10 overlooked classics from the grunge movement
In terms of rock and roll movements, the grunge scene seemed the least equipped to deal with fame. Although there were still many people willing to make the heaviest music they could for their fanbase, there were a lot more people who were uncomfortable the minute a camera was shoved in their faces and treated them like the second coming of The Beatles. Even for a genre that has been mythologised more than a few times, some records from bands like Pearl Jam have held up well despite flying under the radar.
Regardless of how many great tunes have been celebrated to high heaven, like ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, grunge was always an album-based art form, and some of the greatest moments in a group’s discography usually came from their deep cuts. The hits were the first taste, but once people started to immerse themselves in what the scene had to offer, there were many more tunes that felt like a reward for all the deep digging people had to do.
Even when some of them were released as singles, they ended up sinking like a stone once they were released. Whether it wasn’t the right time or the marketing team had absolutely no idea what to do with them, these tunes felt like they were dumped in the trash compared to the monster hits, when in actuality, they may have been a touch better than the tracks everyone already knew.
So whether it was a slow burn for these songs to click or the public missing the boar entirely, they still deserve the credit for being some of the greatest moments in the grunge pantheon. Not every song is meant to be given the same time of day, but once people peel back the layers and see what’s on display, each of these songs is a thing of beauty.
10 overlooked the grunge songs:
10. ‘X-Static’ – Foo Fighters
No one was really looking to see what grunge had to offer after Kurt Cobain died. It was time for everyone to move now that the voice of a generation was gone, but that didn’t mean that Dave Grohl was about to stop. He knew that his calling was still in music, and when he made the first Foo Fighters record, some of that grunge magic was still prevalent on the back end of the record.
Although ‘Exhausted’ feels like a natural reaction to what Nirvana had done, ‘X-Static’ is more in line with what the group had been doing during the In Utero sessions. Compared to Grohl’s one lead vocal on the song ‘Marigold’, this feels like that kind of song with a fuller production, along with plenty of reverb on the guitars to make him sound like he’s singing through a dense fog.
Whereas most people ended up flocking to lighthearted songs like ‘Big Me’ and ‘I’ll Stick Around’, Foo Fighters would have been a very different band had this track been accepted by the public. Who knows? Maybe Grohl had pieces of shoegaze in his future without anyone knowing it.
9. ‘Touch Peel and Stand’ – Days of the New
By the end of grunge’s time in the sun, the order of the day seemed to be based on acoustic instruments. Even though the lion’s share of grunge acts were looking to make the most aggressive music possible, it wasn’t outside of the norm for Eddie Vedder to pick up an acoustic guitar or for Alice in Chains to ask their fans to take things down a notch. For an album that’s nothing but mellow tunes, though, ‘Touch Peel and Stand’ taps into something much more visceral.
Despite Travis Meeks barely being out of his teens when making the first Days of the New album, he sounds like the perfect melding between the husky power of Chris Cornell and Vedder’s brooding baritone. Whereas many bands around this time were trying to play up their manufactured anger, this is the sound of genuine frustration towards someone with little remorse.
And when the vocals start layering on top of each other in the final chorus, it’s like getting a peek into what Meeks’s head looked like for a brief second. Any band with the words ‘post-grunge’ in their biography will usually be in for an uphill battle in terms of quality, but Days of the New is a trademark case of being the exception to the rule.
8. ‘This is Shangri-La’ – Mother Love Bone
It’s almost a contradiction looking at how many people lumped grunge all into one category. None of the bands in the supposed ‘Big Four’ of the genre really sounded like each other, and when looking at how the genre branched out, it’s not like everyone was brooding about the same things and putting flannel shirts on to be famous. If anything, the fact that Mother Love Bone never got a fair shake meant missing out on the beginning of funk grunge.
Although it exists more nowadays for being the unintentional breeding ground for Pearl Jam after Andy Wood’s death, this Stone Gossard riff is actually a fun take on the usual formula that Red Hot Chili Peppers were used to. Despite the hook being a little bit flimsy, this is one of the meanest grooves that Pearl Jam never got the chance to ride in their early years, especially when the rhythm guitar and drums lock in at the exact right time.
Then again, a lot of the power behind the song is really tragic, considering what Wood’s fate had in store. He was living with a death sentence due to his heroin issues, but listening to this tune, what you’re hearing is a future superstar who wants nothing more than to take over the world the minute he got onstage.
7. ‘Plump’ – Hole
Ever since the late 1990s, everyone has had some type of sour grapes surrounding Courtney Love. Considering how much her story is tied in with Kurt Cobain, people are still liable to find accusers saying that she was the Yoko Ono of the 1990s and that she had no talent from the word go. If she didn’t have any hope for a musical career, though, explain why the deep cuts of Live Through This go off as well as this.
Compared to the other grunge superstars active at the time, Hole was always into raw noise whenever they could find it, and ‘Plump’ is the kind of raw punk song that anyone could fall in love with. Whereas Love was mainly into channelling angst in her lyrics, this was the first time that people could catch genuine hooks while also having a guitar riff that feels like it’s ripped straight out of Steve Jones’s playbook.
Although Love is far from the most captivating frontwoman in rock history, listening to her spit out these lyrics is some of the most cathartic fits of anger to have ever come out of the grunge scene. She clearly had a long road ahead of her after her husband passed away, but sometimes, getting this raw aggression is exactly what people need to overcome their grief.
6. ‘My Wave’ – Soundgarden
Out of all the grunge bands in the spotlight, Soundgarden seemed to always be slightly left of centre. They were far and away one of the commercially viable acts due to Chris Cornell’s voice, and yet their fixation with strange time signatures and tuning their guitars strangely meant that they could barely get any radio play until Superunknown came out. Even though ‘Black Hole Sun’ is impossible to escape, ‘My Wave’ is much more in line with what mainstream rock was doing.
Despite still being in a strange open tuning for guitarists to figure out, the whole track only needs a handful of chords to sound massive. Although the verses do sound like Soundgarden by numbers in some respects, the chorus is pure alternative rock gold, from Cornell’s sticky vocal hook to the open-string riff that they seemed to inherit from the Pixies’s song ‘Where Is My Mind’.
While most of the record isn’t nearly this happy-sounding, ‘My Wave’ still sounds modern in a way that few other Soundgarden tracks do from this time. If anything, with the stadium-sized hook behind it, this is practically an unintentional warm-up for Audioslave years before the idea was planted in Cornell or Tom Morello’s mind.
5. ‘River of Deceit’ – Mad Season
Most of grunge’s best songs are defined by some form of pain. No matter how many times people tried to lash out in anger, the main inspiration behind everyone from Soundgarden to Nirvana was boiling over and making something that put all of that negative energy on display. Whereas Layne Staley lived most of his life dealing with that kind of pain, Mad Season felt the closest thing to recovery that he was ever going to see.
After going through rehab and showing signs of being clean, this supergroup was an excuse for Mike McCready of Pearl Jam to jam with Staley while also keeping himself in check with his alcoholism. Despite the support centre of influences behind the scenes, ‘River of Deceit’ is still everything about Staley’s broken spirit coming to the forefront, even saying that his pain is self-chosen when talking about his demons.
Even though it would have been nice to hear Jerry Cantrell’s guitar over everything, hearing those watery Jimi Hendrix-esque fills from McCready is the perfect way to tell a story like this. Staley had tried his best to work his way through the darkness, and while he had a long battle ahead of him that he would ultimately lose, ‘River of Deceit’ showed him to be on the right track for a while.
4. ‘Nothingman’ – Pearl Jam
At the height of the grunge popularity, no other band felt more desensitised to fame than Eddie Vedder. Kurt Cobain did play up some of his antics for the media when he got the chance, but in terms of talking about his innermost feelings, Vedder was much more liable to pull back the curtain and never let anyone into his heart ever again if they said the wrong thing to him. So, while Vitalogy was an exercise in being as impersonal as possible, ‘Nothingman’ does tug on its fair share of heartstrings.
Compared to what ‘Black’ and ‘Daughter’ had done on the last few albums, this tale of a relationship gone sour actually takes everything one step further. It’s clear that the person at the heart of this song has severely screwed up, but like all good grunge songs, there’s no real happy ending where everything is smoothed over.
All we’re left with is hearing this man cry about how he let a bolt of lightning go and is left with less than nothing as a result. Grunge was known for having many different genres under one umbrella, but in terms of the emotional weight of every song, no other movement understood heartache quite like Seattle did.
3. ‘Lady Picture Show’ – Stone Temple Pilots
Stone Temple Pilots never really deserved the kind of flogging they got in the press when they came out. They may have had similarities to the grunge scene, but coming from San Diego instead of Seattle was not a good enough reason for people to wash their hands of what they saw as a discount Pearl Jam. If anything, STP were more eclectic, and after grunge faded, ‘Lady Picture Show’ was a look at one of the avenues that alternative music could go into after the fact.
After all, all of the greatest names in grunge were about paying tribute to the greats of the 1970s, but while Chris Cornell could copy Robert Plant to a tee, ‘Lady Picture Show’ is an Aerosmith-style ballad with a David Bowie sheen to it. Compared to every other ballad from this time, none had sounded prettier, especially when Scott Weiland reached into his higher register, and the ringing guitar lick sounded like falling stars during the breakdown.
For a group that was known exclusively as imitators of what grunge was all about, Stone Temple Pilots were out to prove that they were around for the long haul and could even manage to transcend grunge altogether. They didn’t ride that wave very far, but the fact that they got on it at all was encouraging enough.
2. ‘Don’t Follow’ – Alice in Chains
Talking about Alice in Chains’s best moments often goes hand-in-hand with their drug use. As much as everyone in the band had their vices, they saved all of their confessions for their songs, usually using each track as a diary of what made them so far gone in the first place. Although Jar of Flies exists solely on the pain that comes with drug use, one of the final tracks actually hits a more sombre note than many people thought.
Whereas ‘Nutshell’ was Layne Staley pouring his heart out about suffering from his addictions, ‘Don’t Follow’ is a country-tinged dialogue between Staley and guitarist Jerry Cantrell. Since Cantrell takes the verses, a lot of what he’s talking about involves him having a drink with Staley and practically saying goodbye to him years before he would be found dead of an overdose.
When the rest of the band join in, and Staley takes the vocals, though, every note he’s singing is pure pain aimed at himself, saying he will do whatever he can to get by and praying that something will save him from this downward spiral he caught himself in. It can be fun listening to a tune like ‘No Excuses’ if you’re in the right mindset, but there’s an earnestness that comes with this song that makes it almost too sad for anyone who has gone through struggles with addiction.
1. ‘Sappy’ – Nirvana
From day one, Nirvana were never in show business to be one of the biggest bands in the world. I’m sure that Kurt Cobain liked the idea of being in a popular band, but the minute that he realised that none of his problems were going to be solved by having money, he reverted back inside himself and would often get resentful of why people even bothered listening to his band. If he couldn’t get the sound that he wanted on record, at least he could use his platform to make a stand against the mistreatment of women.
Even though ‘Polly’ showed the dark side of a woman being tortured, ‘Sappy’ really deserved to be released as a single instead of being tucked away as a demo. While the track would continue to be shelved before being released on a box set, this is everything that Cobain was about when it came to domestic issues, painting the picture of a woman who has given into Stockholm Syndrome with her husband and is trapped in a dead-end relationship.
Although most fans would have a field day trying to track down a version of the tune for years, its eventual release helped many people see the kind of artist that Cobain was. He could still write the kind of tunes that John Lennon would have approved of, but there was no point in releasing anything if it didn’t have something to say.
