If you were a kid watching MTV in 1991, you would have noticed a shift as Riki Rachtman premiered grunge videos alongside the hair metal bands he hung out with on the Sunset Strip. So what was going on in 1991 as summer turned to fall?
Videos by American Songwriter
Between late August and early October, Pearl Jam’s Ten, Nirvana’s Nevermind, and Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger arrived in record stores. That September, Alice In Chains’ 1990 album Facelift reached Gold status, becoming the first grunge album to do so.
Revisiting the year grunge broke, here are four songs most 90s kids—at least the rock kids—can’t forget.
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana
Nirvana’s record label, DGC Records, viewed “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as the first step in growing the band’s audience. No one saw it having crossover appeal, let alone being a culture-shifting anthem. However, once exposed to listeners, it became an indelible hit. This song opened the commercial floodgates for grunge, and soon, other Seattle bands had hit records of their own. While the other bands on this list are important parts of the grunge piece, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” remains the most transformative rock single from the era.
“Outshined” by Soundgarden
On Soundgarden’s major label debut, Louder Than Love, the band’s grunge leaned closer to heavy metal, and their videos found a hard rock audience on MTV’s Headbangers Ball. Yet two years later, Nirvana’s success created a wave that turned into a tsunami. “Outshined” became an unlikely hit, with its odd time signature connecting doom metal with alternative rock. Soundgarden straddled the line between incoming and outgoing scenes, with the emerging popularity of grunge, and subsequent tours with Guns N’ Roses and Skid Row.
“Alive” by Pearl Jam
“Alive” felt like a revolution built with classic rock DNA. Eddie Vedder’s semi-biographical narrative and emotional baritone are backed by a Hendrix-at-Monterey jam worthy of the band’s name. The track sounded familiar yet different. And also highlights how absurd it was to lump all these bands under the category of “grunge.” Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Nirvana were very different bands. But together, they utterly transformed the sound of rock music in 1991 with seminal releases.
“Man In The Box” by Alice In Chains
Imagine being Firehouse and releasing “Love Of A Lifetime” in 1991. Say you’re on tour somewhere in America and you turn on MTV in a hotel room. And you see the video for “Man In The Box”, which looks as though it could have been directed by Leatherface. Jerry Cantrell’s guitar riff resembles some kind of forbidden blues as Layne Staley howls darkly. Alice In Chains may have had distant roots in hair metal. But the glitz was gone, and here’s Staley singing a tune about censorship and “eating meat as seen through the eyes of a doomed calf.”
Photo by Paul Bergen/Redferns/Getty Images
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