Grunge

“Even flow, thoughts arrive like butterflies.” Lyrics like Pearl Jam’s 1992 hit single Even Flow highly impacted the early 90’s as the Seattle grunge rock movement grew more commercial. Bands such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Smashing Pumpkins, Sound Garden, and Stone Temple Pilots dominated that day in age with heavily distorted guitar playing and lyrics with powerful meaning.

Grunge vocalist Kurt Cobain (Nirvana) and Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam) battled for the spotlight, filling outdoor amphitheaters with thousands, and magically the stories told in their lyrics connected with people in many ways. Plain and simple, the goal was to make music, whether a band made fame or not.

Eventually, as usual music evolved, new trends moved in. The death of Kurt Cobain in 1994 marked an unofficial down turn in the success of that type of rock and roll.       

15 years later, we live in a musical era that consists primarily of rap, country, metal, and different types of rock that do not make anywhere close to the impact that the grunge movement did.

“Grunge wasn’t just music it was a style of life. I am very fortunate to have gotten to experience a band like Pearl Jam live at the height of the grunge hysteria,” says history teacher Jason Castro, who grew up in the Seattle area during the grunge height.

“I like the rhythm today, but the ‘f’ word being used as an adjective over and over again is a little much,” Castro also stated.

Today, musical talent exists just as much or if not more then it did 15 years ago, but it is taken for granted. It seems now the majority of musicians don’t even write their own music. A song writer is hired to write songs, and the musicians perform what is given to them.

All early 90’s grunge bands wrote their own music. They were gifted with the talent to compose their own lyrical music, and that is why many songs have gone down in history as some of the greatest rock and roll songs of all time.