3 Overplayed Grunge Songs From the 90s You Want To Forget but Can’t

Even the greatest hits become tiresome from too much exposure. And the 90s certainly played these grunge songs to death.

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Of course, any band is lucky to have a single played to death. But for fans, it can all be a bit too much. Still, you must acknowledge a well-written tune when you hear it, and these three grunge hits got overplayed for good reason.

So if you are of a certain age, the brain has likely committed these endlessly repeated tunes to memory. Probably too late to forget them now.  

“Creep” by Stone Temple Pilots

Stone Temple Pilots, with Scott Weiland, were a stellar band. Many thought STP had jumped on the grunge bandwagon, but I always thought they were too talented for the accusation to stick. Robert and Dean DeLeo used a combination of sophisticated chord progressions and classic rock to create some of the biggest tunes of the 90s. “Creep” became a defining song, a massive hit, and so overplayed by modern rock radio that it makes you want to forget it.

“Even Flow” by Pearl Jam

The music video for “Even Flow” begins with Eddie Vedder raging at the lighting guy. The band then rips into one of its most iconic riffs. Though it took a while for Pearl Jam’s debut album to catch on, once it did, you couldn’t escape “Even Flow”, “Alive”, “Jeremy”, and “Black”. Ten deserves high praise for how revolutionary it sounded at the time. Meanwhile, on one album, Stone Gossard proved he was the riff master of the 90s. Unfortunately, radio programmers chose to drill one of his best grunge riffs and songs into our heads in an effort to ruin it.

“Hunger Strike” by Temple Of The Dog

Temple Of The Dog became an accidental supergroup. When Chris Cornell led members of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam on an album in tribute to his late friend Andrew Wood, neither band was a household name. When grunge exploded, the record label realized, after the fact, what they had in the catalog. But thanks to “Hunger Strike” getting overplayed, many listeners weren’t going hungry for it any longer. They had had their fill.

Nonetheless, this one-off album was a full-circle moment for Seattle’s rock legends. Drummer Matt Cameron had played on Pearl Jam’s demo, but Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament’s new band was born out of the tragedy of Wood’s death and the end of Mother Love Bone. Without the tragedy, would we even know the name Eddie Vedder?

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