Grunge Movement Analysis

Introduction "In the past six years, Seattle has gone from a small but vibrant music scene to a rock mecca recently profiled by Time, Entertainment Weekly, and USA Today.” This quote in Rolling Stone’s “Grunge City” article from 1992 speaks of the rise of the grunge sub-culture (Borgman 1993). Born of post-punk, post-hippie, and heavy metal, grunge is a term used to describe a specific moment in music, self-expression, and fashion of the mid-1980’s. This movement, similar to many others in the past, gave a voice to a lost generation of youth, yet unlike those it’s roots were drawn from members of the grunge movement did not necessarily share a common goal, such as how the punks had anarchy and rebellion and the hippies had peace (Price 2005).

This unique new “grunge” sound was a mix of high energy 1970’s heavy metal (Hunter 2013), old-fashioned rock and roll, and punk combined with angst filled lyrics that really ‘spoke’ to it’s large youth following (Borgman 1993). The movements early bands and musicians accredited a variety of punk bands as their greatest influences, even though grunge ended up holding punk philosophies to be largely invaluable (Brenner). Members of the movement were not referred to by others or by themselves as “grungers” and it’s characterization as a self-conscious subculture has been debated over time. Much unlike other movements grunge was not driven in any sense by politics or political opinions, it was driven by music and the self expression of sadness, disconnect, and an unsatisfied craving for freedom (Price 2005). This focus on self-expression brought forth the grunge aesthetic and cheap, durable, timeless “non-fashion’ that came to be associated with the movement

Many of the most prominent bands within the movement were all produced at the same place, the independent Seattle based record label Sub Pop, who were even partly responsible for the garage-basement like feel of the band’s sound (Price 2005). Some of the most note-worthy bands to be inexpensively recorded here include Green River, Soundgarden, The Melvins, and Nirvana, the band most closely associated with the grunge subculture (Price 2005). Other bands that reflected the genres sound are Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, and Alice in Chains (Brenner). The whole grunge aesthetic differed from that of other forms of rock music mainly because it was all very low maintenance, grunge musicians were renowned for their unkempt hair, laid back style, and rejection of theatrics (“Grunge”). In fact many of these musicians and bands refused the complex and costly concert presentations that included light shows and pyrotechnics preferred in other genres, instead opting for an inconsistent live sound and performances where they would just simply “rock out”, never aiming to be entertainers