08/30/2021 16:00
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Updated 08/30/2021 4:00 PM
30 years ago
, just a few weeks apart, they released
Ten
, Pearl Jam's debut album;
and
Nevermind
, Nirvana's consecration plaque.
Two works that would cause
the worldwide explosion of the grunge sound
, the musical style originated in the prosperous industrial city of Seattle, through which the so-called Generation X manifested their existential anguish.
The
distorted and strident guitars, the catchy melodies and the devastating lyrics
of grunge expressed in the aforementioned bands, which were joined by Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, among others;
appeared in response to a decade marked by the synth and shake hair pop party.
And also the boom of phallic fun proposed by the so-called hair metal, with Poison, Bon Jovi, Cinderella and Twisted Sister, among some of its savvy exponents.
Kurt Cobain's ragged scream became a trademark of the Nirvana sound.
Photo AP Photo / Robert Sorbo
A show of boredom
But this musical genre was also the jaded cry that appeared in the United States in all its splendor, at the beginning of the '90s, after several years of neoliberal policies applied by republican governments, which fed a whole
generation dominated by consumerism, individualism and cynicism
.
Precisely, grunge broke through with worldwide force at a time when this discourse emanating from the North seemed to become hegemonic in the face of the "unquestionable evidence" provided by
the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet bloc
, which the political scientist Francis Fukuyama summarized with the totalizing expression "The end of history", with which he titled his famous book.
"
People got to know grunge in 1991 but it had been brewing for some time
in Seattle, in the northwestern United States, which was a city that had a very strong industrial boom from the '70s and that made it one of the the most developed cities in the country ", journalist Alfredo Rosso explained to Télam.
Eddie Vedder, head of Pearl Jam: A response to consumerism that ended up generating a phenomenal business.
Photo AP, PL, BL, KD, RTR1998
And he pointed out more precisely: "That is to say that there was economic prosperity but, on the other hand,
there was a whole mass of young people who felt a little alienated
by the lack of opportunities to give a creative orientation to their life. The solution for that existential crisis once again was rock music. "
The end of the "yuppies"
For his part, the writer and philosopher Gito Minore expanded that the so-called Generation X emerged after years of neoliberal governments in the United States, as
a stage after the appearance of the "yuppies"
, the young consumerist and individualist executives.
"Generation X was a label to call the 'post-yuppies'. They were also individualistic, but nihilistic. There was that feeling of being alone," said Minore.
At this point, Rosso positioned himself differently, noting that "that Generation X, who identified with the soulless lyrics of (Kurt) Cobain, was not so much nihilistic, but rather
critical of himself, of the society around him. and relationships
".
As the lead singer of Soundgarden, Chris Cornell was another of the genre's iconic artists.
Photo Chris Pizzello / Invision / AP
"There is a hint of irony, but also sadness, in
that feeling that is very similar to the Sex Pistols 'No Future'
, in the midst of the punk fury that occurred in 1977," the journalist warned.
A mix of styles
On a sound level, grunge brought together different elements, including
hard rock and pop melodies
;
to which factors more linked to the attitude and punk anger and an "unsightly" were added.
"
That Seattle rock has several tributary agents.
On one side there was the hard rock of Black Sabbath, the hard blues of Led Zeppelin, that debauchery that Iggy Pop's The Stooges had, and this combined with a punk attitude midway between The Sex Pistols and West Coast groups like Black Flag or Los Death Kennedys, "Rosso analyzed.
But social and political context, musical influences and attitudes are intertwined when it comes to deconstructing this genre in greater depth, because
the aesthetic contrary to the glamorous, the expressions in the lyrics and the sound made up an indissoluble
and, almost, non-negotiable whole. .
"It was a necessary move at the end of a decade that, from the musical point of view, had started with a lot of momentum and then, as far as rock is concerned, it had waned a bit. There was glam metal or hair metal, which was fun but it lacked that more lyrically committed thing that historically had the rock of other decades, "said Rosso.
And he added: "
Grunge gives back a little that sense of belonging and orphanhood
that that generation that grows up in the late '80s and early' 90s feels," the journalist added.
Grunge, not punk
But although all the sound paths "especially because of the strident distortions", philosophical and aesthetic find parallels with the punk movement, which occurred just over ten years before the grunge boom, there were some substantial differences between both currents.
On the one hand,
with grunge that idea of "do it yourself" that ruled punk no longer ran too much
, which led to much more competent musicians, although, as Rosso pointed out, "without the need for great samples of virtuosity, but rather always at the service of music ".
The reasons for disagreement expressed in the lyrics were also different because while punk music pointed to intense social criticism,
grunge was not focused on questioning politics
or defining itself as economically marginalized, but on something more existential, related to the purposes in the music. life.
In opposition to the consumerism of the '80s and the glamor in the music industry,
grunge also positioned itself as an "unsightly" aesthetic
, since its main figures dressed in the same way their fans could do on a daily basis, perhaps inspired in Creedence Clearwater Revival or in Neil Young, two of the great references of the genre.
Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994 and the consequent dissolution of Nirvana, in addition to the disintegration of other groups, and the strong irruption of other genres, such as
Britpop, marked the decline of grunge in the second half of that decade
, beyond the stay in the foreground of the Pearl Jam and Soundgarden scene.
However, various analysts do not hesitate to affirm that grunge was
the last great revolution offered by rock culture
.
"I do not know if it was the last important move, but it has some foundation if you see that there was not another one as significant. There were pockets, like Britpop, that although they had very popular bands, the truth is that you will not see boys with T-shirts of Oasis or Blur, "said Rosso, who accepted that" in that sense, it was
the last move that produced a very strong emotional effect
. "
Source: Télam / Hernani Natale
ES
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