Rockpedia
Rock branch Full entry · 1988

Grunge

Emerged 1988 Origin Seattle, USA Subgenres 1 Vocals Sung
Heaviness
6
Speed
5
Melody
8

Sung. Melodic singing throughout.

In short

Punk plus Black Sabbath plus flannel: quiet verse, exploding chorus and lyrics about self-disgust.

How it sounds

  • Quiet verse, chorus at full distortion — the dynamic taken from the Pixies.
  • Guitars sometimes tuned a whole step down, through simple fuzz pedals.
  • Hoarse vocals with lyrics about self-disgust, apathy and unfocused anger.

Hear what that means

  • Quiet verse, loud chorus

    Nirvana - In Utero

    The clean, almost pretty verse and the wall that replaces it, with nothing in between and no build. The dynamic is the songwriting - this is the Pixies' idea, and Cobain said so repeatedly.

    Open on YouTube
  • Drop D, and the sag it puts in a chord

    Alice in Chains - Dirt

    The bottom string tuned down a whole tone, played in seven, with two voices harmonised in a way no other band in the city was attempting. The riff sounds like it is falling over and never does.

    Open on YouTube
  • What it sounded like before the money

    Mudhoney - Superfuzz Bigmuff

    Two fuzz pedals, named on the sleeve, and a recording that cost almost nothing. This is the Seattle sound as it actually existed in 1988, three years before a major label worked out how to sell it.

    Open on YouTube

Loaded only when you press play — nothing reaches Google before that. Each opens at the start of the recording.

The specifics

Tempo
90-140 bpm
Song length
3.5-5.5 min
Tuning
Drop D as often as standard, and frequently a semitone flat on top of that — slack strings, which is half of why the chords sag the way they do.
Production
Split between the two records that defined it. Bleach cost six hundred dollars and sounds like it; Nevermind cost a great deal more and spends it on sounding like it didn't.
Written about
Alienation, Addiction, Shame, The body

What each part is doing

  • Guitar One clean, chorused, almost pretty part in the verse and a wall of fuzz in the chorus, with nothing in between. The dynamic is the songwriting.
  • Bass Carrying the verse on its own while the guitar is quiet, which is why the loud part lands as hard as it does.
  • Drums Hit very hard and mixed roomy — closer to Bonham than to anything punk was doing — and holding back until the chorus.
  • Vocals Sung with a rasp rather than screamed, and frequently doubled. The strain is audible and it is meant to be.

What it isn't

That grunge was a sound. It was a city and a record label: Soundgarden, Nirvana, Mudhoney and Alice in Chains share Seattle, Sub Pop and a photographer, and share remarkably little musically — one is a metal band, one is a punk band, one is a garage band, one is closer to Sabbath than to any of them. The word was a marketing category applied afterwards and quickly resented by everyone inside it, which is why the entry above describes tendencies rather than rules.

Told apart from

  • Alternative rock Grunge is one city's answer to a question the whole alternative branch was asking. Alternative rock is the category; grunge is Seattle between 1988 and 1993.
  • Post-grunge Post-grunge kept the guitar tone and the vocal rasp and discarded the discomfort — which was the content. It is the same sound with the subject removed.
  • Hard rock Sabbath riffs and Zeppelin drums are both here, but hard rock is confident and grunge is not. The genre is built on hard rock played by people embarrassed to be doing it.
  • Noise rock Noise rock is where several of these bands came from and it never wanted the chorus. Grunge is noise rock that agreed to write hooks.

The genres this one is most often mistaken for. Written, not derived.

History

Sub Pop Records built a local scene in Seattle and invented a marketing mythology for it. Nirvana signed to a major and changed the industry within six months. The genre burned out fast: five years later most of the original bands had split up or moved on.

Descended from

Branches into

On the timeline

Siblings on this branch

Sounds like this, elsewhere in the tree

Closest by the three ratings, among genres at least 4 steps away in the tree. A rating match is not a musical claim.