The 10 best acoustic grunge songs
Half of the reason why grunge happened in the first place was to cut out all the bullshit. We had been through a decades’ worth of bands that relied on style over substance half the time, and the idea of having a guitar played with feel and artists quoting their heart was much better than yet another song about partying all night. The hair metal bands had their share of power ballads, though, and even grunge rockers like Nirvana knew how to tone it down when the time called for it.
Although the acoustic guitar is not the most rock-friendly instrument in the world, the fact that so many grunge bands ended up using it is honestly insane. The entire concept of grunge was about making sludgy music, so how were they supposed to get something dark and heavy out of something that you barely even plug into an amplifier?
As it turns out, it’s not about the instrument so much as it is about the song. Plenty of bands try to fake their way into sounding tough half the time, but if you have that kind of darkness in the song from the very beginning, it usually doesn’t take that much for it to go from a decent rock tune to an anthem.
Considering where the band took these songs, though, many aren’t for the faint of heart, either turning that anger from the heavy rockers into sadness or giving you a good look into their tortured minds. Hair metal ballads may have been fun at worst and cheesy at best, but if you’re not careful, you might want to keep the tissues handy for some of these tracks.
10 best acoustic grunge songs:
10. ‘Touch Peel and Stand’ – Days of the New
Some of the greatest musicians have always stood by learning on acoustic guitar first. Since it’s the most honest way of expressing yourself, it’s not always that hard to go from the songs you play on an acoustic and then transferring that over to an electric guitar once you get halfway decent. Days of the New may not have started all that differently, but somewhere along the line, they figured out they never really needed the distortion, anyway.
Coming out right as the golden age of grunge was ending, ‘Touch Peel and Stand’ was a shoo-in to be a hit just because of how Travis Meeks was singing. The dude is clearly doing his best Eddie Vedder impression, but that’s far from a bad thing. Even though plenty of artists tried their hand at mindlessly copying Vedder’s style, you never doubt for a second that it’s coming from a genuine place whenever he opens his mouth.
Compared to the angsty songs that filled teenagers’ bedrooms at the time, ‘Touch Peel and Stand’ sounds like raw, unfiltered aggression toward someone, as Meeks sings about looking to exact revenge on this person for wronging him in the past. It may not have been the most cerebral song of the grunge era, but few bands not from Seattle could capture pain this well. Not bad for a kid who was still in his teens.
9. ‘Friend of a Friend’ – Foo Fighters
Foo Fighters have always been on the fringes of grunge half the time. While Dave Grohl has done a good job of running as far away from that other band he was in, he managed to carve himself into one of the greatest frontmen of his generation, even giving some of the greatest in grunge a run for their money. Grohl still remembered those old days, and when it came time for him to reflect, he had a lot to get off his chest about Kurt Cobain.
Then again, ‘Friend of a Friend’ had been knocking around for a while before Grohl thought to turn it into a Foo Fighters song. The track was meant to be a personal song from him to Kurt Cobain, talking about the times that they were scrounging in Seattle without a pot to piss in. It might appear on a Foos album, but this is a Grohl solo track if there ever was one, featuring only him and an acoustic guitar as he tells the story of the blonde-haired legend he once knew.
Foo Fighters songs might be intended for you to throw your fist in the air, but this track just feels like looking at a Polaroid from those days. He may be writing about the man who single-handedly pioneered the next rock movement, but for a few brief seconds, you’re not listening to a guy talk about Kurt Cobain. You’re just listening to Grohl remember his friend named Kurt, and it’s nice to see the human side every now and again.
8. ‘Seasons’ – Chris Cornell
It is still one of the greatest injustices in the world that the movie Singles isn’t more well-known than it is. While it might be a by-the-numbers romance movie by Cameron Crowe’s standards, he somehow managed to get some of the greatest talent in Seattle together on one album, with the lone exception of Nirvana. Soundgarden may have already had their slot on the soundtrack but Chris Cornell was looking to break some hearts when he got out the acoustic.
Whereas ‘Birth Ritual’ from this album is more indicative of what Soundgarden is about, this was the first time we heard what Cornell could do just by himself. Outside of his amazing melodic phrasing, Cornell made a Zeppelin-style rocker from the ground up, playing the part of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant in one go as he drones about feeling lost and left behind by the rest of the world.
Considering the movie follows the lives of these random twentysomethings trying to find their place in the world, this could probably be the main single from the album. There are a lot of times when you feel like nobody understands you, but Cornell took all of that internal frustration and made it seem like things might actually get better. Just move with the seasons and see what happens.
7. ‘Iris’ – Goo Goo Dolls
In a perfect world, no one would have taken a second glance at Goo Goo Dolls. They seemed to be a band destined for college rock radio stations until the end of time, and there was no way that their style would clash with the harsh sounds of alternative. By the late 1990s, most of us were burnt out on irony, and it wasn’t out of the question for a silly love song to break through to the mainstream anymore.
Granted, the one that we have to thank for this song is actually Nicolas Cage. After seeing the basic prompt for the movie City of Angels, John Rzeznik came up with the idea for ‘Iris’, taking the point of view of Cage’s character as he struggles to decide whether he should live as a human on Earth. Even though the song is a track that wouldn’t feel out of place at a campfire, good luck trying to actually play it.
As if to screw with the guitar players of the world, Rzeznik made a tuning that has never really been used in any other song, resulting in a sort of droning sound over the rest of the track that makes the music feel like it’s crying out in pain. That effect may have been done completely by accident, but that doesn’t stop the guitars from hitting you in the chest every time the chorus rolls around.
6. ‘Disarm’ – Smashing Pumpkins
Every band to come out of the 1990s usually had that one song where they would talk about something insanely dark. Pearl Jam had ‘Jeremy’, which was revealed to be about a school shooting, and you can pretty much take your pick of half of Alice in Chains’ discography to see what drug-addled haze they were singing about. Smashing Pumpkins may not have been entrenched in the rest of the Seattle scene, but Billy Corgan had the same shaped heart when he wrote the song ‘Disarm’.
Although the rest of Siamese Dream is a much more peaceful affair, hearing Corgan sing about his desire to rid himself of this world feels a lot more real than it probably should. If ‘Today’ was him trying to put a happy face on a dark situation, this is where cold reality sets in, and you start to realise just how far gone this man is as he attempts to end his life.
They may have broken out the acoustic guitars yet again on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, but a song like ‘Tonight Tonight’ is a bit too overblown to be considered grunge. This is the garage band equivalent of Corgan’s magnum opus, and with only a few elements going in and out of the mix, he sounds like he’s on the verge of a breakdown in the vocal booth.
5. ‘Creep’ – Stone Temple Pilots
Depending on which side you fall on, Stone Temple Pilots is either a grunge success story or one of the worst things to happen to the genre. For a genre that was based out of the Pacific Northwest, the fact that these guys had the gall to actually grow up in California was enough, but hearing Scott Weiland sing exactly like Eddie Vedder on ‘Plush’ was too over the line. Once people got over the more pretentious side of the genre label, ‘Creep’ was proof that these guys could seriously play.
While most of Core is just a decent grunge record with a lot of great singles, ‘Creep’ is where things start to get a bit more moody. Set up like a traditional hair metal ballad, Weiland’s vocal is a lot more haunting than anything else coming out of California. Whereas a song about a lover may have talked about heartache a few years before, all Weiland can sing about is how he got rejected by his old flame and is now worth half of what he used to be.
Considering how much power the band had with just acoustics, it’s no shocker that their appearance on MTV Unplugged is what got people to turn their heads. Any poser can throw on a bunch of distortion and pretend to be a grunge band, but when you can pull it off with just a few amplifiers and a big heart, you’ve earned people’s respect.
4. ‘Burden in My Hand’ – Soundgarden
Looking at Soundgarden’s back catalogue, can you really responsibly call them grunge? Sure, they were there at the genre’s inception in the late 1980s, but looking at their discography, they seemed like an art rock version of a heavy metal band in some spots, especially on Louder Than Love. That may be why they had such a hard time breaking through, but once they reached the big time, they would not take the easy route to make a hit.
Since ‘Black Hole Sun’ was already a pretty major headtrip, ‘Burden In My Hand’ was an even bigger mystery. Taking a page out of Zeppelin’s playbook (are we sensing a pattern here with Cornell?), most of the song is in a strange open tuning as the frontman tears his soul to ribbons from behind a vocal booth.
While it’s sometimes hard to decipher what Cornell is really getting at, it almost doesn’t matter when the rest of the band comes crashing in. Compared to other artists who reel things back on every ballad, this is Soundgarden doing an acoustic song on their own terms. It’s still heartfelt, but that doesn’t mean it has to give up on being interesting.
3. ‘Nothingman’ – Pearl Jam
Throughout grunge’s prime, Pearl Jam seemed to be one of the only bands that could actually create character pieces. While Kurt Cobain always seemed to be referencing his demons when he was writing, Eddie Vedder was more than comfortable trying his hand at writing fiction, documenting a girl’s fall from grace on ‘Daughter’ or the sad woman who never escaped her small town on ‘Elderly Woman’. When he did decide to open himself up a little bit, he didn’t leave a single dry eye in the crowd.
While ‘Black’ was known as one of the most personal songs Vedder ever wrote when it was released, ‘Nothingman’ might be even more heart-wrenching. Framed as another breakup song, Vedder is the narrator this time around, talking about this man who put everything he had into this relationship only for his pride to get the better of him.
Love songs may have been few and far between back then, but “caught a bolt of lightning/cursed the day he let it go” remains one of the most haunting lyrics to come out of the decade. Vedder certainly had his moments where he could wear his heart on his sleeve, but if you’re in the right headspace, ‘Nothingman’ has made more grown men cry than the ending of any sports drama.
2. ‘Nutshell’ – Alice in Chains
Alice in Chains was never meant to see the 2000s. Not because their music was bad. They had plenty of great songs to go around, but Layne Staley was slowly withering away from heroin addiction, and it didn’t look like anything was going to stop him. While Dirt served to document his spiral, Jar of Flies was when we were just left with sadness over where he would be going.
Of all the songs about Staley’s personal habits, ‘Nutshell’ might be the most haunting. It might have been easy to see Staley playing a character in other songs, but not so much here. There’s no question that this is about him tackling his demons, and he leaves nothing to the imagination as he talks about fighting his battle alone and feeling much better if he were dead.
The studio version always packs a punch, but the live version might be even harder to take. You might separate the artist from the art when you can, but there’s no escape when you have the lonely addict right in front of your face, clearly struggling to keep it together. These songs might have helped people get over their own drug habits, but ‘Nutshell’ is more than just a cautionary tale. It’s a man writing a tribute song for himself just before he gives in to his dark side.
1. ‘Something in the Way’ – Nirvana
There’s probably no one on this Earth who will be able to know what it was like to be Kurt Cobain. Before he had even gotten famous, Cobain was already going through struggles with his mental state, and when you combine that with millions of people looking to you as the next rock god, it’s going to do your head in even more. We’ll never know what made him feel so tortured, but if there was one thing that could put us in that headspace, it’s probably ‘Something in the Way’.
While this might be ignoring ‘Polly’ and the entire MTV Unplugged performance, the studio version of ‘Something in the Way’ is still one of the darkest recordings to come out of the 1990s. Since most of it was recorded with Cobain barely whispering the lyrics, it does truly feel like you’re entering into his mind, singing about an obstacle in his life that he can never quite shake.
Even though a new generation is getting to know the song through its use in The Batman, it’s more important to look at the human behind the song rather than the great soundtrack for Bruce Wayne. ‘Something in the Way’ might not seem like it says much, but when you’re talking about the loneliness that came from Generation X, that chorus may as well be a mantra for every kid touched by Cobain’s music.
