Grunge

"Grunge" is the story of the freewheeling music scene born in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1980s. It began as anti-everything, scorning the decadence of heavy metal and rallying against the nihilism and violence of punk rock. Steadfastly individualist, early grunge bands like Skin Yard and The Melvins had no interest in writing catchy songs to get on the radio. The critical year for grunge was 1991, when three seminal albums were released: Pearl Jam's "Ten", Soundgarden's "Badmotorfinger" and Nirvana's "Nevermind". All were breakthroughs, played endlessly on pop radio and MTV, and the bands were plastered across the covers of Rolling Stone and even "Newsweek" and "Time". Grunge had arrived. But Kurt Cobain was embarrassed by the grunge tag and refused to be lumped in with the other bands who belonged to the scene, so much so that a minor feud developed between him and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder. Meanwhile, Cobain was spiralling further into drug addiction; by 1994, the reluctant prophet of grunge was dead. Though hugely influential, grunge was shortlived - it was a movement that invented and destroyed itself almost at the same time.
Top rock journalist Kyle Anderson has produced a lively, informed account of a moment in history after which pop music was never the same again.