Was 1991 the best alt-rock year in music history?
The idea of alternative rock music becoming popular feels like one of the biggest oxymorons in the world. This was the type of music meant for people who wanted something left-of-the-dial back in the day, so when it started making waves on the charts and people started embracing it, by definition, it couldn’t be alternative to anything anymore. That doesn’t mean there aren’t a handful of success stories over the years, and right as 1991 began, the world of underground music was in for a hell of a ride.
Then again, it was already beginning to get a little bit ridiculous on the mainstream side of things. The hair metal movement had become absolutely ridiculous with bands like Cinderella releasing albums this year, but there were also veterans making some of their more challenging records as well, like Sting tackling the fallout of his father’s death on The Soul Cages. It seemed more than a little bit dismal, but there were signs that things were starting to change.
Alice in Chains had scored their first major hits a year before with ‘Man in the Box’, but there were bands with a slightly strange angle already making waves, be it The Divinyls talking about touching themselves or The Butthole Surfers doing pretty much anything they wanted on their album piouhgd. But Out of Time by REM was the first to throw down the gauntlet for alt-rock in the mainstream, riding in on a mandolin on ‘Losing My Religion’.
That was strange enough, but there were also rumblings from Seattle. The Pacific Northwest was far from the most in-demand rock spot at the time, and yet Temple of the Dog had the makings of two great bands in it. But we’ll come back to that a little later. That movement was ready to explode, but there were still a few surprises on the rise, like Slint’s Spiderland giving us a clinic on creating tortured music and Blue Lines by Massive Attack taking hip-hop in a different direction.
The problem was that while many of those bands were great, not all of them saw airplay on the charts. EMF had ‘Unbelievable’ crack the hit parade, and Violent Femmes kept on keeping on, but it wasn’t until the summer that things began to heat up, whether that was Smashing Pumpkins releasing their debut or Primus proving that weirdness had its place on the charts with Sailing the Seas of Cheese.
It might not seem like much looking at the charts today, but these bands were merely putting al the pieces into place for the world got hit with a musical sucker punch. Bands like Metallica and Guns N’ Roses were still putting out classics throughout the year off of their albums, but when the fall began, fans were treated to the greatest run of classics in a row, with Pearl Jam’s Ten, Nirvana’s Nevermind, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik and Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger being released within weeks of each other.
That alone would be enough to put those few weeks in musical Valhalla, but the music wasn’t what mattered. It was about how the kids were responding to it, and once ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ launched on MTV, everyone suddenly felt the need to throw out their old Winger records and start doing the deep dive on other alternative bandslike Tad and Melvins, or summoning up the courage to ask a record store clerk who the Butthole Surfers were.
But that wasn’t even the end of it. Right at the tail end of the year, U2 went from being some of the most pompous rock stars in the world to one of the faces of alternative music, with Bono using his platform to make fun of every celebrity he could on Achtung Baby. No band should have been able to get away with that, but by becoming ingrained in new sounds, the Irish legends managed to sound even cooler than they were when performing in stadiums.
And while not everything released during this time was selling in droves, anyone in the know also figured out the legendary bands that were on the rise. Before Britpop was even an idea, Kurt Cobain was talking about how much he loved the song ‘She’s So High’ by an up-and-coming band called Blur, and despite never seeing the kind of mainstream success as everyone else, Loveless by My Bloody Valentine might be one of the most hypnotically gorgeous records to come out during the year as well.
There are countless other records to cover on this subject, but the biggest takeaway from 1991 should be the variety of material that’s under the alternative umbrella. None of these bands ended up sounding like each other for too long, but that was every reason why the alternative movement worked. Everyone liked their music to be put into their own separate categories, but as Generation X was on the rise, they knew it was better to sample any music that lit a fire in them.
A timeline tracking alt-rock in 1991:
March 1991
REM goes mainstream
After years of being underground darlings, Out of Time took REM to the top with ‘Losing My Religion’ and turned soft-rock on its head.
There was still room for balladeers on the charts, but in terms of soft-rock, everyone from Hootie and the Blowfish to Counting Crows would be drawing from their playbook for a more gentle form of alternative.
February 1991
Temple of the Dog is released
After the tragic end of Andy Wood, Temple of the Dog emerge to pay tribute to the grunge icon.
No one might have known the kind of band they were dealing with, but this was a smorgasbord of grunge icons before the genre had a name, from Chris Cornell’s shrieking vocals to a fresh-faced kid new on the scene named Eddie Vedder.
While grunge had not yet begun, it served as a taste of things to come.
April 1991
Pumpkin Season
While not grunge, Smashing Pumpkins showed signs of change with the release of Gish. It definitely had the same trappings of alternative with feelings of dejection, but songs like ‘Siva’ and ‘I Am One’ made them fit right at home when the rest of the Seattle scene followed suit.
Little did we know this was only the first taste of Billy Corgan’s powers.
April 1991
Trip-hop enters the picture
With alt-rock still being born, Massive Attack gives fans an alternative to straight hip-hop on Blue Lines.
Most of the biggest hip-hop outfits of the time were already veering towards a more underground sound, but whereas A Tribe Called Quest stayed strictly in the hip-hop sphere most of the time, this strange blend of electronica, hip-hop and the slightest garnish of alternative music became a lot more prevalent once Damon Albarn embrace his inner primate.
May 1991
Getting crazy with the cheese-whiz
Primus turns weirdness into an art form on Sailing the Seas of Cheese. From strange time signatures to basslines that would require Olympian-like strength to pull, this was the blend of Rush and Frank Zappa no one realised they wanted. Faith No More was weird enough, but Les Claypool let everyone know the 1990s was the era to let the freaks flag fly.
July 1991
Feeling Slappy
Years before their big break, Green Day’s compilation 1039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours laid the groundwork for pop-punk.
Green Day was far from the first punk band to use pop hooks, but pieces of their sound were already locked in from the very beginning on ‘Going to Pasalacqua’. Their scene may have looked down on the mainstream, but the rest of the 1990s would belong to their brand of punk.
July 1991
Turning towards Seattle
Mudhoney turn in their classic Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. Despite being one of the less recognised names in the grunge compared to Nirvana and Pearl Jam, Mark Arm’s blending of punk and dirty sounding guitars is the purest definition of what the Seattle scene was supposed to be.
This was a good sign of things to come, but for any grunge fans, you might want to fasten your seatbelts here
August 1991
At your own leisure
They may be more shoegaze than Britpop here, but Blur gave everyone a taste of their brand of rock on Leisure. The jaded version of retro 1960s pop wasn’t in the cards yet, but it was enough to catch the eye of Noel Gallagher years before he’d be trading jabs with them in the press.
Oasis was a distant prediction, but at least they had a fan in Kurt Cobain when ‘She’s So High’ dropped.
August 1991
A perfect ten
So as we start the autumn that changed alt-rock, Pearl Jam arose from Temple of the Dog to give us their mammoth debut, Ten. With massive rock hooks and Mike McCready’s solos, it was classic rockers’ gateway into alt-rock, especially with Eddie Vedder’s soulful yarl.
It may have been parodied by countless imitators afterwards, but there’s only one person that can manage to hit the heights of ‘Jeremy’.
September 1991
The danceable bangers
Primal Scream fashion their own brand of danceable rock and roll on Screamadelica. There had been elements of shoegaze music and the occasional psychedelic rock outfit coming to the forefront, but this felt like what the biggest names of the 1960s would have made had they used electronic elements rather than a distortion pedal.
A good start for the British scene, but Creation Records would get a shot in arm a few years down the road.
September 1991
We want the funk
Red Hot Chili Peppers perfect their funk sound on Blood Sugar Sex Magik. From the nimble bass grooves of Flea to the fantastic ballads like ‘Under the Bridge’ and ‘I Could Have Lied’, the Peppers finally reached the peak of their powers and showed everyone they could have some heart.
This is an unintentional greatest hits record, and yet it wasn’t even the best album released that day.
September 1991
The album that changed it all
The same day the Chili Peppers scored a victory, Nirvana’s Nevermind changed everything about rock.
Although ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ didn’t have the greatest showing on the charts compared to the soppy ballads, but anyone even thinking about playing glam rock were being read their last rites once those iconic chords came in. It was about spandex once upon a time, but now grunge is in full swing.
October 1991
Visions of Zeppelin
Soundgarden was in the Seattle scene the longest, but Badmotorfinger officially made them superstars.
Their biggest hits were yet to come, but this is them at their most concentrated, from the strange tunings on ‘Rusty Cage’ to the feral energy of ‘Jesus Christ Pose’. Finally the answer the American answer to Zeppelin that we all wanted but never got.
November 1991
No love in the heart of the music
Despite shoegaze being a more underground genre, My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless becomes a massive breakout for the group. It might not be the greatest album for people to play acoustic covers of by any stretch, but their mix of distortion and noise creates a music world anyone could get lost in.
November 1991
One but not the same
For a band that should be in the conversation of alt-rock, U2 completely reinvent themselves on Achtung Baby.
Compared to their stadium-rock selves in the 1980s, the band embraced post-modern irony and gave alt-rock fans a parody of what a rock star is supposed to be. It’s no longer a gimmick; alt-rock is now a style.
The best alt-rock albums of 1991:
- 1039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours – Green Day
- 8 Way Santa – Tad
- Achtung Baby – U2
- Alanis – Alanis Morissette
- Badmotorfinger – Soundgarden
- Blood Sugar Sex Magik – Red Hot Chili Peppers
- Blue Lines – Massive Attack
- Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge – Mudhoney
- Forbidden Places – Meat Puppets
- Girlfriend – Matthew Sweet
- Gish – Smashing Pumpkins
- Just For a Day – Slowdive
- Kill Uncle – Morrissey
- Leisure – Blur
- Loveless – My Bloody Valentine
- Mr Bungle – Mr Bungle
- Nevermind – Nirvana
- Out of Time – REM
- Piouhgd – Butthole Surfers
- Pretty on the Inside – Hole
- Sailing the Seas of Cheese – Primus
- Screamadelica – Primal Scream
- Spiderland – Slint
- Road Apples – Tragically Hip
- Steady Diet of Nothing – Fugazi
- Ten – Pearl Jam
- Temple of the Dog – Temple of the Dog
- The Drill – Wire
- The Forest – David Byrne
- The Pod – Ween
- Trompe le Monde – Pixies
- Uncle Anaethesia – Screaming Trees
- Why Do Birds Sing? – Violent Femmes
