What was the best-selling grunge song of the 1990s?
There was a lot going on in the 1990s. Girl groups and boy bands were running pop. Hip-hop was hot, Britpop was hotter. Classic rock obviously hasn’t left the scene but was now a big umbrella with metal, indie, and even pop punk all hiding under it.
But amongst it all, there was a grumpy adolescent, peeking through, dressed in flannel: grunge.
The emergence of grunge, like the emergence of any subculture, is impossible to truly pinpoint. From the hazy days of the 1960s, when rock and roll was all sunshine and flowers, it morphed into the sex and drugs of the 1970s, the darker sex and drugs of the 1980s, when punk got involved, got depressed, and became post-punk, and then, by the 1990s, the mixing pot was murky.
If there had to be a recipe, it would probably be a combination of rock and roll, punk, post-punk and heavier elements of metal. Throw in a worsening global economy and the overdose and tragic death of countless cultural stars, and add in a growing sense of hopelessness and apathy amongst a youth with no hippie era to rile them passionate about war against an enduring landscape of global conflict worsened by politicians who cared little about anyone’s future but their own. Garnish with a nice sprinkling of the rise of independent labels, venues, and a general DIY ethos as the music industry started to become less welcoming to small bands or working-class musicians, and there you have it: grunge.
Initially, the recipe was cooking up in the states mostly, popping out of suburban towns, especially around the limbo states like Washington and in towns like Seattle and Olympia that were big enough to host a scene but be stuck in the shadows. Here, garages became noisy with the sound of new bands that would soon be the sound of the future when, ironically, the music industry that had caused these kids’ isolated DIY mindset, came desperately looking for them all after independent labels like Sub Pop began doing pretty well for themselves by backing the underdogs.
Quickly, grunge was everywhere. It became more than just a musical genre; it was also a moment in fashion and film too, where the leading artists were icons of movement. Their wins represented more than just hit singles but an unlikely victory that still inspires artists today.
What was the best-selling grunge song?
If you only had one guess, you’d probably get it right.
In a rare instance of cultural impact and sales matching up, Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was the best-selling grunge track of the 1990s, having shifted over 16 million units worldwide, making it even one of the best-selling tracks of all time in any genre.
And that was really the band’s issue with it. It was absolutely everywhere, and throughout their career, it was just a constant call for that one song.
“I can barely, especially on a bad night like tonight, get through ‘Teen Spirit’. I literally want to throw my guitar down and walk away,” Cobain said when he’d had enough, adding, “I can’t pretend to have a good time playing it.”
…and what was the best-selling grunge album of the 1990s?
The top album is a different story, though, and one that could piss off the purists. Technically, the best-selling grunge record of the era is Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette, an artist that plenty would rather define as pop than anything else.
But on her third album, Morissette leaned into the heavier sounds and her alternative rock influences, joining the blossoming subculture with a record that has sold over 33 million copies.
That made it not only the fourth best-selling album of the decade and the top grunge album but also the 14th best-selling record of all time.
