Grunge, a word synonymous with dirt or grime, became a descriptor of a new music genre, a genre that shaped the youth culture of the 1990s and a genre that’s still relevant some 30 years later, to this day.
Grunge wasn’t pretty or glamourous, but grunge was real. No other genres in the brief history of music have had as much influence as grunge had on its contemporary and the subsequent generations.
Drawing elements from the nihilism of punk rock and the head-banging gospel of heavy metal, grunge spoke and is still speaking to a particular generation of youth who identify with lyrics about isolation, anger, and death.
What started in Seattle as some local musicians trying to find their own unique sound soon crossed its borders and became a way of life all over the world. The youth of Bangladesh embraced it too; one of the most prominent bands of Bangla band music, Black, further promoted it in Bangladesh in their own way.
Jon Kabir, one of the vocalists of Black, now the vocalist of another grunge-influenced band, Indalo, has heavily been influenced by grunge music throughout his musical journey.
Mostly remaining within the borders of Seattle throughout the mid to late 1980s, grunge exploded onto the international music scene in the fall of 1991 with the release of American Rock band Nirvana’s Nevermind, an album that changed the music history forever.
Nevermind is a document that will transcend lifetimes. A hauntingly beautiful portrayal of unspoken angst added to that the brilliant songwriting knack of the enigmatic front-man Kurt Cobain.
Nevermind suddenly gave voice to a bored and anguished youth; ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ ‘Lithium,’ ‘Come as You Are’ - all became anthems.
Another seminal record of that fall was Badmotorfinger, the third album by one of the pioneers of the grunge movement, and another American Rock band, Soundgarden, fronted by one of the most powerful and instantly recognisable voices in the history of rock music, Chris Cornell.
As Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam albums and performances infiltrated radio, television, and concert halls, suddenly grunge was everywhere.
Pulak Goswami, a 4th-year student in Anthropology from the University of Dhaka has been a grunge fan for quite some time now. Grunge’s lyrical representation of youth’s negative emotions and ideologies fascinated him the most.
“Before grunge emerged, there weren’t many songs that expressed the negative emotions of the youth. As the songs were telling the youth’s own stories, in some of the rock’s best ever voices, added to that the cool distorted guitar works and heavy drumming, the youth nicely embraced grunge and is still doing so to this day.”
At a time when the music industry was full of musicians singing about sex, drugs, and the devil, grunge artists were singing about failure, loneliness, suicide, negative feelings in general and suddenly people could relate more about their everyday humane feelings through music.
A third-year student of Economics from the University of Dhaka, Mansurul Kafi, shares, “I’ve been listening to grunge since 8th grade, first starting with Nirvana, then slowly exploring Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam.”
“There’s this angst in the singers’ voice and the lyrics, resonating the voice of the troubled youth.”
“Grunge stands out from the other genres because I can easily relate to what the artists are singing about and add to that the heaviness of the music, a perfect blend,” Kafi points out the elements that attracts him towards grunge.
“It’s better to burn out than to fade away,” reads a suicide note by Nirvana front-man Kurt Cobain in 1994.
Layne Staley, Mike Starr, and Scott Weiland were just some of the others who couldn’t survive the dark scene that was grunge and the latest of them was Chris Cornell, arguably one of the best voices in the history of rock music.
Cornell was found dead in his hotel room on May 18th, 2017, just after finishing a Soundgarden concert.
The world, as much as in shock, realised that grunge artists were not superhuman. They had their own struggles, limitations, vulnerability, just like the neighbour next door.
Grunge’s popularity began to wane by the later parts of the 90s, with Kurt Cobain’s suicide, Soundgarden’s break up, Alice in Chains’s hibernation because of Layne Staley’s continuous struggles with drugs, eventually resulting in his death from a heroin overdose in 2002.
By the early 2000s, grunge was being dominated by the more radio-friendly sub-genre of its own, post-grunge.
Grunge music is timeless, it will always be popular whether it’s playing on an I-Pod, radio, in a movie, or by some cover band at a bar.
Grunge has helped a generation learn a lot about self-expression and self-healing. Like Kurt Cobain said, “Thank you for the tragedy. I need it for my art.”
