One of the best instances is “Dollar Bill,” a highlight from 1992’s Sweet Oblivion. While others were caught up in trying to make the most noise, the Screaming Trees seemed only concerned with writing solid, straightforward songs. Part of what made the Screaming Trees so interesting as a grunge act was that they didn’t follow the status quo. Clocking in less than two minutes, the lead track from the band’s 1994 release, ¡Viva Zapata! (named in memory of Gits singer Mia Zapata), benefited from its brevity, quick-tempered vocals and churning guitar. In a music scene that suffered from hordes of doubt, depression and drug abuse, 7 Year Bitch’s “The Scratch” was the other side of the coin, showing an unbridled swagger and self-assuredness. The song, featuring distortion-soaked production and uncouth vocals, encompasses everything that the movement held dear. So, stunning tracks like “Swallow My Pride” were just a byproduct of all that talent and craft. That shouldn’t be a surprise, considering the band was composed of future members of Mudhoney and Pearl Jam. Green River is one of the first grunge bands to have success in Seattle’s burgeoning music scene in the late 1980s. Wood’s tragic overdose would leave a big gap to fill-one that would ultimately lay the foundation for one of grunge’s biggest mainstays. The band’s career would be short-lived, but “Crown of Thorns” is the perfect combo of Wood’s vocal showmanship and the musical strengths of guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament, who would go on to form Pearl Jam. Here are our favorites.īefore there was Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam, there was Andrew Wood and Mother Love Bone. And while many “essential” songs unfortunately got the ax, and some not-so-essential songs too, what follows is a varied and adept sampling of a movement that changed the course of rock music. But before grunge’s name was sullied and outdated, the movement changed the course of rock ’n’ roll, bringing to the fold tales of abuse and depression, bringing socially conscious issues to the pop culture table, perpetuated by the likes of MTV. Beyond that was the beginning of alternative rock and the exhaustive, redundant slog of bands that followed for the duration of the ’90s. While everybody-including the artists themselves-has their own definition of what constitutes grunge, for the sake of this list, we end grunge with Kurt Cobain’s death (with a few exceptions for stragglers in the year that followed). What follows is a list of the best songs from that era. It was a dark and dire time, and soon it was clear that the movement had nowhere to go but down.īut before the movement unraveled, it offered some mind-blowing music.

Pearl Jam was trying to hold it together, retreating from the spotlight as fast as they could Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots and hordes of others were battling horrid drug addictions and struggling for survival. Grunge had been building steadily in the late ’80s before exploding into the mainstream in the early ’90s, but in 1994, it was fading fast. 1 and confirmed that grunge was no longer an isolated genre but an international phenomenon, Kurt Cobain’s suicide shook the scene to its core. Shortly after Soundgarden’s Superunknown went to No. Twenty years ago, grunge had reached its peak.

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