After the excesses of the '80s and the related larger-than-life music, image, and, well, hair, of hair bands, grunge was a stark contrast. Born in the rain-soaked Pacific Northwest, it was the antithesis of the party-forward lifestyle of the Sunset Strip. For me, the "Grunge Era" began in the late '80s, with bands like the Melvins, Green River, and Nirvana, who combined the ethos of punk and lo fi with elements of heavy metal and hard rock to create the sludgy "Seattle Sound." And for me, the Grunge Era ended in 1995. The reluctant spokesman of grunge, Kurt Cobain, died a year earlier, joining the tragically legendary 27 Club, and his former band mate Dave Grohl released the Foo Fighters' first album in July 1995, which I think marked the dividing line between grunge and what would become known as post-grunge. Like the Hair Band Era before it -- which lasted a bit longer than the Grunge Era -- the Grunge Era came to an end as record companies tried to capitalize on the grunge sound and replicate it for their own monetary benefit, which watered it down. If you haven't seen the 1996 documentary about grunge, Hype!, check it out. It tracks the brief yet hugely impactful course of grunge.
As a lover of hair bands, I was very conflicted when grunge came along, and like many, I initially resisted it, regardless of whether I thought the music was good. There was definitely a grunge vs. hair band demarcation among music fans, although that eventually faded as people (myself included) realized you could like both types of music without being Judas.
Now that we're 30 years removed from the grunge explosion in the early '90s -- and good God, that makes me feel really old saying that -- it occurred to me that there might be some young 'uns out there that maybe aren't familiar with grunge, outside of Nevermind and Ten. And that's fine, but one of my life goals is to turn people on to music, and that's kind of the goal of this post. For people who are old enough to remember the tidal shift that occurred in popular hard rock music between 1990 and 1992, the list below will seem pretty self-evident. You probably own all of these albums (on CD, no less). I certainly do. But for those of you who were either too young to get into grunge, weren't born yet, or were maybe more into NKOTB and Color Me Badd, this list is more for you.
Below are what I consider the ten essential grunge albums of the '90s. These are the albums that I think best defined the era. I was going to say that these albums aren't necessarily the "best" grunge albums, but when you look at the list, it's pretty damn hard to argue that they aren't. Obviously, since this is a '90s Rocktober, all of the albums below were released in the '90s, even though there were some influential grunge albums released in the late '80s. And I'm only including one album per band. I'm also including the YouTube embed from my favorite song from each album, and I'm putting them in chronological order by release date.
1. Temple of the Dog by Temple of the Dog (4/16/91)
This is a bittersweet album, as it it was a tribute to the late Andrew Wood -- the frontman of Seattle grunge band Mother Love Bone -- who died of a heroin overdose in March 1990. Soundgarden lead singer Chris Cornell was Wood's former roommate, and he recruited former Mother Love Bone guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament, Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron, and then-unknown singer Eddie Vedder and guitarist Mike McCready. Of course, Vedder, McCready, Ament, and Gossard were already working on the first Pearl Jam album by that time. The album didn't really catch on until a year later, after the success of Pearl Jam's Ten and Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger. But what a fucking grunge supergroup this was, and the album is one of the best one-off albums ever and a fitting tribute to one of grunge's pioneers. "Hunger Strike" is one of those songs that I can never tire of hearing.
Favorite song: "Hunger Strike"
2. Ten by Pearl Jam (8/27/91)
Along with Nirvana's Nevermind, Ten, of course, is one of the defining albums of grunge. There's not a bad song on the album, and it kicks you in the face from the get-go with "Once," provides several grunge highlights with "Even Flow," "Alive," "Black," and "Jeremy," as well as some other great deep cuts, and then gives you that post-climax cigarette in bed with the last track, "Release." It was really hard to pick a favorite from this album, but I went with "Porch" for no particular reason other than I hadn't yet mentioned it in this post.
Favorite song: "Porch"
3. Nevermind by Nirvana (9/24/91)
Obviously, this album is at the top of most "essential grunge albums" lists, and rightfully so. It was the album that thrust grunge into the mainstream and transformed Nirvana from a regional Seattle band to one of the biggest and most important rock bands in the world. I'm not going to belabor the album's glory, but I'd just like to note that in addition to the songs everyone knows -- "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Come As You Are," "In Bloom," and "Lithium" -- the deep tracks on the album are just as good. My choice below, "Breed," was on my pysch-up mix tapes back in the day, and it remains on my running/workout mixes to this day.
Favorite song: "Breed"
4. Singles: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Various Artists (6/30/92)
Along with 1994's Reality Bites, the Cameron Crowe film Singles was one of two '90s films that epitomized Gen X lifestyle, but the latter was set in Seattle and was focused on grunge. Members of Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden have cameos in the film, and while there are some non-grunge songs on the the soundtrack (including Paul Westerberg's "Dyslexic Heart," which was his first post-Replacements offering), it is very grunge-centric, featuring a couple non-album tracks from Pearl Jam, "Would?" by Alice in Chains, and songs by Soundgarden, Chris Cornell, Mother Love Bone, Smashing Pumpkins, Mudhoney, and Screaming Trees.
Favorite song: "Nearly Lost You" by Screaming Trees
5. Dirt by Alice in Chains (9/29/92)
For whatever reason, I didn't really get into Alice in Chains back in the '90s, and I'm not sure why. They seemed to be the grunge band that was the most metal. Dirt was their second studio album, and it solidified them as one of the top groups of the genre, with songs like "Rooster," "Would?," "Them Bones," and "Down in a Hole."
Favorite song: "Would?"
6. Core by Stone Temple Pilots (9/29/92)
September 29, 1992 was apparently a big day for one-word albums released by three-word grunge bands. I always liked STP, and Core was one of the first three CDs I ever owned, along with 2Pac's Strictly For My N.I.G.G.A.Z. and the Spin Doctors' Pocket Full of Kryptonite, which I got for my 15th birthday, along with my first CD player. STP seemed to have more of a hard rock slant than some of the other grunge bands, and Core is just a kickass album, with one of the best opening lines to an album in rock history -- "I am smellin' like a rose that somebody gave me on my birthday deathbed" -- while "Plush" remains my favorite song of the '90s.
Favorite song: "Plush"
7. Siamese Dream by Smashing Pumpkins (7/27/93)
Chicago's Smashing Pumpkins broke through to the mainstream -- and apparently alienated many fellow indie musicians who thought they sold out -- with Siamese Dream, which is unquestionably an album that most of those haters wished they could have made. "Today," "Cherub Rock," "Disarm," and "Rocket" are all Pumpkins classics, and I'm still pissed that radio stations wouldn't play "Silverfuck."
Favorite song: "Rocket"
8. Superunknown by Soundgarden (3/8/94)
It was a tough call between Superunknown and Soundgarden's 1991 album Badmotorfinger, but I think the latter is more grungy and the former is more metal or alternative metal, so I went with Superunknown. Plus, I feel like Superunknown is what really broke the band to a wider audience, with songs like "Black Hole Sun," the inimitable "Spoonman" (featuring a spoon solo from Artis the Spoonman, a Seattle street performer), "Fell On Black Days," "My Wave," and "The Day I Tried to Live." The latter is the one where I think Chris Cornell's amazing pipes shine the brightest. He fucking wails on that song.
Favorite song: "The Day I Tried to Live"
9. Live Through This by Hole (4/12/94)
Released a week after Kurt Cobain's death, Live Through This showed that Kurt's wife, Courtney Love, was also a hell of a songwriter and frontwoman. "Violet," "Doll Parts," and "Miss World" are grunge classics. Sadly, like Cobain, Hole's bassist on this album, Kristen Pfaff, would also join the 27 Club about two months after the album was released, as a result of a heroin overdose.
Favorite song: "Violet"
10. Sixteen Stone by Bush (12/8/94)
One of the last massive albums of the Grunge Era, Bush's Sixteen Stone (or 224 pounds for you American readers) showed that the grunge sound wasn't exclusive to America. The album had a bunch of great songs that I consider the band's signature songs, like "Everything Zen," "Comedown," "Little Things," "Glycerine," and "Machinehead." "Everything Zen" presented me with several questions that remain unanswered to this day: Why was Gavin Rossdale's brother an asshole? Why did he live in Los Angeles? And why would Rossdale want to find him if he was an asshole?
Favorite song: "Machinehead"
Honorable mention: Bricks Are Heavy by L7 (4/14/92); Sweet Oblivion by Screaming Trees (9/8/92); Candlebox by Candlebox (7/20/93); Rubberneck by Toadies (8/23/94)
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