this is true. No one came for the scenery before it was cool.
Now that's some big facts right there, nowadays it looks as if it were on the future but way back then it looked almost like a rural town in the midst of nowhere
Bruce Pavitt Matt Cameron Eddie Veddee Kim Thayil Hiro Yamamoto came to Seattle before it was cool
@@OGGOAT23 and what they did there brought more
@@OGGOAT23 Yup. Bruce, Kim and Hiro are from Park Forest Illinois which is like 2 towns away from me. Kim’s mom was a teacher in this area also. A friend of mine also met his mother at a record store in the area back in the 90s.
The very word GRUNGE makes me cringe. It was and IS some of the best music. Alice in chains IS in my opinion the best and most underrated band to rise out of the Seattle scene. THANK YOU LAYNE, CHRIS,ANDREW AND KURT FOR THE GIFT YOU GAVE US!
120 minutes. I forgot about that show. It was incredible. I was in college when cobain passed and our whole campus of 20k students felt like we had lost our idol. Still hurts. Rock on 🤘🏻
Alice was metal more than grunge.
Grunge isn’t a sound, it was a movement. And also real grunge IS metal. Obviously AiC is pretty damn metal, Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger is metal, 4th of July is Sludge as fuck. Nirvana’s Bleach was basically half pretty sludgy metal, half punk. Also Melvins are metal as fuck. Pearl Jam were the main guys that weren’t metal at all, and that’s also probably why they were some of the most popular, because their stuff was a bit more sonically accessible for the average audience.
When the guys who beat up the grunge kids started being grunge, that's when it was over.
In Patrick voice:
Everyone died the end
Pretty much bro
Ooof
6:31 Damn, the RCKNDY. That's where I saw my first punk show with Lagwagon and Guttermouth.
I was a metalhead/punk teen in Olympia back then and I can say with some degree of authority that you absolutely nailed this one.
💯🎯
The video I've been (not so) patiently waiting for 🤘 also AIC stan for life
MTV playing nothing but Top 40 pop and hip hop is what killed Grunge.
Right on Snohimish. I am from Oak Harbor, and graduated HS in 1988. Went to college in Ellensburg, WA. What a great time to be in and around Seattle.
Alice In Chains was a metal band and still is. Their geographical location shouldn’t change that. Also I love these bands. Also in 1990 and 1991 both Megadeth and Metallica released their best selling albums so metal, good metal, was still there.
We got the albums like 2 or 3 years late in the middle East and it was so taboo to even listen to this back then here. But at least we could find the cassettes. God I feel old.
Headbangers ball used to play alice in chains, man in the box, pearl jam, alive and soundgarden, outshined.
Grunge was killed by the monetization of grunge, full stop. The culture grew out of a DIY ethic where the bands were doing what they wanted, but as the SubPop promotion machine and the move of major labels in to 90's alternative were happening, it ratcheted tension in the scene. I was a music director at a college radio station at the time and Smells Like Teen Spirit caused a major identity crisis. We knew that it was still out music, but as it was pushed further into the mainstream and everyone tried to sound 'grungy', where is the line. I think this is a major reason that bands were so interested in promoting their influences and other bands they loved. The media machine didn't look for good or genuine, only marketable. Bands saw the bad bands like Candlebox and their ilk that were being pulled along on their coattails and genuinely hated it. That whole media frenzy to pick the bones of the mid 80's to 90's Seattle scene drove the good actors away and left shills, cynics, and those that managed to escape and find somewhere else to do their thing.
Grunge had to die so limp bizkit could rise to all time great status
Yes. Yes.
Let the hate flow through you…
@@Ungrievable good young sky walker... good... do it for the nookie
We killed the grunge for the nookie lmao
😂😂😂😂
STP were copycats. Mark Arm: "What most people were talking about was a handful of bands that started in Seattle, and then maybe afterwards there were sort of copycat bands around the world - Bush in the UK, Stone Temple Pilots in California, and Silverchair in Australia."
I've never commented on any TH-cam videos, but I loved this one. Your videos are both informative and interesting. Also entertaining (if you're a bit nerdy like me I suppose) Thank you for your hard work, it's appreciated here.
Thank you!
Thanks for playing that Ninja 🥷 Turtles 🐢 clip Finn! 🖕🏻😂
If you weren't from Seattle, grunge lasted a little longer, I guess. Alice in Chains had some traction before Nirvana with Man in the Box. I remember seeing them open for Van Halen in September 1991. You're right about the music of 1990 being very weak.
I remember people saying how they like Pearl Jam's new song when listening to STP's first single.
I wasn’t a kid when Nevermind hit. I was a mid-twenty something, going to clubs and bars, right in the middle of all this. I realize the commercialization of what Company’s thought “grunge” was all about was ironic, But in the music and Clubb seen it wasn’t dying. What started killing it was the slow progressive deaths of the people that were essentially leading the cause. Kurt dying, Shannon Hoon, and the disassociation from his band when Layne could not handle his addiction anymore, Left the door open for the genre to slowly fade. I still remember when Siamese dream came out and I was bouncing a club in downtown St. Louis, and when the band would play ANYTHING from that album the crowd would go completely nuts. We had crowd surfers and stage divers in a little basement bar, I’m sure we’ll beyond capacity, but it was an absolutely awesome time. I feel that down in the trenches like that, grunge was still strong until the music faded away. No one cared about the commercialization or any of that stuff in that environment. We just wanted to have fun and listen to good music. It wasn’t over at that point, and the music still meant a lot to those of us that were stuck in a melancholy and depressed state of mind.
I remember thinking it was the beginning of the end, the day I learned that Kurt killed himself; I knew it would start to fade away. I could not have been a bigger fan and grunge is mostly what I listen to still to this day
People always say Grunge killed Glam Metal, but the way I saw it Grunge was connected to Glam. If you listen to Mother Love Bone's album or the early Alice In Chains you can clearly hear glam influences. I was a Thrash Metal guy back in the day but I also loved some Glam Metal bands like Ratt or Dokken who had just awesome guitar solos and I always loved the euphoric 80s vibe of Glam Metal. The thing in the early 90s was that the scene got over saturated and I do admit at that point I was a bit sick of those bands taking most of the playtime of shows like Headbanger's ball. On the other hand I did appreciete some Grunge. Honestly I thought back in the day that Nirvana wasn't even Grunge. I believe Kurt said they were kind of Alternative Rock, but I was surprised just recently when I saw his early interview from before Nevermind era and he said they were Grunge Rock so whatever. I liked Soundgarden's Bad Motor Finger because of the vocals. I liked Temple of The Doga's album and I liked all albums from Alice in Chains. I also listened to Nirvana. I liked MadSeason and some other stuff, but I wasn't like super into it. I do think that the music that happened in that 1990 - 1995 era was special and really cool.
"grunge" literally got its name from Rolling Stone calling Kris Novoselic in the morning waking him up asking him to describe his genre of music. As he was wearing day old clothes and felt dirty he said "Grunge". They asked him about the Grunge fashjion and he literally just started talking about stuff in hi room. It was just what regular guys were wearing then in Washington,
Rolling Stone had a whole article about the "Grunge Scene" basically off a joke by Novoselic.
There was the post-punk scene in Seattle, but generally there were lots of diverse rock genres at the time that were out of the mainstream rebelling against Hair metal that incorporated punk influences without really being a punk sub-genre, and the phenomenon of Nirvana and "Grunge" which was marketed as a return to rock's roots after the Hair Metal/excess/sex drugs rock/deacdence thing was already becoming passe.
Of course there was plenty of alternative music around the country, it just wasn't getting much play on MTV.
It was true there was a phenomenon where bands who had moved to LA to find success were moving to Seattle, and arguably Kurt's hatred of fame, the lfestyle it demanded, and his legacy as far as being surronded by this and pereptuating it was a major cause of his sucide, but he had always been a guy who struggled with chronic pain, depression, and addiction.
"What actually killed grunge? But first, I wanna mention my merch..." pretty much nailed it.
Ha. Perfect.
You Tube Generation.
I'm sure the Irony is lost on Mr. Presenter.
hes gotta be joking right? lol
Lol grunge killed itself. But this comment was fucking hilarious 🤣
I once heard someone say "Watching Alice in Chains unplugged was like watching someone sing at their own funeral.", and that hit hard.
Still one of the best live albums of all time.
that's a great way to put it. same for Nirvana Unplugged, it was like, less than six months before he was dead. those videos were still in rotation.
horrible.
that’s some heavy truth
Agreed - but that's my favorite album of all time.
Even with Layne's goof ups, that performance was a deeply emotional experience.
In my opinion, the best unplugged along with Nirvana and Eric Clapton
I still think Layne has one of the all time greatest voices in all of music. Not just rock.
Layne was one of a kind.
Possibly the greatest in my opinion
Agreed
He had a unique voice.
Cornell had a incredible voice,but Layne low range was spine chilling.
I find myself often in the position of “old guy trying to explain the impact of grunge on EVERY FUCKING THING” to kids. Now, I can just direct them to this video.
In 8th grade I was a loser than grunge became popular and everything changed. Funny thing I never liked Nirvana much but I often say Nirvana changed my life even though I was never a fan. Skating, hardcore, being dirty became cool and I was ahead the curve. I went from weird kid to kid that knows all the weird music and people wanted to know where I got all my skate company clothes and band shirts. The early 90s were nuts
Dude, totally gonna to the exact same thing, thanks for pointing it out.
^^ this old guy used to play Final Fantasy with his friends on Nintendo ("NES classic" that is) while listening to either Vanilla Ice or Nitzer Ebb (we were also big fans of Nirvana and 120 minutes). Memories are clear as day. Turned 13 in 1990.
We were at Lollapalooza 92 and 93. Interesting side note on the 1992. If you are familiar with the band Front 242 (we as teens were very into the industrial scene), Layne Staley came on stage during "Religion" and sang with them. It was awesome.
"Crazy how old this looks now, feels like the 90's was ten years ago"
My brain: it was 30 years ago
😳
Yup
Lies it was yesterday!
@ippos_khloros Damn, I've never even thought of that. Crazy,!
I'm now boring kids with stories of how awesome the early 90's were the way my parents' generation bored me with stories about how awesome the late 60's were.
Achievement unlocked!
@@robwalsh9843 HAHAHA yeah. I find myself doing that too. Only, my kids realize how everything sucks now. Music, movies, shows, etc. And if you notice, there's a flock of teens listening to 90s music more than modern. So, I think that speaks volumes over our parents music. Of course The Doors, Beatles, Violent Femmes, Zeppelin and all the others I'm forgetting...still rock. Sorry for the ramble.
"Hey Butthead, where's Seattle?"
"Eh huh huh huh, it's a place where stuff is like, really cool"
“Who do you you think would win in a fight? Plantman or Spoonman?”
“Uhhhh I think Spoonman would win, cause he’s like, a bum, uhuhuhuh.”
So very far away from where I am?
Seattle hasn’t been cool for a looong time. From what I remember it’s kind of a shithole now. An expensive, corporate run, trash filled shit hole.
Beavis: "Hey isn't seattle in Washington?" Butthead: "Yeah" beavis: "cuz I was thinking after this we can go see hole" butthead: "hole huhuhuh"
Nuhvarna rules
These days, when a celebrity dies, kids just photoshop them onto a picture of bright sunny clouds.
They did that for Scott weiland and Chester Bennington. Both I'm a huge fan off
Lol that’s some true boomer perspective…look at the reaction to Lil Peep’s death
@@bgmzy Who?
Can't believe he liked this comment
Always has amazed me how short a time the cycle was for grunge was, considering how influential it was and has been to this day.
The grunge era was, pretty much, completely synced to when I was in college (92-96) and it was great, while it lasted. The mortality rate of rock frontmen was staggering at that time.
Energy like that ,by it's nature, burns out faster than average. The Seattle musical influence is still very relevant. Lads now are interested in that era from a music standpoint. That whole scene epitomizes "Burning the candle at both ends, I burns so bright. But does it have enough to make it through the night?"
Big music labels can't make money from kids who dress in jeans and ratty old flannel. Moreover, the oligsrch's can't have kids hearing harrowing songs about the evils we face. They need us listening to messages that degenerate society, leading kids into gangs, drugs, violence, and risky sex.
Look at the Beatles. Still the most influential band ever but they weren’t even together for a decade since they landed in the us.
yeah he's wrong.grunge was alive and kicking in 94. superunkown, vitalogy, purple. the death knell was actually 96. or maybe 95 after alice in chains self-titled
Grunge was an effort to bring back the feeling and passion of 70s rock. What we got instead was something much grittier and darker
It was essentially a blend of heavy 60's/70's rock with punk, post-punk and art rock elements. Soundgarden were frequently compared to Black Sabbath, for example.
@@robwalsh9843 I thought AIC sound more like Sabbath the Soundgarden
An extension of the hippie-movement; swap out LSD with heroine.
Grunge started to feel kind of phony after a while, Steve Albini said as much. It's that kind of movement that could only happen in a decade like the 90s where not much of anything happened, after the 2000s though I just can't take all that angsty whining seriously anymore. Nu Metal at least was more interesting through it's mix of hip-hop and use of sampling in many of its bands.
@@jadedheartsz Grunge felt phony when all the wannabes came into the fold, that's something that everyone agrees upon, including grunge bands themselves. Also, a lot of nu metal was very whiny and way too many bands were being really unoriginal and borrowing everything from the Korn/Ross Robinson playbook.
Nevermind actually knocked MJ's Dangerous album off the top of the charts when it came out. I think that perfectly highlights how impactful and important that album was.
Dangerous is a work of art. 10 million spentvto create. The album cover is also a work of art. Michael was a musical genius, his sense of rhythm was impeccable. Nice guy too.
True. Then again I was around for Fear Innoculum pushing Lover off of #1.
As you can expect, one finished 110 places behind the other in the year end chart...
Gauging the commercial success or cultural impact of an album is surprisingly hard, and can't be done based on any one chart metric.
and what album knocked Nevermind off the charts? ^
sure did
But it was alread out for weeks tho. Still impressive
Remember when the New York Times contacted Sub Pop to do an article about grunge slang and Sub Pop supplied them with a completely made-up list of grunge slang terms? Trolling before there was trolling!
Megan Jasper
Was just thinking this...lol i remember that.... tripping the flippity flop
"Hair metal was instantly irrelevant."
Thank you, Nirvana, we are in your debt.
@@Ungrievable I don't think one needs to be a snob to think hair metal is naff. LOL
Grunge was hair metal
@@GBTWC Glam was Grunge Metal
Word.
Hair Metal/ LA Glam might be the only sub genre of rock n roll that I hate all the way through. Hell even a few National Socialist hardcore songs have catchy riffs despite them being garbage.
Hair metal is just watered down blues rock made in a paint by numbers fashion.
You're 100% correct about the artists using their platform to promote their influences, their peers & the stuff they were into. Krist Novoselic took every opportunity to mention Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Melvins, Soundgarden etc during interviews. Everyone was so supportive of each other.
It's one of the best parts of Nirvana IMO. There is a list somewhere of Kurt Cobains top 50 albums, most of it pretty obscure and most of it really good. Stuff like the Vaselines and the Pastels are my favourites. Just kinds weird off kilter Scottish indie pop.
The “what killed (blank) genre?” And “how did (blank band) get so big?” series’s are my absolute favorite from you Finn! Keep up the good work, productivity is off the charts lately! 💪🏼
Same 🤙
I was 16 yrs old when Nirvana blew up and I can say that everything changed literally overnight. In jr. High I was really into hair metal but by the time I went into high school I, and everyone around me were bored and stuck in a rut with the music out there. When grunge came out we not only dressed different, we thought and felt differently. We felt like we were finally being heard through this music. Before this, rock stars and their lifestyles felt unattainable and outrageous. At least to our adolescent selves these guys felt authentic and real. Mainstream killed so much of that amazing and stripped down feel. Trying to make something that was so anti- everything become cool and the way to be. We wanted this colossal wave to be for us, to be our own; not for the media and mainstream to try and latch on to it like a parasite. But they didn’t kill grunge, Kurt died and no one wanted to go on with it. I still can feel what I felt on that day he died.
Nutshell is one song that really gets me when I listen to it now. That song is basic Layne Staley crying for help and it's so sad that he never got any
It's even more sad that his friends and family did try to help him, but in his last years he withdrew and did not accept help from anyone, even his bandmates.
@@nosyhobbit I don't get why anyone is allowed to refuse help that way. There was absolute proof he had a problem. There should've been some way to banish him to some rehab clinic on an otherwise deserted island from he'd not bee allowed to leave until proven clean for a few years at least. Tough love, but he'd be alive.
@@tempest411 it would have been nice. At the end of the day though, you cannot take away another person's free will. The person has to be willing to accept help.
@@nosyhobbit At some point they are no longer able to make valid decisions concerning their well being. If you're even a little buzzed you are not considered qualified to drive a car safely, so it's reasonable that a drug addict is not qualified to conduct their own affairs in life.
He got plenty of help, a lot of rehabs, therapies etc. He was just one of thoes hopeless cases: nothing was working for him or he wasn’t working on his self enough. yes, going clean demands work from addict.
You look exactly like Travis Barker and nothing like Travis Barker all at the same time.
...and a little like Travis Barker, too.
I just _love_ the story that Kurt Cobain's mother tells, of the very 1st time she heard their album 'Nevermind' sitting in her living room. She asked the boys if they were _really, truly_ ready for what was about to happen to them? She _knew_ it was amazing & unlike anything she'd ever heard before & that this was gonna be IT for them. This was gonna make them all _huge,_ rock stars... whether they liked it or not.
The key word here is STORY.
@@johnaaron37 Hey, gobble up that positivity wherever & whenever you can get it. Do you not know this is the internet?🤣🤣
@Digitalhunny given how she treated Kurt during his teen years make me more inclined to believe that she didn't really give a shit about his music and especially Nevermind AT ALL. After Kurt died, there was a sense of 'Oh, we knew he was a rockstar from the start, we knew he would be successful' that kind of stuff. I was like, nah bitch, you used him and his sister as pawns in your divorce, don't try to act like you were with him all this time
To me, grunge was the last time that rock music took over the world (in the UK would be britpop). After 1997, rock became a really weird time in my opinion and rap, R&B, pop started to takeover rock.
Emo definitely was the last though ending in the late 2000s rock hasnt been mainstream since
💯
@Call Me, BLEGH Me, If You Wanna Reach Me facts.
The last of rock music being a big thing was that last big wave of scenecore music like bmth and stuff, like big warped tour bands. About after 2015 that wave started dying down and rock wasn't as heard of at all since then til recent lol. But in underground terms, the underground is still alive and never died so theres that ofc
@Call Me, BLEGH Me, If You Wanna Reach Me I think you probably know what people mean when they say "emo", there's no need to be pedantic. I am aware of "real emo" but when I say "emo" to a normie they know I mean MCR and Fall Out Boy, even though all those bands are just pop-punk.
Jane’s Addiction were ahead of the curve for an eighties band as were Pixies and Sonic Youth. Although none of these were from Seattle I feel grunge would have been very different without them.
I agree. Kurt definitely plugged Sonic Youth a few times as a band he looked up to, that was how I first listened to them, I think they toured together at one point too. Definitely Sonic Youth and Jane's Addiction were super important at that time because they were doing some of the more weird and arty stuff in the alternative scene.
@@Christovsk Kurt loved JA and the Pixies too, those three laid the groundwork IMO x
yess totally
Never forget the Buthole Surfers and the song Pepper doesn't count. Electric Larry Land is a good album if you take out that song and everything before that is drug fueled gold.
@@ronaldowens5025 Butthole Surfers as a band were absolutely ahead of the curve and an influence on both Nirvana and Jane’s Addiction but the song Pepper was from 1996.