grunge
A rock subgenre that emerged from Seattle in the late 1980s, combining heavy metal riffs with punk attitude and introspective, often anguished lyrics.
In Depth
Grunge fused the distorted heaviness of Black Sabbath and the Melvins with the raw energy of punk rock and the melodic sensibility of indie rock. The genre coalesced in Seattle's underground scene, centered on the Sub Pop record label, with bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains developing a sound characterized by heavy, detuned guitars, dynamic quiet-loud-quiet structures, and vocals that ranged from mumbled introspection to full-throated screaming.
Nirvana's Nevermind (1991) catapulted grunge from underground obscurity to global cultural dominance virtually overnight, displacing hair metal and reshaping the music industry. The genre's aesthetic — flannel shirts, thrift store fashion, anti-commercial attitude — became the defining youth culture style of the early 1990s. Kurt Cobain's death in 1994 effectively ended grunge's commercial peak, but its influence on alternative rock, emo, and post-grunge continues to resonate through contemporary guitar music.
The word "grunge" was first used to describe Seattle's music scene by Mark Arm of Mudhoney in a 1981 letter to a fanzine, where he used it to describe his own band's sound self-deprecatingly.