3 Grunge Songs That Make You Rewind To Hear What They Just Said

Grunge had no pretension. The rock subgenre from the late 1980s and early 1990s wasn’t afraid to speak its mind. Its biggest names wrote songs about disillusionment, drugs, and depression. And yet somehow fans all over the world ate it up!

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Here below, we wanted to dive into three grunge songs from the 1990s that had us scratching our heads. Even for grunge, these songs were shocking and surprising. Indeed, these are three grunge songs that make you rewind to hear what they just said.

“Polly” by Nirvana from ‘Nevermind’ (1991)

When the alien race looks back at human history 12,000 years from now, they’ll wonder just how Nirvana became as popular as they did. The band wrote some of the saddest and most depressing songs during the decade. It’s a wonder they were all over MTV and other pop culture outlets. Take, for example, “Polly”, from the group’s 1991 LP Nevermind. Its subject matter—the abduction of a 14 year old girl—is almost too heinous to write about here. It’s so tough to listen to, you have to rewind it to make sure you can believe your own ears.

“Yellow Ledbetter” by Pearl Jam (Single, 1992)

We go from the difficult to listen to all the way to the difficult to comprehend with this offering. Indeed, this 1992 single is literally gibberish at times. It feels as if Pearl Jam lead vocalist Eddie Vedder is playing with his fans. He’s showing he doesn’t even need to use complete words or complete sentences to write a hit track. It’s so wild that it makes you rewind to wonder if he’s actually trying to pull off what he’s doing.

“Jennifer’s Body” by Hole from ‘Live Through This’ (1994)

Courtney Love was the Queen of Grunge in the 1990s. She matched her husband Kurt Cobain’s song for the most depressing song during the decade. Her band Hole boasted a number of transcendent, mind-bending tracks. And one of those was the 1994 offering, “Jennifer’s Body”. Similar to “Polly”, the track deals with some pretty tough subject matter—physical abuse. Yet, it’s so catchy. That’s grunge for you! The genre juxtaposed harsh ideas with stirring music. It was a combo you had to revisit over and over.

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