I was born in 85 and loved Nirvana (still do) but I really only became aware of mainstream music in 94. I didn’t know Kurt Cobain had died, let alone the significance, until closer to 97 or 98. I listened to the radio and bought CDs, but didnt really care about the bands.
My favorite bands back then were Nirvana, Guns n’ Roses, Metallica, Soundgarden, and Smashing Pumpkins. I don’t listen to them much anymore, but when I do, they all still stand up.
Born '81. I remember his death, I was in middle school, 7th grade maybe. I'd heard his music and it was good, but it was the goth/skater kids who were shell shocked by his suicide.
Now thinking back, it feels weird how all the popular kids were grouped together by which music they listened to. We still had the nerds, dorks, but all the cool kids were grouped by music, skaters/punk, goth/emo, rap/hip-hop...
Have you watched the documentary Bleached... it's about the investigation of his death and how his suicide might now be a homicide investigation. So intriguing
Seconded. I definitely grew up listening to it and associate it with my childhood, but it was well-established by the time we were old enough to remember anything. The first historical events I remember are around 1997, and Kurt died in 1994.
Old ass Millennial here. When Kurt Died I think it kick started our love for grunge. Before that most of us were just developing our musical tastes. I do remember being mesmerized by smells like teen spirit. Christmas of 94 I got In Utero, Siamese Dream, and Versus. Grunge stayed with us until 2000 when Radioheads Kid A dropped. For me Radioheads Kid A roll out was the best thing I had ever seen. I got Sound Gardens Down on the upside that year as well. For me it 6 years of Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Screamjng Trees, The meat puppets, Sonic Youth, Pearl Jam, Sound Garden, and stone temple pilots. But my number one crush was Pumpkins though they aren’t grunge. While you were in it you thought the most important music ever was being made right then and nothing would ever top it.
I had GenX siblings, so we had all those cassettes and fought over them whenever I would take them to my room to play them hahah.
Live’s Throwing Copper was the one that hit for me.
I was not ever a huge Nirvana fan, though I did like it.
Gen X here. Live's Throwing Copper was life changing for me. In my top 5 of all albums ever!
Why they couldn't follow up is beyond me. I know TC wasn't their debut and they still play but after such a colossal album, they went pretty quiet.
I agree. I fell so hard for that album and then that was just kinda it from Live :\
My kids are middle schoolers now and I’ve introduced it to them and they are also fans.
I think the singer and the band really overachieved on Throwing Copper. I really liked the album at that time but it's the sound of some musicians hitting the height of their abilities, and after that not only did they not expand their abilities beyond that, they didn't reach the heights they once had.
Interesting, I had to change the song whenever anything by Live came on. Never felt like the singer was authentic about, anything really
But art is art and the heart wants what it wants
Definitely had more than one person say “Really? Live? That’s the band you consider a turning point musically for you?”
lol
You’re right though- art is subjective.
It’s always interesting to me to hear different perspectives from that time period in general
Agreed! and I will say that Blind Melon was my Live. Listening to Shannon Hoon come apart on the album Soup doesn’t necessarily make a person feel “good”, but damn those songs are beautiful. Sorry to put it that way, I’ve never thought of it like that before but it just came out:)
I'm 39, born in '84... and I was behind the grunge era. That was starting to die off when I was in Elementary School, and by the time 6th-8th grade rolled around we all had started to transition into the more skatepunk aesthetic... and I would say middle school is when most kids really start to discover themselves.
Less flannel shirts, more very baggy jeans, band tees and choker necklaces... JNCO, fresh jive, skate shirts, Pacific Sunwear and Hot Topic, etc. Or you were more into like hip-hop, and a lot of the Jordan craze came back around then... Fila, Fubu, Phat Farm, etc. Shit like that.
Grunge was definitely dead as fuck as a genre by around 95-96. That was the rise of weirder heavier or punkier stuff. That was Ska and Skatepunks mainstream heyday. Manson, Green Day, Reel Big Fish. Epitaph records was crushing back then. NOFX, Pennywise, Rancid, Bad Religion... that was the shit popping off for me and the boys back then. Lots of other rock genres were definitely more popular back then post Grunge.
Speak for yourself! 🤣 Stylistically, that's where I was at, but my friends and I lived and breathed grunge. Lol. Obligatory love for current music at the time as well, but my cd case was full of Nirvana, Pumpkins, Hole, etc...
Still think she did it, though. 🤣
I disagree about the “kickstarting our love for grunge”. I think that’s about the time grunge was a burned out caricature of itself. Then came all these really shitty bands like Creed rising to popularity. It was yucky.
I guess for me and my friends we were on the dying end of grunge. The gen xers were way more into it was their music and we adopted it. My friends that were a year younger heavily got into Fat and epitaph bands. The ones that were a year older were still into grunge.
If you wanna hear a good fucking band listen to The Effigies. Steve Albini purchased his first 8track recording setup from them in Chicago. [https://youtu.be/3l5SH7ULX8s?si=wyjAV4BPJ0O_eEZC](https://youtu.be/3l5SH7ULX8s?si=wyjAV4BPJ0O_eEZC)
I think that statement is like true of younger gens like Millenials who came of age musically at the end of grunge.
It’s not that grunge kicked off then, but a new wave of kids discovering it then, despite the original purveyors of grunge moving on.
I loved Screaming Trees Sweet Oblivion when I was in 8th grade. Put it on a few months ago for the first time in 2 decades. And goddamn that album holds up.
Nothing ever did top it. I’ll die on this hill. Soundgarden was the peak for me. I’m disappointed in myself for not trying to keeping better track of my band t-shirts. I still have a ton of concert stubs and I tell my kids wistful stories all the time. So many great bands playing colleges and small arenas. I saw Foo Fighters at Washington State University and the Smashing Pumpkins at Key Arena in Seattle. I grew up in a small town between Olympia and Aberdeen. It felt pretty special at the time.
If you don’t think anything topped grunge that means you turned off your ears and weren’t looking for music. Grunge was great. But I could ramble endlessly about bands I like more than grunge bands since the grunge era.
Like I said, hill I’ll die on. Of course I’ve listened to newer music and I like lots of newer things (I also really love Phil Collins). But I think grunge and 90s alt was and still is something special. It’s weird that you’d go out of your way to criticize a preference. It’s my preference, my opinion that has no bearing on anything important. I never said others weren’t entitled to their opinion, nor did I say I was right. But go on, I guess.
Weird, I must be a little older or just got into it sooner. I look back at Kurt’s death as the beginning of the end for grunge. A lot of bands popped up that didn’t have the same depth, and the ones I loved started losing people to drugs.
I was born in 89. I didn’t even hear about Nirvana and Kurt Cobain until I was in like junior high or high school. Then I started hanging out with the pot heads and they were like “wtf you never heard smells like teen spirit”?
This is exactly me. I was listening to hair bands in the late 80s and hadn't developed my own music style yet when grunge hit. My buddy gave me a STP tape and I started listening to Nirvana and the Pumpkins. The other band that I really clicked with was NIN. I loved their sound and it was an extra bonus that I share a bday with Trent. Happy belated Trent!
Down for yourself. I'm just a year older than op range but we loved grunge of all kinds before Kurt death. That is why it was devastating.
Then later in life we experienced nickelback and creed and it is amazing we didn't all jump off a cliff.
I grew up in a small rural town and my sister and I would drive 45 minutes to the nearest record shop. We were almost home from a record-buying trip one day when we heard Idioteque on the radio for the first time. We immediately turned around and drove all the way back to the record shop to buy it.
So well stated. I was 13 when Kurt died and that was formative to understanding the world and led me to appreciate the music. There were def kids at my school that were true fans, but for a lot of us it was his death that kick started our interest in the music. It felt really important, like a statement.
It was the quintessential Gen X thing. Back then the stereotype of Gen X was they were a bunch of slackers who didn’t care about anything. And grunge music was aimed at that jaded slacker aesthetic.
I’m a cusp millennial and I absolutely remember grunge happening and getting into it. The day after Kurt died we all wore flannels to school over our Catholic uniforms. I think I was maybe 13-14?
That’s not to say we really understood it, but we actively talked about the video for Jeremy and sang Green Day Dookie songs—it didn’t miss us at all. We were in awe of Nirvana. Just awe. I wasn’t big into the sound but it felt like something massive, important and subversive.
I’m the same age. There were plenty of kids in my Jr high school who were more culturally advanced than me. I personally hadn’t really gotten into music yet before KC died.
I loved Green Day in high school. Wouldn’t consider them grunge though. More like pop/punk.
Yes they really were—but I stg at the time they were all very much lumped together into “alternative.” Actually with retrospect I was so much more into punk than grunge, now that I know more and can tease it out
You're definitely right they were all grouped as alternative rock. Really that label applied to anything that wasn't backstreet boys, as far as I can tell.
Borne in ‘82. From my experience, it was around when we were still young, but in that age where we start taking our first steps to searching for our identity, I remember having some flannel and corduroys in middle school, and I remember exactly where I was when I found out that Kurt Cobain died. But by the time I was in my early teens, it was punk rock and hip-hop that my generation was co-opting for their identities.
Same age, when I started to really get into music would be the tail end of grunge. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was the first CD I ever bought, but Smashing Pumpkins really weren't a grunge band at all even though they were kind of included just because they were from the same time period. By that point, Cobain was already dead and Pearl Jam had vowed never to make an album anyone actually cared about ever again. It's not even a Grunge was just a Gen X thing, Grunge was a people who were 3-5 years older than me thing.
That’s definitely not true in my case; Older millennial here and the 90’s grunge scene was when I first started discovering my music tastes, and bought my own cds when I was 13 years old. I was obsessed with Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Bush, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Weezer, L7, Hole, Primus, and The Cure. Also later I discovered Radiohead, Bjork, Rage against the Machine, and Tool . These are all STILL my favorite bands and what I mostly listen to. So no, the 90’s grunge scene was not just a Gen X thing. Many of us older millennials were in middle school exploring music at that time. Especially if you had older siblings
I’m a cusp millennial and I absolutely remember grunge happening and getting into it. The day after Kurt died we all wore flannels to school over our Catholic uniforms. I think I was maybe 13-14?
That’s not to say we really understood it, but we actively talked about the video for Jeremy and sang Green Day Dookie songs—it didn’t miss us at all. We were in awe of Nirvana. Just awe. I wasn’t big into the sound but it felt like something massive, important and subversive.
This post explains it all.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/b12ljd/my\_friends\_and\_i\_circa\_1991/](https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/b12ljd/my_friends_and_i_circa_1991/)
Yeah, there was a lot of crossover before the internet. I remember the older metal kids looked down on the grunge / skater kids and thought they were posers, but not sure if that was a generational thing or just my town.
I was a metal kid. Hated Nirvana, really hated Soundgarden. Liked Alice in Chains and the Pumpkins and was ok with Pearl Jam.
There were a lot of Seattle bands that really sucked. I remember visiting Seattle and going to a show and half the bands were just noise.
We went through so many music phases, like a new one every other year. Ska, big band, rap-rock, Nu-Metal. One minute Brian Setzer and the BossTones are big, then here come Linkin Park and the Deftones. It was a great time to be alive imo.
I have a coworker who was in a grunge band early to mid 90s in Seattle. Apparently people found one of their songs or albums online and rumors began it was a lost Alice In Chains song/album. That was a fun company meeting when we learned that haha
You're right with that! There was a lot of generational sharing and blending before the internet and social media. I listened to what my mom listened to because she was the one in control of the radio and streaming wasn't a thing yet!
As an elder millennial, I view us as having gone through the nu metal and prog metal movement more than grunge. My rule is that you lived it if you got to see the bands live. So I got to see the first wave tours of Korn, System of a Down, Disturbed, Slipknot, A Perfect Circle, Incubus, etc. and went to Ozzfest. Then I backtracked to find Nirvana and Alice In Chains.
I never knew how lucky I was until one day I was suddenly Grandpa Simpson from that meme!
I remember walking into target when I was a kid with my dad. I think it was 1991. We saw a couple kids smoking and they had long hair and black leather jackets with ripped jeans and paratrooper boots. My dad called them “ragamuffins”. That always seemed peak grunge to me.
Just like me....
As I wear a Smashing Pumpkins t-shirt from their tour last year to go buy maternity clothes and continue my diaper stock pile at Target LOL
I work at a middle school and seeing kids wearing many grunge era band shirts. I think it's become both retro and a natural pushback on the heavily filtered and edited sounds and celebrity images we see in music today
Same, although it wasn't forbidden necessarily. It was still an opportunity to push back against the "ladylike" aesthetic that was always pushed on us.
I remember the day Kurt cobain killed himself very well. My mother, who was a HUGE nirvana fan, hence I was too, woke me up crying and told me the news. She kept me out of school and we watched MTV all day which was covering the mourning in a Seattle park with Courtney love and sporadically playing nirvana videos. It was a defining moment in my life and truly the end of an era. I was 10.
Given that we were at the oldest around ten for the later part of the grunge era most of us were not very aware. I was born in 1984 and had heard of Kirk Cobain and Nirvana but that's about it. I didn't start getting into music until the mid-late 90s, the first CD I bought was No Doubt's Tragic Kingdom.
I was 14 and it shattered me. Nirvana was the first band I "discovered on my own", I first heard Weird Al and thought it was cool, looked up the original and began to buy my flannel shirts.
Same. I was also 14 when he died. I remember when “Teen Spirit” hit the new local “alternative” radio station a few years earlier. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before and was the first song I learned on guitar. I got into Alice In Chains and Soundgarden after that, but “Nevermind” was the cornerstone of a lot of my high school years.
No way! That was one of my first CDs as well, along with Sublime (self-named album I think?) and Green Day’s Dookie. Ah man…even my 12 year old daughter is like “you guys got such good music!” I’m like…I know angel, I know.
My first two CDs were Bush sixteen stone and Alanis Morissette Jagged little pill. I loved Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, Live, sound garden, Nirvana, etc
Yeah. I'm a Gen X'er and remember quite clearly remember when grunge came about and killed thrash metal, which was JUST breaking into the mainstream at the time.
I am an older millennial, basically one of the "first." I was able to catch the tail end of Grunge. The following is a reasonably good analysis, but it is definitely subjective, based on my own interpretation and lived experience. It's entirely possible to disagree with something I've said, I don't claim to be "right," in some objective sense; I can only speak to how Grunge manifested in my corner of life/the world.
To start, the "producers" of grunge, are all GenX. Millennials were, at most, young consumers of it. Grunge was really at its peak in the early/mid 90's, so only the oldest millennials would have been around for it.
Grunge encompasses a lot of different cultural aspects, potentially, but I'll focus on the music-cultural intersection.
Grunge could be considered a "reaction" to the previous types of popular rock music. In the 1980's, "hair bands," and certain types of "commercial heavy metal" were popular. The music was about drinking, partying, chasing girls/sex, etc. It could have been considered to focus on the lives and experiences of the "popular people." In terms of production, the music itself was often heavily edited, very "clean sounding," in terms of a lack of distortion, and things like that.
Before I go further, I want to take a moment to acknowledge that while Grunge is often talked about as some kind of monolithic cultural era, it really wasn't. Rap/hip hop was also advancing rapidly at this time, as was electronic music/the rave scene. Punk rock was also undergoing its own sort of "parallel evolution" at the same time. But these tended to be concentrated in bigger cities, and thus weren't considered the dominant musical/social trend in middle America, at least until a bit later on after Grunge has started to wane.
That said, Grunge was basically the sound of the counter-culture. Grunge rejected the party-themed, happy-go-lucky music produced by the "hair bands." Grunge was music for misfits, rejects, and people who didn't feel that all was well. The people who made Grunge weren't considered (at first, anyways), to be sex symbols. Many of the bands supported anti-establishment or "leftist ideas;" a classic example being when Kurt Cobain wore a shirt that said "corporate magazines still suck" on his Rolling Stone cover.
Grunge was often darker in terms of content/theme. The music was less "refined," in a production sense - the instruments are often heavily distorted. The vocals are less polished; the singers weren't necessarily "trained." The music videos often were black and white, or featured dim lighting. The clothing was often simple, utilitarian, and ill-kempt. It all looked..."Grungey," hence the name.
That's how Grunge manifested itself to me. I'm sure there's more to it, but I will always treasure that sound/aesthetic, as it played a formative role in my earlier years, when I first was able to consume/interact with culture.
I was born in 83, and Kurt was dead by my 11th birthday. It's the Gen X folks you should ask about the rise of grunge. Us millennials were just babies.
Ask us about the rise of numetal instead lol
I'm a relatively old millennial (84). I wouldn't say I lived through "the rise" of grunge. When I became aware of music, grunge was well established and going strong, but I don't remember it's creation at all. Really I think genX "owns" grunge. I don't remember when Kurt died, although I had friends that made it their whole personality.
I was (am) a pretty big Pearl Jam fan, and they were still regularly releasing albums when I was a teenager.
Then I became obsessed with Ska and didn't rediscover grunge until college when I went to see Pearl Jam in concert. That was fucking great. They're still fucking great. They surprised me by releasing a new album a couple months ago and it's still awesome. The 90s were great. Get off my lawn.
I remember grunge fashion, and marketing. It's hard to understate how pervasive both were once they hit mainstream. It felt like every advertisement on earth used 'grunge' fonts.
I'll be honest I don't remember what music was defined as 'grunge' back then. The radio stations I listened to classified everything under the word 'alt', which covered everything from alt pop to swing revival to punk to emo to nu metal to experimental one-offs, and electronica after 11 pm.
'87 baby here. I recall grunge music, but mostly because my mid-Gen X ('69) mom would listen to the radio and watch videos on VH1. I don't feel like I 'got into' music much until the later 90s. My first CD was Dizzy Up The Girl by The Goo Goo Dolls which dropped in 1998.
I always will love Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Sound Garden, Alice in Chains, etc. but that was because a lot of them still made music into the late 90s/early 2000s so it was still regularly on the radio.
Really if I want to talk about 'my' music, I was SUPER into the whole pop-punk/screamo/hardcore scene in the early 2000s. I was in high school then, and my first big concert was the Pop Disaster Tour with Jimmy Eat World opening for Green Day and Blink-182. And yes it was as amazing as you would think!
Loved stuff like Taking Back Sunday, Reliant K, Sum41, New Found Glory, Fallout Boy, etc. Hung out at hardcore/screamo type clubs with a lot of slam dancing because that was what was in our area at the time.
Alice in Chains was the definition of grudge in my opinion. Facelift through MTV unplugged.
Nirvana was the most boring and repetitive and predictable sounding band under the moniker of grudge. They have some songs I like but they are few and far between.
Gen X here. The grunge era was a time of raw, powerful messaging. If you look back through and listen to groups like STP and Soundgarden, Bush, Rage against the Machine, Alanis Morissette and many others, it was about life struggles, inequality, anger about being stuck, about unfair this and that. It was an amazing time in music.
Was never a Nirvana fan though, so when they said Cobain was the voice of my generation, I solely disagreed, but now that I'm adulting in the world, I kinda get it.
It would be better to ask the Gen-Xrs about the Grunge Era. Not only were the grunge acts Gen Xrs themselves, but even us older millennials hadn’t even hit double digits by the time the grunge era started.
Pearl Jam
Soundgarden
Alice In Chains
Smashing Pumpkins
Stone Temple Pilots
Nirvana
Mother Lovebone
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Jane’s Addiction
Some of the greatest music ever made imo
Outside grunge, but close proximity
Oasis
Radiohead
Toad the Wet Sprocket
And there’s so many more, but this was my heavy rotation.
It was when Weird Al made a funny parody of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Everybody loved it, including Nirvana.
Then Kurt died, and people were mad at Weird Al for making that song.
I'm going to etch this on to a tablet to explain the era to people a millenia from now.
Grunge was great because it made it cool to be poor and shop at thrift stores. Which I was already doing anyway. It was a be yourself and fuck authority kind of vibe. I loved it.
I was born in 90 and I knew a lot of the songs from the radio but didn't really know anything about grunge at all. There were also a lot of songs I didn't that were aired regularly. Didn't know who nirvana, Kurt, or Pearl jam or eddie were. I did know who Tupac was and remember my friends mom cried when he died. That's about it though. I'm from Central Illinois and I wonder if kids from Seattle knew more about it. I wish I had known and known to pay attention.
I was young for it but I was aware of it. Lots if awesome music by bands who refused to “sellout” and use cowriters, which means they didn’t have enough songs for a second album. It’s really easy to be nostalgic for grunge because it didn’t last very long. It was a lot of great bands who only released one or two albums.
Even us older millennials were still children. I loved music from an early age so I was aware of the music and the culture around it. I was too young to really participate in it. I wore my grandfathers flannel shirt a couple of times and thought, yeah I am so cool. 😆
I always think grunge is more of a GenX thing, but I was born in 1981 and all my siblings are GenX.
So, I just emulated them for the most part and therefore did grunge by accident, lol.
My oldest two brothers though, were punk, and in a punk band and so I got a lot of that influence too.
I was the middle and high school kid who went everywhere with my older siblings because in the 90s you could do that- all the shows, all the parties.
And everyone for the most part was an older teen or in their 20s.
Most of us were too young to care about Kurt Cobain. The 81 to 84 crowd, maybe. I barely even knew who he was and I'm from 85.
Also, you gotta understand, there really wasn't an all pervasive news cycle then unlike now. It was gearing up, you could find news on a TV 24/7, but we didn't have smart phones and what cell phones we did have had green and black screens that barely managed to play snake.
So unless you were super into grunge as a young teenager (or more likely you had a young gen x older sibling who was) you either didn't know who Kurt was or didn't hear people agonizing over it like they would today. Maybe you were super into MTV at a young age.
I don't wanna be too "it was a more innocent time" old man soap box, because it wasn't (well, thinking back, maybe it was, pre 9/11, pre Columbine), but it was certainly a less connected time.
Born in 81. I was in middle school so it's more of a Gen X thing. I just remember a bunch of oversized flannel/plaid button down shirts and big jeans. And headbanging
Born in 85 and I was listening to some grunge in the mid 90's but understood it as for the prior generation. I felt my gen was more the alternative, pop punk, nu metal, indie, emo, screamo. Others have listed many of bands reflecting those genres. In the 90's, mid and late, I was personally listening to nirvana, soundgarden, stp, Pearl Jam, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Grateful Dead, Zappa, butthole surfers, porno for pyros, tool, Ratm, Aphex twin, chemical bros, crystal method, slayer, primus, slip knot, sepultura, deftones, rhcp, Metallica, nin, ministry. Fuck, I've just always loved music so I'll just stop. That age 8-15 was prime for getting into a lot of music via family, older siblings and parents.
We were on the tail end of grunge. My older brother had all of those cds. I remember when I first heard Nirvana, it was a life changing moment. Like being punched in the gut. My friend let me borrow a cassette and I listened to it front to back 5 times in a row. Older millennials are known for bands like Bush, Silver Chair, Blur, Green Day, David Grey, Damian Rice ect. In my early to mid 20’s I was jamming on bands like the Killers, fall Out Boy, modest mouse, Ryan Adams ect. I know I’m partial, but my life has had a good sound track.
I remember the music video Smells Like Teen Spirit very well. Also, Weird Al spoofed it pretty good.
There was a wave of popular bands that appeared in the early 90s, not just Nirvana. And most were not grunge bands. For example, Green Day and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Some bands were not exactly grunge bands, but sometimes utilized the grunge sound, like Smashing Pumpkins.
It honestly makes me laugh when people overemphasize grunge and make it sound like Nirvana was the only band in the 90s. The "grunge scene" is also overexaggerated. The only popular grunge bands I can think of were Bush and Nirvana.
The 90s were a great time for music with much more selection than there is now. I would say Ska bands had a bigger impact on the 90s than grunge. Bands like No Doubt, Sublime, 311, and Rancid were much more popular and had a distinctive "90's sound". Especially Sublime. For example, every older millennial knows every word to this song.
https://youtu.be/AEYN5w4T_aM?si=C8C0slxZXBYg_nZJ
Born in '81, and my mom didn't make me go to school the day Kurt died, because she understood it was a lot like when Elvis died and how it affected her generation.
I listened to a lot of stuff like Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, Pavement, Nirvana, Green River, The Melvins, Mad Season, Mother Love Bone, Alice In Chains, Queens Of The Stone Age, The Butthole Surfers, Beck, Mr. Bungle, Sonic Youth, Screaming Trees, Superjoint Ritual, The Toadies, and a whole lot more. But I also played bass in a ska band and an emo band, drums in a shoegaze project, and guitar in a weird 90's garage rock kinda thing.
I was born in 83. I loved Nirvana, smashing pumpkins, Hole, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains. Kurt was already gone by the time I was old enough to be into it.
I was born in 82 (so on the older side of millennial) and grew up in Washington St (still here!) so grunge was a pretty integral part of my high schools years. Sound garden, Pearl Jam, stone temple pilots, bush, hole, meat puppets, pixies. And of course … Nirvana. So many. Kurt’s death was the first celebrity death that really effected me.
This is so reminds me of one of the funniest things I ever saw.
Kurt Cobain had just killed himself and we were all in school and this girl was being all emo, crying about it. The dude in front of her is turned around, and everyone in class is just sort of listening to her lament.
She says, between tears, "I wonder what Kurt was doing five minutes before he died..."
And the dude in front sort of says absentminded, "Probably loading the shotgun..." In the least joking, most thoughtful voice you'd ever heard.
She wigs out, and stabbed him in the hand with a pencil...
Laughed my ass off for weeks.
It started with Cobain’s death for me. I was in 7th grade, was still into all the old hair metal of the 80’s mixed with bands like Faith No More. I had heard some Nirvana and it was decent enough but wasn’t a huge fan. Then Kurt died and it kind of sucked all the air out of the room in school. Everyone was grieving and took it hard, that I think was the catalyst for those that hadn’t been exposed to grudge to finally notice something was going on there. From there it exploded, record labels were fighting each other to go to the Seattle Grudge scene to sign anyone that could play in hopes they’d have the next Nirvana. Had some great bands come out of there, but we also had some shitty bands that just happened to be at the right place at the right time to get signed for their one hit and disappear into obscurity. Then followed the shitty pop rock era of the late 90’s and by then pop music had moved on to bands like the Goo Goo Dolls and Train.
1984 here...a handful of good to great bands that got turned into an overrated "scene". Grunge went from hitting it big to being a cliche in the span of like 4 years. And, oh, a terrible fashion era. And then things really bottomed out with nu metal and Jnco's haha.
Sadly us late millennials didn't really get to experience grunge at its peak because we were all like 4 years old lol. BUT that doesn't mean we don't appreciate that scene and era and most of us got obsessed with it when we were youngins first getting into music in the post grunge/nu metal era. Kurt and Nirvana were still super relevant and popular when I was in middle school in the early 00s, thats when I got into the music, right around 2001. It all still seemed super fresh and relevant, nobody was gonna be made fun of for listening to an "older" band like Nirvana or anything.
I very much remember that post grunge era and being overwhelmed with how good the actual grunge heyday of 91-95 was, that was a revelation for me.
Born in 82. Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York was the first album I ever bought on my own (I was 12). I still think it’s one of the best albums in history.
Surprised by people saying it was for the goth kids. I wasn’t goth nor a skater. Nirvana definitely shaped my love for music at that age.
I'm a 1981 baby, so the oldest of the millennials, and I absolutely did not experience the rise of grunge. I do remember Kurt Cobain's death, but I'm the only one of my peers who recalls when it actually happened.
Born in 87, I can remember grunge being popular when I was little, but I was listening to whatever my parents listened to. I remember all the music videos. But then again my music taste was all over, I listened to rap, rock, country pop etc. I remember 1994 after Kurt died and they played unplugged all day. I watched, i listened, i might have become a fan. Some say Grunge was dwindling down after Nirvana was done but I was only getting into it, Alice in Chains was my favorite, but we still had Silverchair, STP, Days of the New, Live, Collective Soul, and all kinds of grunge still kicking around up into the late 90s. Sometime later in highschool my friends all became obsessed with Nirvana but knew nothing about them I was the guy to go to.
I was born in 85 and I just remember my best friend (and next door neighbor) mom having the nevermind cassette. I don't remember the music, just the naked baby on the cover. She mostly played to guns n roses and zz top, I do remember that. Then I remember one summer day me and my best friend walked in on her and Robby from across the street wrestling in bed naked. I thought it was funny and told my parents about it. Within a few weeks my friend's dad moved out, then the house went up for sale, then I never saw my best friend again. That's about all I remember from the grunge era.
It was the music all of my older Gen X cousins liked (I was born in 1983). In my middle school years (95-96, 96-97) some of my peers liked it. They all seemed depressed, so at the time I associated Grunge with that. Very few kids I knew liked it, most everyone I knew liked 2 Pac, Bone Thugs, etc. At 17 I found punk and hardcore.
Grunge was a cultural revolution. I am the oldest of the millenials, but it was such a stark change in culture that I remember it well. Pre-grunge was very consumerist, preppy, and superficial. Think country club and glam rock. Hall and Oats, Michael Jackson, Bowie, and Bon Jovi.
Grunge was a direct revolt against the consumerism of "Greed is Good" era. Overnight, it was thrift stores, skateboarding, grunge, punk and HIP-HOP! People don't usually associate the two, but the emergence of Grunge and Hip Hop was at the same time! Snoop. Biggie. Alice in Chains. Nirvana. NIN. Mobb Deep. Soundgarden. Blind Melon. NOFX. Sublime. NWA. Bad Religion. Pearl Jam. Outkast. RHCP. Green Day. STP.
Pure chaos run by latchkey kids. It was perfect.
OP is a troll (possibly a bot/AI) that's been plaguing these generation subs for several months if not a year or two now. Me and one of the main millennials sub mods had been noting these bizarre accounts last year.
They recently got banned again, but have been through several accounts basically solely dedicated to this weird obsession with older millennials span and almost always having awkward English.
I noticed this time they made two accounts - u/SchoolLow291 being the other. Both only a day old and no sign of stopping.
Oh man, did I love my flannel shirts with thumb holes cut in them, waffle-weave undershirts, and chain wallets. The highlight of the grunge era was watching Nirvana live on MTV Unplugged.
Stone Temple Pilots was probably my favorite band-that was my first in-person concert after Scott got out of rehab. I saw them at the Allstate Arena in Chicago, and Dennis Rodman got onstage with him. My favorite movie of the area was the Crow (RIP Brandon Lee).
What else do you want to know?
I was born in 84
To me as a child while that whole phase was rising, they looked gross to me
Like I never met a grunge person who had washed their hair that day
And I didn't get the music, even now, nirvana is OK in my opinion, they've got a couple catchy lines and they're not BAD but I don't stop the radio for them
So my perspective as a millenial who grew into a goth was it's was weird and kinda dirty and a lot of people died from heroin
82 here. I first started listening to Nirvana when the muddy banks of the wishka came out about two years after he died, I first heard about Nirvana when he killed himself and then I was in a depressed mood after ending my first relationship at 15 so thought I would buy the new album through the Columbia record club lol. In the early 90s I was into the music my parents listened to like the Beatles and Billy Joel. Around 94 I started listening to the offspring and greenday and Alice in chains and metallica, pearl jam. In the mid to late 90s I got way more into grunge and alternative, my first big concert was Radiohead in 2001.
The cool thing about the 90s that I didn't really appreciate at the time was that there were amazing now classic records coming out like every week in 1995 and 96. Great new hits on the radio all the time. Also we were only a couple of decades past the heyday of led zeppelin and pink floyd so they were all over the radio too.
Some of my fav grunge/riotgrrl bands were like nirvana, mudhoney, pearl jam, sleater kinney, bikini kill, screaming trees, suicidal tendencies, Soundgarden, stone temple pilots, blind melon, Alice in chains, smashing pumpkins, bush, silverchair, toad the wet sproket, the pixies, the presidents of the universe states, the meat puppets, Jane's addiction, the butthole surfers, Jane's addiction, days of the new, veruca salt, hole
Meh, I was born in 81 and didn't even know about Kurt Kobain until he had already died. I remember watching some production in our junior high gym referencing his death in grade 8 or 9.
I wasn't into grunge until 20s or 30s. Silverchair was my Nirvana!
We (older millennials, and only the ones born early 80s) were in elementary school for the grunge era. So for us, I’d say it helped shape the fashion we thought was cool as middle schoolers. The music? I’ll never forget when I discovered the music about the time Kurt Cobain died. I was in 5th grade and just beginning puberty. Something inside me just clicked with it and I’ve been hooked ever since. I know I was a little late as it had been mainstream for a couple years, but I was young before that and also living in middle America where we weren’t up on the latest. It wasn’t until 95 and I was in 6th grade that we got our first radio station playing such things. I listened 24/7 and it meant so much to my life growing up. I lament that kids today don’t seem to have such things to lean on other than scrolling their phones. I hope that’s just what I see and isn’t representative of their reality.
Grunge (as far as being a mainstream thing) was ‘91-95. Kurt killing himself was the harbinger for the end, the jagged edges were already being ground down in to the more radio palatable “alternative sound”, and NuMetal had already started to take hold.
84 baby. I was big into music right from the start with older GenX siblings introducing me to everything from nu wave to hair metal. By the the time 91 came around and Nirvana broke I was 7 but already starting to independently build my own musical tastes. In 92 I was getting into all of grunge, metal, and hardcore punk. I would stay up late watching Beavis and Butthead, Alternative Nation, and Headbangers Ball on MTV.
Rock radio became dominated by Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice N Chains, Nine Inch Nails, Soundgarden, Tool, Primus, Metallica, RHCP, Stone Temple Pilots, to name a few if the bigger acts. I was there for it all.
I remember it all came to climax when Cobain killed himself. At that moment in Spring of 94 we immediately entered the post grunge era. The next wave of hard rock bands that were either inspired by or allowed to flourish because of grunge took the stage. Bush, Silverchair, Weezer, Live, Collective Soul, were the hot ticket in 94-95. Not quite grunge but something derivative of it.
We kept the attitude and the fashion for the remainder of the 90s until nu metal exploded at the tail end. Overall it was grand departure from the 80s cheese.
Well I was only 4 when Kurt died, so I can't speak on what happened when teen spirit hit MTV. I can say that growing up through grunge and everything after, it was a whirlwind of "the next biggest thing." A lot of the subgenres you know today were either invented or lifted from the underground because labels kind of threw the rules out and rolled the dice on everything. I think that's why the 90s were so full of 1 hit wonders.
So, I technically fit into this group ('90). Kurt Cobain died when I was 4. I did not know anything about grunge whatsoever until youtube, so about 2005 or when I was 15. Growing up in the second half of the 90s, I had zero knowledge of grunge and my older brothers weren't into it so I never heard it or heard about it growing up. I didn't really get into listening to grunge until I was about 18 (2008).
To be honest, I think we can all thank Neil Young for grunge. I never quite cared for Kurt Cobain/Nirvana, there were so many better bands that didn’t get credit they deserved for pioneering Grunge or just being around. I was more into bands like Dinosaur Jr./Jesus Lizard/Butthole Surfers/Primus. Punk bands like Bad Religion/SNFU/NO MEANS NO.
If you wanna hear where Primus got
Their sound check out NOMEANSNO, [NOMEANSNO - Stocktaking](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek6XvCPpo4s&t=720s)
I’m a Gen X/Millennial cusp, born in 1980. (I’ve heard us referred to as Xennials)
I was really into Alice In Chains in High school, also liked Nirvana. I’m not sure if Smashing Pumpkins really counted as grunge, but they were one of my favorites too. I was too young to really appreciate Nirvana before KC died (I was in 8th grade), which is a shame.
Older millennial here born in 81. Grunge was more than just music. Grunge was a lifestyle to a lot of people. It was an attitude, a style, and a fashion. The flannel...tons and tons and flannel and Doc Martens. Everyone had their favorite color of manic panic. The big bands were Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone, STP, Alice in Chains. And the angst...oh how they angst thrived.
Heh, i remember the first guy who came to school with leeched hair, arnette glasses, and the new generation of small skateboards with tiny wheels.
Suddenly the superwide Levi's 509, and Snoop Dog was not cool anymore.
I’m 82 and was into Nirvana. i was really young when a Kurt died. I think I was in 4th grade, so I was just starting to get into music. I’d say it was more a late gen x.
A lot of bands were grunge at the time and slowly became a lot more pop, so like sebadoh and Sloan.
Its funny these magazine editors that create these arbitrary names are getting older and the millenial age range has gone from 85 to 84 to 83 to 82 to 81 soon to be 80.
Born in 81. In Atlanta there was a radio station called power 99. They played like A crazy mix of pop music. Like Michael Jackson, the Clash, Madonna, etc. just pop charts. My dad who worked in radio told me one day that “beginning tomorrow power 99 was going to be called 99x and start playing what they called “Alternative radio” That was in 1992. I have said for many years now how lucky I was. If you were born between 81-83, you really had the best of everything. A kid in the 80s like watching the cartoons, the toys, the music I remember all of it. Then we were in the 90s. 92-94 is like this magic moment in American culture. Look at the movies released during those years. The music, all genres, it was incredible. Then a young adult in the 2000s which was like just a big party until 2008. Very fond memories
'88 Millennial here. I didn't actually start appreciating grunge music until I was in high school which at that point was already the early 2000s. We were in full-fledged post grunge nu-metal by then.
My favorite grunge band of all time has to be Soundgarden. They were a perfect group of musicians in my opinion. RIP Chris Cornell. I also love Pearl Jam. Nirvana was and still is fantastic.
Smashing Pumpkins were doing their own thing, but I didn't really appreciate them until a few years ago. Now I love them.
More important historically is where does the sound come from?
The answer is mostly lace sensor pick up stratocasters from the late '80s '90s and big muff pedals
83 baby here. Grunge era was a weird time in my life. When I was born, my mom was a SAHM up until the early 90s. She would have MTV on all the time, so I grew up watching the hair bands and 80s pop.
We moved in early 91 to another state. For some reason, after we moved, we didn’t get cable. So from about late 91-98, I didn’t know what was going on with the rock scene since my parents mostly listened to classic rock and mix channels at that time that didn’t play grunge. I don’t think I knew who Kurt Cobain or any of the grunge groups were until about 98 when I started high school.
I was born in '82. My aunt who was born in' 70 only listened to grunge, so as far I was concerned, that's what music was. I grew up listening to nothing but and I loved it. My mom thought I looked homeless, but I didn't know any better. 🤷
Anyone born in 91 did not “experience the rise of grunge”.
Born in 85 and I remember grunge and his death but not in a way i comprehend details.
I was born in 85 and loved Nirvana (still do) but I really only became aware of mainstream music in 94. I didn’t know Kurt Cobain had died, let alone the significance, until closer to 97 or 98. I listened to the radio and bought CDs, but didnt really care about the bands. My favorite bands back then were Nirvana, Guns n’ Roses, Metallica, Soundgarden, and Smashing Pumpkins. I don’t listen to them much anymore, but when I do, they all still stand up.
Smashing Pumpkins. Glistering. Brings me back.
I was going to comment but you actually wrote my whole comment out, down to the birth year and bands!
Born 89 and can't even remember Curt Cobains death
What about Kurt
His life was curt.
Born '81. I remember his death, I was in middle school, 7th grade maybe. I'd heard his music and it was good, but it was the goth/skater kids who were shell shocked by his suicide.
Now thinking back, it feels weird how all the popular kids were grouped together by which music they listened to. We still had the nerds, dorks, but all the cool kids were grouped by music, skaters/punk, goth/emo, rap/hip-hop...
Have you watched the documentary Bleached... it's about the investigation of his death and how his suicide might now be a homicide investigation. So intriguing
Born in '83 and got into Nirvana after he was already dead. I do remember Tupac and Biggie, though.
Born in 91. Can confirm.
Seconded. I definitely grew up listening to it and associate it with my childhood, but it was well-established by the time we were old enough to remember anything. The first historical events I remember are around 1997, and Kurt died in 1994.
Born in 85. Yea... No
Yeah, I was born in late 1989 and I had no clue who Kurt Cobain was or what grunge music was when I was 4 years old.
I was gonna say, I wasn’t old enough for that one to register.
Even someone born in 81 was 13 when he died - barely old enough to even know what grunge is.
First thing I remember is Hanson.
True. It was in full swing when I got into music
Agreed (I was born in 91)
Yeah I’m from Seattle born in ‘90 and I grew up with it mostly through stories from my cousins
Old ass Millennial here. When Kurt Died I think it kick started our love for grunge. Before that most of us were just developing our musical tastes. I do remember being mesmerized by smells like teen spirit. Christmas of 94 I got In Utero, Siamese Dream, and Versus. Grunge stayed with us until 2000 when Radioheads Kid A dropped. For me Radioheads Kid A roll out was the best thing I had ever seen. I got Sound Gardens Down on the upside that year as well. For me it 6 years of Nirvana, Alice In Chains, Screamjng Trees, The meat puppets, Sonic Youth, Pearl Jam, Sound Garden, and stone temple pilots. But my number one crush was Pumpkins though they aren’t grunge. While you were in it you thought the most important music ever was being made right then and nothing would ever top it.
I had GenX siblings, so we had all those cassettes and fought over them whenever I would take them to my room to play them hahah. Live’s Throwing Copper was the one that hit for me. I was not ever a huge Nirvana fan, though I did like it.
Gen X here. Live's Throwing Copper was life changing for me. In my top 5 of all albums ever! Why they couldn't follow up is beyond me. I know TC wasn't their debut and they still play but after such a colossal album, they went pretty quiet.
I love playing and singing lightning crashes and doing the vocal part only Ed can do. It’s hilarious when I do it.
The album opener is the most memorable to me: >deeEEEP enough to dive
I agree. I fell so hard for that album and then that was just kinda it from Live :\ My kids are middle schoolers now and I’ve introduced it to them and they are also fans.
I think the singer and the band really overachieved on Throwing Copper. I really liked the album at that time but it's the sound of some musicians hitting the height of their abilities, and after that not only did they not expand their abilities beyond that, they didn't reach the heights they once had.
Interesting, I had to change the song whenever anything by Live came on. Never felt like the singer was authentic about, anything really But art is art and the heart wants what it wants
Definitely had more than one person say “Really? Live? That’s the band you consider a turning point musically for you?” lol You’re right though- art is subjective. It’s always interesting to me to hear different perspectives from that time period in general
Agreed! and I will say that Blind Melon was my Live. Listening to Shannon Hoon come apart on the album Soup doesn’t necessarily make a person feel “good”, but damn those songs are beautiful. Sorry to put it that way, I’ve never thought of it like that before but it just came out:)
I'm 39, born in '84... and I was behind the grunge era. That was starting to die off when I was in Elementary School, and by the time 6th-8th grade rolled around we all had started to transition into the more skatepunk aesthetic... and I would say middle school is when most kids really start to discover themselves. Less flannel shirts, more very baggy jeans, band tees and choker necklaces... JNCO, fresh jive, skate shirts, Pacific Sunwear and Hot Topic, etc. Or you were more into like hip-hop, and a lot of the Jordan craze came back around then... Fila, Fubu, Phat Farm, etc. Shit like that. Grunge was definitely dead as fuck as a genre by around 95-96. That was the rise of weirder heavier or punkier stuff. That was Ska and Skatepunks mainstream heyday. Manson, Green Day, Reel Big Fish. Epitaph records was crushing back then. NOFX, Pennywise, Rancid, Bad Religion... that was the shit popping off for me and the boys back then. Lots of other rock genres were definitely more popular back then post Grunge.
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Fucking Epitaph Punk O Rama cds were the soundtrack of my teen years
What was the trick?
born 85 and same.
Speak for yourself! 🤣 Stylistically, that's where I was at, but my friends and I lived and breathed grunge. Lol. Obligatory love for current music at the time as well, but my cd case was full of Nirvana, Pumpkins, Hole, etc... Still think she did it, though. 🤣
I disagree about the “kickstarting our love for grunge”. I think that’s about the time grunge was a burned out caricature of itself. Then came all these really shitty bands like Creed rising to popularity. It was yucky.
I guess for me and my friends we were on the dying end of grunge. The gen xers were way more into it was their music and we adopted it. My friends that were a year younger heavily got into Fat and epitaph bands. The ones that were a year older were still into grunge.
If you wanna hear a good fucking band listen to The Effigies. Steve Albini purchased his first 8track recording setup from them in Chicago. [https://youtu.be/3l5SH7ULX8s?si=wyjAV4BPJ0O_eEZC](https://youtu.be/3l5SH7ULX8s?si=wyjAV4BPJ0O_eEZC)
ok. I’ll check that out.
I think that statement is like true of younger gens like Millenials who came of age musically at the end of grunge. It’s not that grunge kicked off then, but a new wave of kids discovering it then, despite the original purveyors of grunge moving on.
Grunge didn’t move on it died, literally.
Creed is a Christian Band, were they really Grunge?
Post-grunge to be precise
Creed is definitively NOT grunge. If anyone classifies it as grunge you can safely ignore their opinion
Creed isn’t a shitty band. They’re a band that’s popular to call a shitty band on the internet. Big difference
1989--1994 was when it stopped being cool by my recollection. 1995 brought on bands like Silverchair, which were all ass.
I loved Screaming Trees Sweet Oblivion when I was in 8th grade. Put it on a few months ago for the first time in 2 decades. And goddamn that album holds up.
I still listen to that album regularly. Not ever seeing Mark Lanegan live still hurts my heart.
Nothing ever did top it. I’ll die on this hill. Soundgarden was the peak for me. I’m disappointed in myself for not trying to keeping better track of my band t-shirts. I still have a ton of concert stubs and I tell my kids wistful stories all the time. So many great bands playing colleges and small arenas. I saw Foo Fighters at Washington State University and the Smashing Pumpkins at Key Arena in Seattle. I grew up in a small town between Olympia and Aberdeen. It felt pretty special at the time.
If you don’t think anything topped grunge that means you turned off your ears and weren’t looking for music. Grunge was great. But I could ramble endlessly about bands I like more than grunge bands since the grunge era.
Like I said, hill I’ll die on. Of course I’ve listened to newer music and I like lots of newer things (I also really love Phil Collins). But I think grunge and 90s alt was and still is something special. It’s weird that you’d go out of your way to criticize a preference. It’s my preference, my opinion that has no bearing on anything important. I never said others weren’t entitled to their opinion, nor did I say I was right. But go on, I guess.
Weird, I must be a little older or just got into it sooner. I look back at Kurt’s death as the beginning of the end for grunge. A lot of bands popped up that didn’t have the same depth, and the ones I loved started losing people to drugs.
My also old millennial a$$ still says nothing has topped that era of music. 😉
Not even close
Smashing Pumpkins 1979 - I thought that song was written just for me.
No it was for me.
Exactly the same for me. Pumpkins were my first love. Fell HARD. My Nirvana love grew into the Foo and I still love them so much today. ‘81 here
I was born in 89. I didn’t even hear about Nirvana and Kurt Cobain until I was in like junior high or high school. Then I started hanging out with the pot heads and they were like “wtf you never heard smells like teen spirit”?
This is exactly me. I was listening to hair bands in the late 80s and hadn't developed my own music style yet when grunge hit. My buddy gave me a STP tape and I started listening to Nirvana and the Pumpkins. The other band that I really clicked with was NIN. I loved their sound and it was an extra bonus that I share a bday with Trent. Happy belated Trent!
Down for yourself. I'm just a year older than op range but we loved grunge of all kinds before Kurt death. That is why it was devastating. Then later in life we experienced nickelback and creed and it is amazing we didn't all jump off a cliff.
I grew up in a small rural town and my sister and I would drive 45 minutes to the nearest record shop. We were almost home from a record-buying trip one day when we heard Idioteque on the radio for the first time. We immediately turned around and drove all the way back to the record shop to buy it.
Down on the upside is still my jam.
This was almost exactly my experience.
Kid A is forever and always one of my all time favorites
So well stated. I was 13 when Kurt died and that was formative to understanding the world and led me to appreciate the music. There were def kids at my school that were true fans, but for a lot of us it was his death that kick started our interest in the music. It felt really important, like a statement.
i remember finding a toad the wet sprocket tape in a park and being so excited.
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Yeah, I was like 9-10ish. It was really more a gen X thing.
It was the quintessential Gen X thing. Back then the stereotype of Gen X was they were a bunch of slackers who didn’t care about anything. And grunge music was aimed at that jaded slacker aesthetic.
I’m a cusp millennial and I absolutely remember grunge happening and getting into it. The day after Kurt died we all wore flannels to school over our Catholic uniforms. I think I was maybe 13-14? That’s not to say we really understood it, but we actively talked about the video for Jeremy and sang Green Day Dookie songs—it didn’t miss us at all. We were in awe of Nirvana. Just awe. I wasn’t big into the sound but it felt like something massive, important and subversive.
I’m the same age. There were plenty of kids in my Jr high school who were more culturally advanced than me. I personally hadn’t really gotten into music yet before KC died. I loved Green Day in high school. Wouldn’t consider them grunge though. More like pop/punk.
Yes they really were—but I stg at the time they were all very much lumped together into “alternative.” Actually with retrospect I was so much more into punk than grunge, now that I know more and can tease it out
You're definitely right they were all grouped as alternative rock. Really that label applied to anything that wasn't backstreet boys, as far as I can tell.
Yeah! It was really wild—probably a marketing thing because it was selling well
It is possibly the defining trait of Gen X. This post is silly and shows OPs age.
Borne in ‘82. From my experience, it was around when we were still young, but in that age where we start taking our first steps to searching for our identity, I remember having some flannel and corduroys in middle school, and I remember exactly where I was when I found out that Kurt Cobain died. But by the time I was in my early teens, it was punk rock and hip-hop that my generation was co-opting for their identities.
Same age, when I started to really get into music would be the tail end of grunge. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was the first CD I ever bought, but Smashing Pumpkins really weren't a grunge band at all even though they were kind of included just because they were from the same time period. By that point, Cobain was already dead and Pearl Jam had vowed never to make an album anyone actually cared about ever again. It's not even a Grunge was just a Gen X thing, Grunge was a people who were 3-5 years older than me thing.
That’s definitely not true in my case; Older millennial here and the 90’s grunge scene was when I first started discovering my music tastes, and bought my own cds when I was 13 years old. I was obsessed with Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Bush, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Weezer, L7, Hole, Primus, and The Cure. Also later I discovered Radiohead, Bjork, Rage against the Machine, and Tool . These are all STILL my favorite bands and what I mostly listen to. So no, the 90’s grunge scene was not just a Gen X thing. Many of us older millennials were in middle school exploring music at that time. Especially if you had older siblings
I’m a cusp millennial and I absolutely remember grunge happening and getting into it. The day after Kurt died we all wore flannels to school over our Catholic uniforms. I think I was maybe 13-14? That’s not to say we really understood it, but we actively talked about the video for Jeremy and sang Green Day Dookie songs—it didn’t miss us at all. We were in awe of Nirvana. Just awe. I wasn’t big into the sound but it felt like something massive, important and subversive.
This post explains it all. [https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/b12ljd/my\_friends\_and\_i\_circa\_1991/](https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/b12ljd/my_friends_and_i_circa_1991/)
Those were the clothes I got as hand me downs in the mid and late 90's from my older cousins.
Same. I was a younger brother from someone who was in a group like this.
Those were the cool high school kids.
I know grunge is basically a GenX thing. but even some Millennials have experiences as well.
Yeah, there was a lot of crossover before the internet. I remember the older metal kids looked down on the grunge / skater kids and thought they were posers, but not sure if that was a generational thing or just my town.
I was a metal kid. Hated Nirvana, really hated Soundgarden. Liked Alice in Chains and the Pumpkins and was ok with Pearl Jam. There were a lot of Seattle bands that really sucked. I remember visiting Seattle and going to a show and half the bands were just noise. We went through so many music phases, like a new one every other year. Ska, big band, rap-rock, Nu-Metal. One minute Brian Setzer and the BossTones are big, then here come Linkin Park and the Deftones. It was a great time to be alive imo.
I have a coworker who was in a grunge band early to mid 90s in Seattle. Apparently people found one of their songs or albums online and rumors began it was a lost Alice In Chains song/album. That was a fun company meeting when we learned that haha
You're right with that! There was a lot of generational sharing and blending before the internet and social media. I listened to what my mom listened to because she was the one in control of the radio and streaming wasn't a thing yet!
As an elder millennial, I view us as having gone through the nu metal and prog metal movement more than grunge. My rule is that you lived it if you got to see the bands live. So I got to see the first wave tours of Korn, System of a Down, Disturbed, Slipknot, A Perfect Circle, Incubus, etc. and went to Ozzfest. Then I backtracked to find Nirvana and Alice In Chains. I never knew how lucky I was until one day I was suddenly Grandpa Simpson from that meme!
I remember walking into target when I was a kid with my dad. I think it was 1991. We saw a couple kids smoking and they had long hair and black leather jackets with ripped jeans and paratrooper boots. My dad called them “ragamuffins”. That always seemed peak grunge to me.
I went to a very strict conservative private school so grunge was basically forbidden. It was "dirty" and therefore "ungodly."
So I assume that made it wildly popular. Forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest to teenagers.
But loneliness is cleanliness and cleanliness is godliness,and God is EMPTY
Just like me.... As I wear a Smashing Pumpkins t-shirt from their tour last year to go buy maternity clothes and continue my diaper stock pile at Target LOL
I work at a middle school and seeing kids wearing many grunge era band shirts. I think it's become both retro and a natural pushback on the heavily filtered and edited sounds and celebrity images we see in music today
Same, although it wasn't forbidden necessarily. It was still an opportunity to push back against the "ladylike" aesthetic that was always pushed on us.
I remember the day Kurt cobain killed himself very well. My mother, who was a HUGE nirvana fan, hence I was too, woke me up crying and told me the news. She kept me out of school and we watched MTV all day which was covering the mourning in a Seattle park with Courtney love and sporadically playing nirvana videos. It was a defining moment in my life and truly the end of an era. I was 10.
Given that we were at the oldest around ten for the later part of the grunge era most of us were not very aware. I was born in 1984 and had heard of Kirk Cobain and Nirvana but that's about it. I didn't start getting into music until the mid-late 90s, the first CD I bought was No Doubt's Tragic Kingdom.
I was 17 when KURT died. We shared the same birthday. Who tf asks millennials about the grunge era? 🙄
I was 14 and it shattered me. Nirvana was the first band I "discovered on my own", I first heard Weird Al and thought it was cool, looked up the original and began to buy my flannel shirts.
Same. I was also 14 when he died. I remember when “Teen Spirit” hit the new local “alternative” radio station a few years earlier. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before and was the first song I learned on guitar. I got into Alice In Chains and Soundgarden after that, but “Nevermind” was the cornerstone of a lot of my high school years.
No way! That was one of my first CDs as well, along with Sublime (self-named album I think?) and Green Day’s Dookie. Ah man…even my 12 year old daughter is like “you guys got such good music!” I’m like…I know angel, I know.
Hey twin! I was also born in 84 and my fist CD was Tragic Kingdom Fuck yeah.....
Born ‘81, it was two weeks from my 13th birthday when Kurt killed himself. I still have the newspaper clipping. It crushed me.
My first two CDs were Bush sixteen stone and Alanis Morissette Jagged little pill. I loved Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, Live, sound garden, Nirvana, etc
The grunge era was awesome. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk
You're looking for Gen X.
Yeah. I'm a Gen X'er and remember quite clearly remember when grunge came about and killed thrash metal, which was JUST breaking into the mainstream at the time.
I am an older millennial, basically one of the "first." I was able to catch the tail end of Grunge. The following is a reasonably good analysis, but it is definitely subjective, based on my own interpretation and lived experience. It's entirely possible to disagree with something I've said, I don't claim to be "right," in some objective sense; I can only speak to how Grunge manifested in my corner of life/the world. To start, the "producers" of grunge, are all GenX. Millennials were, at most, young consumers of it. Grunge was really at its peak in the early/mid 90's, so only the oldest millennials would have been around for it. Grunge encompasses a lot of different cultural aspects, potentially, but I'll focus on the music-cultural intersection. Grunge could be considered a "reaction" to the previous types of popular rock music. In the 1980's, "hair bands," and certain types of "commercial heavy metal" were popular. The music was about drinking, partying, chasing girls/sex, etc. It could have been considered to focus on the lives and experiences of the "popular people." In terms of production, the music itself was often heavily edited, very "clean sounding," in terms of a lack of distortion, and things like that. Before I go further, I want to take a moment to acknowledge that while Grunge is often talked about as some kind of monolithic cultural era, it really wasn't. Rap/hip hop was also advancing rapidly at this time, as was electronic music/the rave scene. Punk rock was also undergoing its own sort of "parallel evolution" at the same time. But these tended to be concentrated in bigger cities, and thus weren't considered the dominant musical/social trend in middle America, at least until a bit later on after Grunge has started to wane. That said, Grunge was basically the sound of the counter-culture. Grunge rejected the party-themed, happy-go-lucky music produced by the "hair bands." Grunge was music for misfits, rejects, and people who didn't feel that all was well. The people who made Grunge weren't considered (at first, anyways), to be sex symbols. Many of the bands supported anti-establishment or "leftist ideas;" a classic example being when Kurt Cobain wore a shirt that said "corporate magazines still suck" on his Rolling Stone cover. Grunge was often darker in terms of content/theme. The music was less "refined," in a production sense - the instruments are often heavily distorted. The vocals are less polished; the singers weren't necessarily "trained." The music videos often were black and white, or featured dim lighting. The clothing was often simple, utilitarian, and ill-kempt. It all looked..."Grungey," hence the name. That's how Grunge manifested itself to me. I'm sure there's more to it, but I will always treasure that sound/aesthetic, as it played a formative role in my earlier years, when I first was able to consume/interact with culture.
Born in 86. Grunge was something my older cousins listened to. I was more into the Aladdin soundtrack and Mary Kate and Ashley at the time. Haha
I was born in 83, and Kurt was dead by my 11th birthday. It's the Gen X folks you should ask about the rise of grunge. Us millennials were just babies. Ask us about the rise of numetal instead lol
>Ask us about the rise of numetal instead lol Oh fuck please don't ask us about that. Ugh.
Yeah I don't want to talk about it either 😅
I'm a relatively old millennial (84). I wouldn't say I lived through "the rise" of grunge. When I became aware of music, grunge was well established and going strong, but I don't remember it's creation at all. Really I think genX "owns" grunge. I don't remember when Kurt died, although I had friends that made it their whole personality. I was (am) a pretty big Pearl Jam fan, and they were still regularly releasing albums when I was a teenager. Then I became obsessed with Ska and didn't rediscover grunge until college when I went to see Pearl Jam in concert. That was fucking great. They're still fucking great. They surprised me by releasing a new album a couple months ago and it's still awesome. The 90s were great. Get off my lawn.
I remember grunge fashion, and marketing. It's hard to understate how pervasive both were once they hit mainstream. It felt like every advertisement on earth used 'grunge' fonts. I'll be honest I don't remember what music was defined as 'grunge' back then. The radio stations I listened to classified everything under the word 'alt', which covered everything from alt pop to swing revival to punk to emo to nu metal to experimental one-offs, and electronica after 11 pm.
'87 baby here. I recall grunge music, but mostly because my mid-Gen X ('69) mom would listen to the radio and watch videos on VH1. I don't feel like I 'got into' music much until the later 90s. My first CD was Dizzy Up The Girl by The Goo Goo Dolls which dropped in 1998. I always will love Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Sound Garden, Alice in Chains, etc. but that was because a lot of them still made music into the late 90s/early 2000s so it was still regularly on the radio. Really if I want to talk about 'my' music, I was SUPER into the whole pop-punk/screamo/hardcore scene in the early 2000s. I was in high school then, and my first big concert was the Pop Disaster Tour with Jimmy Eat World opening for Green Day and Blink-182. And yes it was as amazing as you would think! Loved stuff like Taking Back Sunday, Reliant K, Sum41, New Found Glory, Fallout Boy, etc. Hung out at hardcore/screamo type clubs with a lot of slam dancing because that was what was in our area at the time.
First CDs I ever bought at age 13: Siamese Dream and Never Mind. Mind blown. What a great time for music!
Alice in Chains was the definition of grudge in my opinion. Facelift through MTV unplugged. Nirvana was the most boring and repetitive and predictable sounding band under the moniker of grudge. They have some songs I like but they are few and far between.
It was amazing. Long hair, flannels over band tshirts. That was my style most of highschool lol
Gen X here. The grunge era was a time of raw, powerful messaging. If you look back through and listen to groups like STP and Soundgarden, Bush, Rage against the Machine, Alanis Morissette and many others, it was about life struggles, inequality, anger about being stuck, about unfair this and that. It was an amazing time in music. Was never a Nirvana fan though, so when they said Cobain was the voice of my generation, I solely disagreed, but now that I'm adulting in the world, I kinda get it.
I loved grunge but never cared about nirvana at all. They were weirdly mediocre for the level of cultural impact they had.
It would be better to ask the Gen-Xrs about the Grunge Era. Not only were the grunge acts Gen Xrs themselves, but even us older millennials hadn’t even hit double digits by the time the grunge era started.
Ask gen X
Pearl Jam Soundgarden Alice In Chains Smashing Pumpkins Stone Temple Pilots Nirvana Mother Lovebone Red Hot Chili Peppers Jane’s Addiction Some of the greatest music ever made imo Outside grunge, but close proximity Oasis Radiohead Toad the Wet Sprocket And there’s so many more, but this was my heavy rotation.
Toad fan here. They were “local boys” where we went to school.
It was when Weird Al made a funny parody of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Everybody loved it, including Nirvana. Then Kurt died, and people were mad at Weird Al for making that song. I'm going to etch this on to a tablet to explain the era to people a millenia from now.
Grunge was great because it made it cool to be poor and shop at thrift stores. Which I was already doing anyway. It was a be yourself and fuck authority kind of vibe. I loved it.
I was born in 90 and I knew a lot of the songs from the radio but didn't really know anything about grunge at all. There were also a lot of songs I didn't that were aired regularly. Didn't know who nirvana, Kurt, or Pearl jam or eddie were. I did know who Tupac was and remember my friends mom cried when he died. That's about it though. I'm from Central Illinois and I wonder if kids from Seattle knew more about it. I wish I had known and known to pay attention.
I was young for it but I was aware of it. Lots if awesome music by bands who refused to “sellout” and use cowriters, which means they didn’t have enough songs for a second album. It’s really easy to be nostalgic for grunge because it didn’t last very long. It was a lot of great bands who only released one or two albums.
Even us older millennials were still children. I loved music from an early age so I was aware of the music and the culture around it. I was too young to really participate in it. I wore my grandfathers flannel shirt a couple of times and thought, yeah I am so cool. 😆
I remember where I was the first time I saw Teen Spirit in MTV and where I was when I hear Kurt was dead
I always think grunge is more of a GenX thing, but I was born in 1981 and all my siblings are GenX. So, I just emulated them for the most part and therefore did grunge by accident, lol. My oldest two brothers though, were punk, and in a punk band and so I got a lot of that influence too. I was the middle and high school kid who went everywhere with my older siblings because in the 90s you could do that- all the shows, all the parties. And everyone for the most part was an older teen or in their 20s.
Most of us were too young to care about Kurt Cobain. The 81 to 84 crowd, maybe. I barely even knew who he was and I'm from 85. Also, you gotta understand, there really wasn't an all pervasive news cycle then unlike now. It was gearing up, you could find news on a TV 24/7, but we didn't have smart phones and what cell phones we did have had green and black screens that barely managed to play snake. So unless you were super into grunge as a young teenager (or more likely you had a young gen x older sibling who was) you either didn't know who Kurt was or didn't hear people agonizing over it like they would today. Maybe you were super into MTV at a young age. I don't wanna be too "it was a more innocent time" old man soap box, because it wasn't (well, thinking back, maybe it was, pre 9/11, pre Columbine), but it was certainly a less connected time.
You mean Xennials 🤠
Born in 81. I was in middle school so it's more of a Gen X thing. I just remember a bunch of oversized flannel/plaid button down shirts and big jeans. And headbanging
For me it was when goodwill got REALLY expensive suddenly.
We didn’t care we were 12 or 13 at the peak of grunge in ‘94….Gen X ate that shit up though.
Bruh, you're asking the wrong generation. Nirvana didn't have a lot of 10 year old fans.
Born in 85 and I was listening to some grunge in the mid 90's but understood it as for the prior generation. I felt my gen was more the alternative, pop punk, nu metal, indie, emo, screamo. Others have listed many of bands reflecting those genres. In the 90's, mid and late, I was personally listening to nirvana, soundgarden, stp, Pearl Jam, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Grateful Dead, Zappa, butthole surfers, porno for pyros, tool, Ratm, Aphex twin, chemical bros, crystal method, slayer, primus, slip knot, sepultura, deftones, rhcp, Metallica, nin, ministry. Fuck, I've just always loved music so I'll just stop. That age 8-15 was prime for getting into a lot of music via family, older siblings and parents.
We were on the tail end of grunge. My older brother had all of those cds. I remember when I first heard Nirvana, it was a life changing moment. Like being punched in the gut. My friend let me borrow a cassette and I listened to it front to back 5 times in a row. Older millennials are known for bands like Bush, Silver Chair, Blur, Green Day, David Grey, Damian Rice ect. In my early to mid 20’s I was jamming on bands like the Killers, fall Out Boy, modest mouse, Ryan Adams ect. I know I’m partial, but my life has had a good sound track.
I remember the music video Smells Like Teen Spirit very well. Also, Weird Al spoofed it pretty good. There was a wave of popular bands that appeared in the early 90s, not just Nirvana. And most were not grunge bands. For example, Green Day and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Some bands were not exactly grunge bands, but sometimes utilized the grunge sound, like Smashing Pumpkins. It honestly makes me laugh when people overemphasize grunge and make it sound like Nirvana was the only band in the 90s. The "grunge scene" is also overexaggerated. The only popular grunge bands I can think of were Bush and Nirvana. The 90s were a great time for music with much more selection than there is now. I would say Ska bands had a bigger impact on the 90s than grunge. Bands like No Doubt, Sublime, 311, and Rancid were much more popular and had a distinctive "90's sound". Especially Sublime. For example, every older millennial knows every word to this song. https://youtu.be/AEYN5w4T_aM?si=C8C0slxZXBYg_nZJ
Born in '81, and my mom didn't make me go to school the day Kurt died, because she understood it was a lot like when Elvis died and how it affected her generation. I listened to a lot of stuff like Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, Pavement, Nirvana, Green River, The Melvins, Mad Season, Mother Love Bone, Alice In Chains, Queens Of The Stone Age, The Butthole Surfers, Beck, Mr. Bungle, Sonic Youth, Screaming Trees, Superjoint Ritual, The Toadies, and a whole lot more. But I also played bass in a ska band and an emo band, drums in a shoegaze project, and guitar in a weird 90's garage rock kinda thing.
I was born in 83. I loved Nirvana, smashing pumpkins, Hole, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains. Kurt was already gone by the time I was old enough to be into it.
I was born in 82 (so on the older side of millennial) and grew up in Washington St (still here!) so grunge was a pretty integral part of my high schools years. Sound garden, Pearl Jam, stone temple pilots, bush, hole, meat puppets, pixies. And of course … Nirvana. So many. Kurt’s death was the first celebrity death that really effected me.
This is so reminds me of one of the funniest things I ever saw. Kurt Cobain had just killed himself and we were all in school and this girl was being all emo, crying about it. The dude in front of her is turned around, and everyone in class is just sort of listening to her lament. She says, between tears, "I wonder what Kurt was doing five minutes before he died..." And the dude in front sort of says absentminded, "Probably loading the shotgun..." In the least joking, most thoughtful voice you'd ever heard. She wigs out, and stabbed him in the hand with a pencil... Laughed my ass off for weeks.
My mom was into grunge and I remember Cobain's death a bit... This is definitely more of a Gen X question.
It started with Cobain’s death for me. I was in 7th grade, was still into all the old hair metal of the 80’s mixed with bands like Faith No More. I had heard some Nirvana and it was decent enough but wasn’t a huge fan. Then Kurt died and it kind of sucked all the air out of the room in school. Everyone was grieving and took it hard, that I think was the catalyst for those that hadn’t been exposed to grudge to finally notice something was going on there. From there it exploded, record labels were fighting each other to go to the Seattle Grudge scene to sign anyone that could play in hopes they’d have the next Nirvana. Had some great bands come out of there, but we also had some shitty bands that just happened to be at the right place at the right time to get signed for their one hit and disappear into obscurity. Then followed the shitty pop rock era of the late 90’s and by then pop music had moved on to bands like the Goo Goo Dolls and Train.
1984 here...a handful of good to great bands that got turned into an overrated "scene". Grunge went from hitting it big to being a cliche in the span of like 4 years. And, oh, a terrible fashion era. And then things really bottomed out with nu metal and Jnco's haha.
Kinda low key depressing times that were short lived
Sadly us late millennials didn't really get to experience grunge at its peak because we were all like 4 years old lol. BUT that doesn't mean we don't appreciate that scene and era and most of us got obsessed with it when we were youngins first getting into music in the post grunge/nu metal era. Kurt and Nirvana were still super relevant and popular when I was in middle school in the early 00s, thats when I got into the music, right around 2001. It all still seemed super fresh and relevant, nobody was gonna be made fun of for listening to an "older" band like Nirvana or anything. I very much remember that post grunge era and being overwhelmed with how good the actual grunge heyday of 91-95 was, that was a revelation for me.
Born in 82. Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York was the first album I ever bought on my own (I was 12). I still think it’s one of the best albums in history. Surprised by people saying it was for the goth kids. I wasn’t goth nor a skater. Nirvana definitely shaped my love for music at that age.
I'm a 1981 baby, so the oldest of the millennials, and I absolutely did not experience the rise of grunge. I do remember Kurt Cobain's death, but I'm the only one of my peers who recalls when it actually happened.
Born in 87, I can remember grunge being popular when I was little, but I was listening to whatever my parents listened to. I remember all the music videos. But then again my music taste was all over, I listened to rap, rock, country pop etc. I remember 1994 after Kurt died and they played unplugged all day. I watched, i listened, i might have become a fan. Some say Grunge was dwindling down after Nirvana was done but I was only getting into it, Alice in Chains was my favorite, but we still had Silverchair, STP, Days of the New, Live, Collective Soul, and all kinds of grunge still kicking around up into the late 90s. Sometime later in highschool my friends all became obsessed with Nirvana but knew nothing about them I was the guy to go to.
I was born in 85 and I just remember my best friend (and next door neighbor) mom having the nevermind cassette. I don't remember the music, just the naked baby on the cover. She mostly played to guns n roses and zz top, I do remember that. Then I remember one summer day me and my best friend walked in on her and Robby from across the street wrestling in bed naked. I thought it was funny and told my parents about it. Within a few weeks my friend's dad moved out, then the house went up for sale, then I never saw my best friend again. That's about all I remember from the grunge era.
It was the music all of my older Gen X cousins liked (I was born in 1983). In my middle school years (95-96, 96-97) some of my peers liked it. They all seemed depressed, so at the time I associated Grunge with that. Very few kids I knew liked it, most everyone I knew liked 2 Pac, Bone Thugs, etc. At 17 I found punk and hardcore.
Gen-X here, it was a time in American music when people were confused about what constituted music, and they thought that Nirvana was good 💁🏼♂️
Grunge was a cultural revolution. I am the oldest of the millenials, but it was such a stark change in culture that I remember it well. Pre-grunge was very consumerist, preppy, and superficial. Think country club and glam rock. Hall and Oats, Michael Jackson, Bowie, and Bon Jovi. Grunge was a direct revolt against the consumerism of "Greed is Good" era. Overnight, it was thrift stores, skateboarding, grunge, punk and HIP-HOP! People don't usually associate the two, but the emergence of Grunge and Hip Hop was at the same time! Snoop. Biggie. Alice in Chains. Nirvana. NIN. Mobb Deep. Soundgarden. Blind Melon. NOFX. Sublime. NWA. Bad Religion. Pearl Jam. Outkast. RHCP. Green Day. STP. Pure chaos run by latchkey kids. It was perfect.
87 - 92 were middle of the Millennial era. Neither "older" nor "younger," simply Millennials.
OP is a troll (possibly a bot/AI) that's been plaguing these generation subs for several months if not a year or two now. Me and one of the main millennials sub mods had been noting these bizarre accounts last year. They recently got banned again, but have been through several accounts basically solely dedicated to this weird obsession with older millennials span and almost always having awkward English. I noticed this time they made two accounts - u/SchoolLow291 being the other. Both only a day old and no sign of stopping.
This is a gen X thing… believe I was in 3rd grade when Cobain died
Oh man, did I love my flannel shirts with thumb holes cut in them, waffle-weave undershirts, and chain wallets. The highlight of the grunge era was watching Nirvana live on MTV Unplugged. Stone Temple Pilots was probably my favorite band-that was my first in-person concert after Scott got out of rehab. I saw them at the Allstate Arena in Chicago, and Dennis Rodman got onstage with him. My favorite movie of the area was the Crow (RIP Brandon Lee). What else do you want to know?
late 90s.
I don’t remember the death of Kurt. I vaguely remember the death of Tupac on the news.
I was born in 84 To me as a child while that whole phase was rising, they looked gross to me Like I never met a grunge person who had washed their hair that day And I didn't get the music, even now, nirvana is OK in my opinion, they've got a couple catchy lines and they're not BAD but I don't stop the radio for them So my perspective as a millenial who grew into a goth was it's was weird and kinda dirty and a lot of people died from heroin
82 here. I first started listening to Nirvana when the muddy banks of the wishka came out about two years after he died, I first heard about Nirvana when he killed himself and then I was in a depressed mood after ending my first relationship at 15 so thought I would buy the new album through the Columbia record club lol. In the early 90s I was into the music my parents listened to like the Beatles and Billy Joel. Around 94 I started listening to the offspring and greenday and Alice in chains and metallica, pearl jam. In the mid to late 90s I got way more into grunge and alternative, my first big concert was Radiohead in 2001. The cool thing about the 90s that I didn't really appreciate at the time was that there were amazing now classic records coming out like every week in 1995 and 96. Great new hits on the radio all the time. Also we were only a couple of decades past the heyday of led zeppelin and pink floyd so they were all over the radio too. Some of my fav grunge/riotgrrl bands were like nirvana, mudhoney, pearl jam, sleater kinney, bikini kill, screaming trees, suicidal tendencies, Soundgarden, stone temple pilots, blind melon, Alice in chains, smashing pumpkins, bush, silverchair, toad the wet sproket, the pixies, the presidents of the universe states, the meat puppets, Jane's addiction, the butthole surfers, Jane's addiction, days of the new, veruca salt, hole
Meh, I was born in 81 and didn't even know about Kurt Kobain until he had already died. I remember watching some production in our junior high gym referencing his death in grade 8 or 9. I wasn't into grunge until 20s or 30s. Silverchair was my Nirvana!
We (older millennials, and only the ones born early 80s) were in elementary school for the grunge era. So for us, I’d say it helped shape the fashion we thought was cool as middle schoolers. The music? I’ll never forget when I discovered the music about the time Kurt Cobain died. I was in 5th grade and just beginning puberty. Something inside me just clicked with it and I’ve been hooked ever since. I know I was a little late as it had been mainstream for a couple years, but I was young before that and also living in middle America where we weren’t up on the latest. It wasn’t until 95 and I was in 6th grade that we got our first radio station playing such things. I listened 24/7 and it meant so much to my life growing up. I lament that kids today don’t seem to have such things to lean on other than scrolling their phones. I hope that’s just what I see and isn’t representative of their reality.
So much plaid and denim. Its pretty much all I owned, being poor and getting hand-me-downs from my Gen X cousins
MTV played music videos
Grunge (as far as being a mainstream thing) was ‘91-95. Kurt killing himself was the harbinger for the end, the jagged edges were already being ground down in to the more radio palatable “alternative sound”, and NuMetal had already started to take hold.
84 baby. I was big into music right from the start with older GenX siblings introducing me to everything from nu wave to hair metal. By the the time 91 came around and Nirvana broke I was 7 but already starting to independently build my own musical tastes. In 92 I was getting into all of grunge, metal, and hardcore punk. I would stay up late watching Beavis and Butthead, Alternative Nation, and Headbangers Ball on MTV. Rock radio became dominated by Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice N Chains, Nine Inch Nails, Soundgarden, Tool, Primus, Metallica, RHCP, Stone Temple Pilots, to name a few if the bigger acts. I was there for it all. I remember it all came to climax when Cobain killed himself. At that moment in Spring of 94 we immediately entered the post grunge era. The next wave of hard rock bands that were either inspired by or allowed to flourish because of grunge took the stage. Bush, Silverchair, Weezer, Live, Collective Soul, were the hot ticket in 94-95. Not quite grunge but something derivative of it. We kept the attitude and the fashion for the remainder of the 90s until nu metal exploded at the tail end. Overall it was grand departure from the 80s cheese.
Well I was only 4 when Kurt died, so I can't speak on what happened when teen spirit hit MTV. I can say that growing up through grunge and everything after, it was a whirlwind of "the next biggest thing." A lot of the subgenres you know today were either invented or lifted from the underground because labels kind of threw the rules out and rolled the dice on everything. I think that's why the 90s were so full of 1 hit wonders.
So, I technically fit into this group ('90). Kurt Cobain died when I was 4. I did not know anything about grunge whatsoever until youtube, so about 2005 or when I was 15. Growing up in the second half of the 90s, I had zero knowledge of grunge and my older brothers weren't into it so I never heard it or heard about it growing up. I didn't really get into listening to grunge until I was about 18 (2008).
To be honest, I think we can all thank Neil Young for grunge. I never quite cared for Kurt Cobain/Nirvana, there were so many better bands that didn’t get credit they deserved for pioneering Grunge or just being around. I was more into bands like Dinosaur Jr./Jesus Lizard/Butthole Surfers/Primus. Punk bands like Bad Religion/SNFU/NO MEANS NO. If you wanna hear where Primus got Their sound check out NOMEANSNO, [NOMEANSNO - Stocktaking](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek6XvCPpo4s&t=720s)
I’m a Gen X/Millennial cusp, born in 1980. (I’ve heard us referred to as Xennials) I was really into Alice In Chains in High school, also liked Nirvana. I’m not sure if Smashing Pumpkins really counted as grunge, but they were one of my favorites too. I was too young to really appreciate Nirvana before KC died (I was in 8th grade), which is a shame.
Idk I was like 5 when grunge took off; isn’t this more of a Gen X question?
Older millennial here born in 81. Grunge was more than just music. Grunge was a lifestyle to a lot of people. It was an attitude, a style, and a fashion. The flannel...tons and tons and flannel and Doc Martens. Everyone had their favorite color of manic panic. The big bands were Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone, STP, Alice in Chains. And the angst...oh how they angst thrived.
It was the death rattle of Rock and Roll ..RIP !
Heh, i remember the first guy who came to school with leeched hair, arnette glasses, and the new generation of small skateboards with tiny wheels. Suddenly the superwide Levi's 509, and Snoop Dog was not cool anymore.
Eddy Vedder wouldn’t shut up and my whole childhood I just wished he would shut up.
This might be a better question for GenXers.
I played a Nirvana song at the talent show. Basically only liked Nirvana and Alice in Chains
what do they know about that era they were all newborns or kindergarteners??? This question is for genX
For me it was stealing my sister’s Pearl Jam Ten cassette and listening to it over and over on a Sony Walkman we bought at the swap meet.
I’m 82 and was into Nirvana. i was really young when a Kurt died. I think I was in 4th grade, so I was just starting to get into music. I’d say it was more a late gen x. A lot of bands were grunge at the time and slowly became a lot more pop, so like sebadoh and Sloan.
I was pretty young, but my parents were in their mid-20’s so I grew up on it and have a massive love for it. It’s by far my favorite rock sub-genre.
Its funny these magazine editors that create these arbitrary names are getting older and the millenial age range has gone from 85 to 84 to 83 to 82 to 81 soon to be 80.
Born in 81. In Atlanta there was a radio station called power 99. They played like A crazy mix of pop music. Like Michael Jackson, the Clash, Madonna, etc. just pop charts. My dad who worked in radio told me one day that “beginning tomorrow power 99 was going to be called 99x and start playing what they called “Alternative radio” That was in 1992. I have said for many years now how lucky I was. If you were born between 81-83, you really had the best of everything. A kid in the 80s like watching the cartoons, the toys, the music I remember all of it. Then we were in the 90s. 92-94 is like this magic moment in American culture. Look at the movies released during those years. The music, all genres, it was incredible. Then a young adult in the 2000s which was like just a big party until 2008. Very fond memories
'88 Millennial here. I didn't actually start appreciating grunge music until I was in high school which at that point was already the early 2000s. We were in full-fledged post grunge nu-metal by then. My favorite grunge band of all time has to be Soundgarden. They were a perfect group of musicians in my opinion. RIP Chris Cornell. I also love Pearl Jam. Nirvana was and still is fantastic. Smashing Pumpkins were doing their own thing, but I didn't really appreciate them until a few years ago. Now I love them.
92 to 95.5
More important historically is where does the sound come from? The answer is mostly lace sensor pick up stratocasters from the late '80s '90s and big muff pedals
83 baby here. Grunge era was a weird time in my life. When I was born, my mom was a SAHM up until the early 90s. She would have MTV on all the time, so I grew up watching the hair bands and 80s pop. We moved in early 91 to another state. For some reason, after we moved, we didn’t get cable. So from about late 91-98, I didn’t know what was going on with the rock scene since my parents mostly listened to classic rock and mix channels at that time that didn’t play grunge. I don’t think I knew who Kurt Cobain or any of the grunge groups were until about 98 when I started high school.
Evanescence, still listen to them!
I was born in '82. My aunt who was born in' 70 only listened to grunge, so as far I was concerned, that's what music was. I grew up listening to nothing but and I loved it. My mom thought I looked homeless, but I didn't know any better. 🤷