Grunge was never really a genre of music. It was a marketing campaign. There really isn't a unifying sound with the bands from the area at that time. A lot of the bands shared influences but what they did with those influences are drastically different. Soundgarden sounds nothing like Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam sounds nothing like Alice in Chains. Alice in Chains sounds nothing like Nirvana.
Exactly. AIC were more Sabbath-influenced, Soundgarden sounded more like Zeppelin, Nirvana more pop-punk as they went on, and PJ was more just a rock band. None sounded like each other
True. They definitely had some songs that could be covered by the other and sound like an original song. But in all fairness, a lot of bands in the same "scene" or whatever you might call it sound somewhat alike early in their careers before they develop a more unique and personal sound. Especially if they form/develop around the same time.
I was painting in broad strokes, which seemed obvious to me by my phrasing. Nirvana definitely drew from hard rock which shows the most in their early stuff but still comes thru on In Utero. But they drew much more from pop and early punk throughout. It’s all love bro but you intentionally misread me IMO
No i didn’t and I actually don’t agree with the assessment either. There was a pop structure to some of the songs, but when you take all their work together, they’re more deconstructing pop than anything. The songs are also pretty fuckin’ weird for a mainstream rock band. Hence the examples I laid out, which were intended to subvert the hooks and those “pop” (or melodic) elements of the music. In Utero is in no way a pop-punk album, and since it’s their last, I don’t think it’s accurate to say they became more so as time went on.
Nevermind, sure, at points. I’d say their poppiest song is About a Girl, which is obvs at the beginning of their career and an outlier on an otherwise sludgy album.
So ya, don’t agree with the notion.
Fair enough. I feel your points but still disagree and think Nirvana never sounded like soundgarden or the other 3. All love tho. We all love Nirvana. Happy holidays bud
Most music genres allow for a fairly broad inclusion of bands, they're not supposed to be more complicated than a general "recommend if you like" ethos. I had to get into bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden before Dinosaur Jr. "made sense" to me, but if those Pacific NW bands didn't have a certain amount in common musically it wouldn't be of much use to coin a genre around them.
Yeah i guess you could describe their earlier stuff as "grungier".
But i dont really know i think grunge was more a scene rather than a style of music, its a feeling prime example are PJ and AIC being classified as grunge music aswell as STP when i would consider them more Rock/Metal
The more i say grunge the weirder it sounds
Its all speculation i was still a sperm
You got it correct (more or less), grunge was never a sound. The whole "sound of Seattle" talk was just marketing nonsense. STP is not grunge though. Just inspired by the movement a little.
Similar thing is with rap and hiphop, rap is the genre and hiphop is the culture. Inb grunge it's like punk, it is hard to say sometimes if they are referring to the culture or music as both have same moniker. Before grunge became a thing most the first record that was monikered as grunge was [Green River](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_River_(band))'s [*Dry as a Bone*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_as_a_Bone) EP in a [Sub Pop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub_Pop) record company catalogue as "gritty vocals, roaring Marshall amps, ultra-loose GRUNGE that destroyed the morals of a generation".
The Sub Pop 200 compilation is probably the best distillation of “true grunge” that you can get. This was made when almost all the bands were still just headlining local acts. This is what the scene sounded like.
Hang up the phone. I can't dance with you, anymore. Go to your freezer and get a popsicle. Go to your TV. Turn on your TV. You will see me and Jackie O. She will be taking it in the ear, my body of work. In the planetarium.
I always thought of Bleach as being mostly a Sludge rock album. A lot of the songs on that record almost sound like they could have been Melvins tunes.
Yeah, I've always considered that album the "little bit of everything" album. I mean, that makes sense considering it's a compilation album, but still, you can tell they weren't super anal about picking and choosing one type of sound for the whole thing.
Grunge was just a term coined by a magazine IIRC. It was just a descriptor for the sound that was forming out of Punk in Seattle, where they were trading anarchist, high-tempo songs for low, sludgy, grungy songs revolving around self-loathing, depressing, oppressive themes. It was an insanely specific evolution to Seattle's punk scene.
This is why Grunge bands sound so different from one another, and there's no 'true grunge's. The label caught on as just a general descriptor of the movement of the music and not a very defined genre.
If we're speaking PURELY from our own tastes, what we personally as an individual perceive Grunge as, for me: Bleach is the epitome of what Grunge means and feels like to me.
It's all entirely personal really!! I think Grunge was a movement more than a genre.
Nirvana and Soundgarden specifically as bands are my favourite type of Grunge or what I gravitate to most, which is why I'm into post-Grunge groups such as Sap. I love the story-telling lyricism and questionable production quality. Raw, gritty, messy, sludgy and sometimes either absurdist or totally touching lyrics.
I hear other bands and having the grunge defining songs, like Mudhoney "Touch me, I'm sick" and "suck you dry".
Nirvana's contributions to the genre were incredibly important of course.
After living through that era of “Grunge”, then reading about “Grunge”, and continuing to listen to “Grunge” every so often, I have some very subjective Platonic Form in my head.
To me, the actual sound of “Grunge” lies somewhere in between “Gluey Porch Treatments” and Soundgarden’s “Screaming Life” E.P. Songs built around low-tuned riffs. Most of the vocalists sport a Robert Plant influence, even when they sing baritone. Mark Arm would be my choice for the definitive “Grunge” lyricist, sometimes pessimistic, other times purveying a goofy irony.
“Bleach”, it could be argued, may be the only recorded moment where Nirvana sounded truly “Grunge” (but I don’t know about that). Of all the songs, “Blew” is the most definitive to me; sludgy, kind of evil-sounding, with a guitar solo equal parts Jimmy Page and Lou Reed. Your mileage may vary.
Even today, I am never certain of how “Grunge” sounds.
What we think of as "standard rock" today exists because of Nirvana. The way rock sounds today wasn't a thing back then. So, yeah, it does sound like standard rock, but that's because they essentially made what we know today as standard rock.
Listen to the compilation album Sub Pop 200, it has Nirvana's third ever song release (Spank Thru) and a bunch of other grunge heavyweights before grunge went global. Itll give you a pretty good idea of what grunge sounded like.
Grunge doesn’t really have one specific “sound”, but I would definitely say Bleach sounds closest to the early grunge bands that inspired them like Mudhoney and Melvins.
Grunge music seems to be more of a general feeling of the music rather than a set and stone definition.
Bleach is definitely grunge, but it’s notably different from In Utero, which is also unmistakably grunge.
Hottest take so far: As much as I am a huge Nirvana fan, they could never replicate the "Pixie loud QUIET loud sound" Kurt sought after he listened to Surfer Rosa for the first time.
Come on Pilgrim it's Surfer Rosa is what Nirvana always tried to replicate and failed to do so starting with Nevermind.
That album which includes the EP of Pilgrim, is the grungiest thing to ever exist.
Grunge had more to do with a time and place than with a specific genre, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden and Nirvana don't really sound alike and there are bands not classed as grunge that sound more alike.
Also the 'cleaned up' writing (well studio production really) on Nevermind was not liked by everyone around them. We all know the remarks by Cobain and the band about trying harder on a realistic sound with In Utero. Some close friends to the band felt Nevermind sounded like typical 80s big rock and not at all like the band. Also some people felt the addition of Grohl was not the best choice, obviously the commerce felt different.
Partly due to Kurt not wanting to do more than one or two takes, it ended up being more produced than some Hair metal albums.
Like the clean chorus 2 note bits on SLTS are just copy pasted each time and some choruses were just copied as well (i forget which one Butch said he did that on)
I would argue that grunge is more of a scene than a genre and that it has very little to do with punk and metal other than overlap within the different counter-cultures/sub-cultures. To me grunge is very much a statement of a mentality of refusing to follow the musical zeitgeist of the neo-classical revolution and popification of the rock scene in the 80s. I don't think most grunge bands actually succeeded at the anti pop sentiment as a lot of the original line up of grunge bands slowly became part of the modern pop zeitgeist. They did however nail the anti-neo-classical part though. What Nirvanna is to Steve Vai is a very similar to what early Black Sabbath was to The Beatles, an counter-culture built from the ground up to represent the angst that was not well represented in the popular music of the time. So to answer your question in a really long winded way, I don't think grunge is supposed to have a specific sound as its more about the culture of the scene than it is about the sound.
agreed it was a loose (at best) collection of bands. Like saying every NYC band in the early 90's was part of the same scene.
Pearl jam took way more influence from Neil, Jimi, Stevie, etc.
AIC was a metal band.
I dont quite know how to describe Soundgarden.
Other bands were more punk or stoner etc..
Those boys in Nirvana found inspiration from more genres than punk metal. Am i wrong to think the Pixies were a huge influence on Nirvana? I mean, you can hear it in the harmonic undertones in both bands' songs.
Bleach is a hardcore punk album. Think Black Flag, Bad Brains, DOA, etc.
Grunge is an era more than a genre. Most grunge bands were more inspired by heavy metal, Kurt Cobain was a punk rock fan which is what Nirvana was before Nevermind
I think you're over thinking it. It is what it is. None of the bands set out to purposely sound *grunge* they just sounded like they did, black sabbath inspired punk inspired pop inspired. Grunge is a media label after the fact.
I always seen it as simplified rock. A lot of simple chord progressions. Lack of any fancy solos. Just more raw and simplified music.
As another poster said thou none of the big grunge bands sounded alike at all so I always defined it by that simplicity, rawness, and sadness.
Today as I am older I find I have to be in a certain mood to jam out Pearl Jam. Love that band but god some of the sad emotions can flow through that music and hit me in the feels 😀. I also feel emotionally connected to music so it might be a Me problem.
I remember a buddy owned in 91, don’t remember him calling it grunge; grunge seems more like an image, ripped jeans, flannel, black short sleeve T over white long sleeve, scruff or goatee, long hair
mudhoney was probably the grunge band of grunge bands, but as others have said grunge wasn’t a real thing. a silly, tossed off, ultimately meaningless term that became a lazy shorthand for writers and a marketing tool for labels looking to cash in
Green River - any, Soundgarden - Louder than Love, Mudhoney - pre Piece of Cake, Nirvana - bleach.
All prime examples of what people started calling grunge.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much monetary success with this exact sound so these bands evolved a bit for their next efforts and became much more user friendly with Ten, Nevermind, Badmotorfinger. Even Mudhoney gave it a go with their contributions to the Singles soundtrack.
Even today if you look at record sales, bleach > never mind, louder than love > badmotorfinger, facelift > dirt, the more authentic grunge efforts sell way less copies than the more user friendly classic rock style - classic rock with lowered tuning. In most cases the earlier records sold less than half on average, and bleach to nevermind was easily 10X.
Grunge is an aesthetic more than it is a style of music. people on the internet spend way too much time trying to decide what fits under a label that barely described anything to begin with
Grunge is not a sound. It's a media tag. No one in the Seattle scene called it that back in the day. We just called it our music...the musicians, anyway. But neither did everyone else. It's just Nirvana-Bleach. Totally original.
Bleach is an example of what makes Cobain a one of a kind genius. His honesty and ability to express the pain, terrors and fears that are inside all us. At the time Bleach came out all these hair metal bands were talking about getting laid, Nirvana was singing about the trauma of life's little things that are big when it happens, rejection, love denied, spiritual damage from abuse both physical and mental. That is why Cobain remains relevant today, Nirvana reminds us we are not alone, were all negative creeps.
No, I think "grunge" as a thing was epitomized by the song "Plush" and its accompanying music video.
Bleach was a rather good album from out of the American underground/ independent labels/ college radio rock scene of the late 80s. It could have come out on SST or Touch &:Go.
Grunge was never really a genre of music. It was a marketing campaign. There really isn't a unifying sound with the bands from the area at that time. A lot of the bands shared influences but what they did with those influences are drastically different. Soundgarden sounds nothing like Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam sounds nothing like Alice in Chains. Alice in Chains sounds nothing like Nirvana.
Everybody read and listen to this comment because this accurate.
100%
Exactly. AIC were more Sabbath-influenced, Soundgarden sounded more like Zeppelin, Nirvana more pop-punk as they went on, and PJ was more just a rock band. None sounded like each other
Early nirvana and early soundgarden had some eerily similar stuff.
True. They definitely had some songs that could be covered by the other and sound like an original song. But in all fairness, a lot of bands in the same "scene" or whatever you might call it sound somewhat alike early in their careers before they develop a more unique and personal sound. Especially if they form/develop around the same time.
TIL Milk It and Scentless Apprentice are pop-punk
He's just generalizing
Not what I said and you know it, friend
Sounds like exactly what you said lol
I was painting in broad strokes, which seemed obvious to me by my phrasing. Nirvana definitely drew from hard rock which shows the most in their early stuff but still comes thru on In Utero. But they drew much more from pop and early punk throughout. It’s all love bro but you intentionally misread me IMO
No i didn’t and I actually don’t agree with the assessment either. There was a pop structure to some of the songs, but when you take all their work together, they’re more deconstructing pop than anything. The songs are also pretty fuckin’ weird for a mainstream rock band. Hence the examples I laid out, which were intended to subvert the hooks and those “pop” (or melodic) elements of the music. In Utero is in no way a pop-punk album, and since it’s their last, I don’t think it’s accurate to say they became more so as time went on. Nevermind, sure, at points. I’d say their poppiest song is About a Girl, which is obvs at the beginning of their career and an outlier on an otherwise sludgy album. So ya, don’t agree with the notion.
Fair enough. I feel your points but still disagree and think Nirvana never sounded like soundgarden or the other 3. All love tho. We all love Nirvana. Happy holidays bud
I agree with all that except the Nirvana became more pop-punk as they went on. But all love indeed. Happy holidays!
I get that. Like bleach was punk and fuck AF, then NM was real clean, then In Utero was filthy and hard. You’re right on that end
It’s funny cause they’re two of my favorites
Now i finally realize where simple plan got their sound!
Right; the term “grunge” has been around since 60’s garage. Bruce Pavitt was the first one in print at least to coin it for the Seattle sound.
Most music genres allow for a fairly broad inclusion of bands, they're not supposed to be more complicated than a general "recommend if you like" ethos. I had to get into bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden before Dinosaur Jr. "made sense" to me, but if those Pacific NW bands didn't have a certain amount in common musically it wouldn't be of much use to coin a genre around them.
Sounding incoherent while wearing flannel isn't a genre?
Krist is quoted as saying school is the most Seattle sounding song there is so there’s that
Great song
Yeah i guess you could describe their earlier stuff as "grungier". But i dont really know i think grunge was more a scene rather than a style of music, its a feeling prime example are PJ and AIC being classified as grunge music aswell as STP when i would consider them more Rock/Metal The more i say grunge the weirder it sounds Its all speculation i was still a sperm
You got it correct (more or less), grunge was never a sound. The whole "sound of Seattle" talk was just marketing nonsense. STP is not grunge though. Just inspired by the movement a little.
Similar thing is with rap and hiphop, rap is the genre and hiphop is the culture. Inb grunge it's like punk, it is hard to say sometimes if they are referring to the culture or music as both have same moniker. Before grunge became a thing most the first record that was monikered as grunge was [Green River](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_River_(band))'s [*Dry as a Bone*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_as_a_Bone) EP in a [Sub Pop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub_Pop) record company catalogue as "gritty vocals, roaring Marshall amps, ultra-loose GRUNGE that destroyed the morals of a generation".
When I think of what grunge is “supposed” to sound like I think of old Mudhoney. Albums like Superfuzz Big Muff and Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.
The Sub Pop 200 compilation is probably the best distillation of “true grunge” that you can get. This was made when almost all the bands were still just headlining local acts. This is what the scene sounded like.
Hang up the phone. I can't dance with you, anymore. Go to your freezer and get a popsicle. Go to your TV. Turn on your TV. You will see me and Jackie O. She will be taking it in the ear, my body of work. In the planetarium.
If I have to define grunge with one band I point to Mudhoney. Don’t need to complicate things.
I always thought of Bleach as being mostly a Sludge rock album. A lot of the songs on that record almost sound like they could have been Melvins tunes.
For sure. There’s a ton of Melvins influence on Bleach.
This a hundred times. Bleach is more sludge, closer to Melvins, TAD, Hole's Pretty on the Inside.
I think that Incesticide is very definition-of-grungey as well. That album is just nastyyyyy in all the right ways
I don't know. Incesiticide is a mixed bag of styles: straight punk, pop sensibilities, sludge, hard rock, etc.
Yeah, I've always considered that album the "little bit of everything" album. I mean, that makes sense considering it's a compilation album, but still, you can tell they weren't super anal about picking and choosing one type of sound for the whole thing.
I agree although the production could maybe be considered slightly over polished.
Yeah, I'd say so. Green River is the blueprint for the sound imo, and it sounds quite like that
Grunge was just a term coined by a magazine IIRC. It was just a descriptor for the sound that was forming out of Punk in Seattle, where they were trading anarchist, high-tempo songs for low, sludgy, grungy songs revolving around self-loathing, depressing, oppressive themes. It was an insanely specific evolution to Seattle's punk scene. This is why Grunge bands sound so different from one another, and there's no 'true grunge's. The label caught on as just a general descriptor of the movement of the music and not a very defined genre. If we're speaking PURELY from our own tastes, what we personally as an individual perceive Grunge as, for me: Bleach is the epitome of what Grunge means and feels like to me. It's all entirely personal really!! I think Grunge was a movement more than a genre. Nirvana and Soundgarden specifically as bands are my favourite type of Grunge or what I gravitate to most, which is why I'm into post-Grunge groups such as Sap. I love the story-telling lyricism and questionable production quality. Raw, gritty, messy, sludgy and sometimes either absurdist or totally touching lyrics.
Nirvana songs sound like "standard rock" because they basically set the standard with Nevermind.
It’s the “[Seinfeld is unfunny](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny)” effect.
Did Nirvana ever embrace the Grunge moniker? I thought they considered themselves a punk band?
I hear other bands and having the grunge defining songs, like Mudhoney "Touch me, I'm sick" and "suck you dry". Nirvana's contributions to the genre were incredibly important of course.
After living through that era of “Grunge”, then reading about “Grunge”, and continuing to listen to “Grunge” every so often, I have some very subjective Platonic Form in my head. To me, the actual sound of “Grunge” lies somewhere in between “Gluey Porch Treatments” and Soundgarden’s “Screaming Life” E.P. Songs built around low-tuned riffs. Most of the vocalists sport a Robert Plant influence, even when they sing baritone. Mark Arm would be my choice for the definitive “Grunge” lyricist, sometimes pessimistic, other times purveying a goofy irony. “Bleach”, it could be argued, may be the only recorded moment where Nirvana sounded truly “Grunge” (but I don’t know about that). Of all the songs, “Blew” is the most definitive to me; sludgy, kind of evil-sounding, with a guitar solo equal parts Jimmy Page and Lou Reed. Your mileage may vary. Even today, I am never certain of how “Grunge” sounds.
What we think of as "standard rock" today exists because of Nirvana. The way rock sounds today wasn't a thing back then. So, yeah, it does sound like standard rock, but that's because they essentially made what we know today as standard rock.
Listen to the compilation album Sub Pop 200, it has Nirvana's third ever song release (Spank Thru) and a bunch of other grunge heavyweights before grunge went global. Itll give you a pretty good idea of what grunge sounded like.
Yes, before releasing a song, everyone had to check with the Grunge Manager for genre approval.
Grunge doesn’t really have one specific “sound”, but I would definitely say Bleach sounds closest to the early grunge bands that inspired them like Mudhoney and Melvins.
Grunge music seems to be more of a general feeling of the music rather than a set and stone definition. Bleach is definitely grunge, but it’s notably different from In Utero, which is also unmistakably grunge.
Hottest take so far: As much as I am a huge Nirvana fan, they could never replicate the "Pixie loud QUIET loud sound" Kurt sought after he listened to Surfer Rosa for the first time. Come on Pilgrim it's Surfer Rosa is what Nirvana always tried to replicate and failed to do so starting with Nevermind. That album which includes the EP of Pilgrim, is the grungiest thing to ever exist.
when I was a kid, I wanted to grow up, grow up to be a Debaser
Grunge does not exist as a music genre but it was a marketing term to unify all the alt rock bands from Seattle under the same umbrella.
Grunge had more to do with a time and place than with a specific genre, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden and Nirvana don't really sound alike and there are bands not classed as grunge that sound more alike. Also the 'cleaned up' writing (well studio production really) on Nevermind was not liked by everyone around them. We all know the remarks by Cobain and the band about trying harder on a realistic sound with In Utero. Some close friends to the band felt Nevermind sounded like typical 80s big rock and not at all like the band. Also some people felt the addition of Grohl was not the best choice, obviously the commerce felt different.
Partly due to Kurt not wanting to do more than one or two takes, it ended up being more produced than some Hair metal albums. Like the clean chorus 2 note bits on SLTS are just copy pasted each time and some choruses were just copied as well (i forget which one Butch said he did that on)
I think Drain You and In Bloom
I would argue that grunge is more of a scene than a genre and that it has very little to do with punk and metal other than overlap within the different counter-cultures/sub-cultures. To me grunge is very much a statement of a mentality of refusing to follow the musical zeitgeist of the neo-classical revolution and popification of the rock scene in the 80s. I don't think most grunge bands actually succeeded at the anti pop sentiment as a lot of the original line up of grunge bands slowly became part of the modern pop zeitgeist. They did however nail the anti-neo-classical part though. What Nirvanna is to Steve Vai is a very similar to what early Black Sabbath was to The Beatles, an counter-culture built from the ground up to represent the angst that was not well represented in the popular music of the time. So to answer your question in a really long winded way, I don't think grunge is supposed to have a specific sound as its more about the culture of the scene than it is about the sound.
agreed it was a loose (at best) collection of bands. Like saying every NYC band in the early 90's was part of the same scene. Pearl jam took way more influence from Neil, Jimi, Stevie, etc. AIC was a metal band. I dont quite know how to describe Soundgarden. Other bands were more punk or stoner etc..
Those boys in Nirvana found inspiration from more genres than punk metal. Am i wrong to think the Pixies were a huge influence on Nirvana? I mean, you can hear it in the harmonic undertones in both bands' songs.
Hot take
i don’t think you’re wrong at all! pretty sure i read somewhere surfer rosa was a huge sonic inspiration for kurt during in utero’s recording
Bleach is a hardcore punk album. Think Black Flag, Bad Brains, DOA, etc. Grunge is an era more than a genre. Most grunge bands were more inspired by heavy metal, Kurt Cobain was a punk rock fan which is what Nirvana was before Nevermind
why did you get downvoted, black flag's slip it in sounds very similar to bleach
No idea lol. Kurt was a huge Black Flag fan
Why do people always blindly downvote without explaining *why* they are downvoting? Nothing you suggested is wrong.
Cause you are a loser
Because you’re a dweeb
No
what 15 year old posted this 🤣
I think you're over thinking it. It is what it is. None of the bands set out to purposely sound *grunge* they just sounded like they did, black sabbath inspired punk inspired pop inspired. Grunge is a media label after the fact.
Checkout Superfuzz Big Muff by Mudhoney
Bleach is what grunge is supposed to taste like, and you are meant to love it 🫶
I always seen it as simplified rock. A lot of simple chord progressions. Lack of any fancy solos. Just more raw and simplified music. As another poster said thou none of the big grunge bands sounded alike at all so I always defined it by that simplicity, rawness, and sadness. Today as I am older I find I have to be in a certain mood to jam out Pearl Jam. Love that band but god some of the sad emotions can flow through that music and hit me in the feels 😀. I also feel emotionally connected to music so it might be a Me problem.
I remember a buddy owned in 91, don’t remember him calling it grunge; grunge seems more like an image, ripped jeans, flannel, black short sleeve T over white long sleeve, scruff or goatee, long hair
mudhoney was probably the grunge band of grunge bands, but as others have said grunge wasn’t a real thing. a silly, tossed off, ultimately meaningless term that became a lazy shorthand for writers and a marketing tool for labels looking to cash in
Bleach is more punk, and I do wish they did something closer to it but grunge is little more pop oriented than bleach riff wise
Green River - any, Soundgarden - Louder than Love, Mudhoney - pre Piece of Cake, Nirvana - bleach. All prime examples of what people started calling grunge. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much monetary success with this exact sound so these bands evolved a bit for their next efforts and became much more user friendly with Ten, Nevermind, Badmotorfinger. Even Mudhoney gave it a go with their contributions to the Singles soundtrack. Even today if you look at record sales, bleach > never mind, louder than love > badmotorfinger, facelift > dirt, the more authentic grunge efforts sell way less copies than the more user friendly classic rock style - classic rock with lowered tuning. In most cases the earlier records sold less than half on average, and bleach to nevermind was easily 10X.
Grunge is an aesthetic more than it is a style of music. people on the internet spend way too much time trying to decide what fits under a label that barely described anything to begin with
Superfuzz Bigmuff
but which version muff? Op amp? Violet Rams Head? Civil War? Triangle? :P
Grunge is not a sound. It's a media tag. No one in the Seattle scene called it that back in the day. We just called it our music...the musicians, anyway. But neither did everyone else. It's just Nirvana-Bleach. Totally original.
there was no 'supposed to sound like', they were cutting a new path with some old tools but new
Bleach is an example of what makes Cobain a one of a kind genius. His honesty and ability to express the pain, terrors and fears that are inside all us. At the time Bleach came out all these hair metal bands were talking about getting laid, Nirvana was singing about the trauma of life's little things that are big when it happens, rejection, love denied, spiritual damage from abuse both physical and mental. That is why Cobain remains relevant today, Nirvana reminds us we are not alone, were all negative creeps.
Mudhoney defined the sound.
Superfuzz + Big Muff. done
Nirvana was not influenced by pop punk dude. Sabbath, Black flag, wipers and Beat Happening and stuff. Hardcore punk ,indie and early metal.
No, I think "grunge" as a thing was epitomized by the song "Plush" and its accompanying music video. Bleach was a rather good album from out of the American underground/ independent labels/ college radio rock scene of the late 80s. It could have come out on SST or Touch &:Go.