Where are thou, Grunge?

Don’t you have sometimes the feeling, that nowadays, the songs seem to be all alike, the verses are all expressing the same thoughts and they are all supporting the mainstream music tendencies: be famous, be rich, be young and look pissed off ?

Where are the sincere lyrics, the band’s unkempt appearances and rejection of theatrics; where is that “I don’t care” attitude? Sure, the anger is there, the hatred, the angst, but where is the dark humor, the clever lyrics that mean nothing but makes you wonder over their importance? Like in “In bloom” when Nirvana makes fun of their own audience who “sing along” or the Mudhoney track, “Touch me, I’m sick” full of sarcasm and dark-humor.

Layne Staley, the late singer of Alice in Chains said in one of his interviews: “There’s no huge, deep message in any of the songs. It was just what was going on in my head right then. “ And that’s what these songs were: instant thoughts, and instant, pure feelings. Anything, whether it said only “we’re all alone” sounded just right with the heavily distorted electric guitars and contrasting song dynamics.

It all started with Andrew Wood, the “godfather of grunge”, and his band Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone in the eighties. The new style raised awareness, and it didn’t end with Andrew’s death. The new movement could only end with another singer’s death in ’94 with Kurt Cobain’s alleged suicide. But I think grunge pulled its last straw in ’97, when Soundgarden disbanded. Either way, grunge really is dead. Gone. Vanished.

And now we’re stuck with emo bands and angry teenagers head banging and making noise…