Which "Grunge" songs hold up?

[TheBig3]

I was driving around yesterday with some rock station playing and they put on "Creep" by Stone Temple Pilots. It felt like a relic of a bygone era. While some other songs from that period are almost part of the American Rock canon. So, just a general question, but does the Grunge-era feel dated at this point? And who, if anyone, still holds up?

[Janszoon]

I didn't really like grunge much when it was popular contemporary music and most of it feels extremely dated to me now. I still can enjoy some Nirvana, some Pearl Jam, and a couple Alice in Chains songs, but that's about it. Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Candlebox, Silverchair, Blind Melon, Bush, et al. didn't do it for me back then and still do nothing for me. Even a lot of the more "legit" stuff like Mudhoney, Dinosaur Jr., Meat Puppets, and Screaming Trees (though I do like Mark Lanegan's voice) never did much for me and I never seek them out now. The Melvins and Tad were two that still kind of seem like shit I'd be into, and I have nothing against them per se, but I've never heard anything by them that I really loved.

[Lexi Darling]

It's definitely dated in the sense that it's clearly rooted in the cultural and musical hallmarks of the early 90s. But I don't think that's a bad thing in itself and I don't think that means it can't hold up as great music.

I think a lot of Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains songs all hold up as just great rock songs. I didn't get into any of those bands until I was in my teens in the early-mid 2000s, well after any era where they were relevant. I wasn't conscious of music during the grunge era, so in a way it's always sounded dated to me by default since I cut my teeth on nu-metal and pop punk in the late 90s and early 2000s. Grunge was already kinda part of the rock canon by the time I got heavily into music in my teens. But like I said I don't view being dated as necessarily a bad thing.

There's a lot of grunge I don't like much (never was a big STP or Pearl Jam fan for example) but it's not because it sounds any more dated, it's just a preference thing.

[Janszoon]

One band from that era that I like, though I didn't hear them until twenty years after the fact, is Superconductor. If more grunge had rocked out like this back in the day I think I would've liked it a lot more:

[robhr]

As far as the big names go the only one I was ever really into was Nirvana.

I've been meaning to explore Dinosaur Jr. I think I've heard a bit but not much. I think.

[SGR]

Grunge is such a loosey-goosey genre:

Hole still holds up

If you consider Siamese Dream to be grunge, then yeah, that still holds up too.

[Psy-Fi]

The only grunge groups I was into in the late 80's to the mid 90's were Nirvana, Tad, and Soundgarden. I checked out a lot of other bands in the genre at that time but those three were the ones that stuck and were my favorites by far.

I still have all the albums I bought by those three bands but I haven't listened to anything by any of them for several years. I'm pretty sure they'd all hold up to the test of time if I played any of them now.

[DJChameleon]

I still listen to Soundgarden and it doesn't feel dated to me. I just like to hear Chris. I go from listening to Soundgarden to Audioslave back to back from time to time and it's all good to me.

[Janszoon]

Grunge is such a loosey-goosey genre:

Hole still holds up

If you consider Siamese Dream to be grunge, then yeah, that still holds up too.

"Violet" still mostly holds up for me. I didn't like "Cherub Rock" when it was new and now it kind of makes me nostalgic. I don't know if that's an example of it holding up well, but that's happened with a lot of the music that was popular during my high school years (and childhood and early adulthood too).

[Lexi Darling]

I still love the first two Smashing Pumpkins albums. I sometimes wish they had continued in the direction of Siamese Dream, the mash of shoegaze and psychedelia and Sabbath and alt-whine rock they captured on that early stuff is so unique for its time.

[Janszoon]

I still love the first two Smashing Pumpkins albums. I sometimes wish they had continued in the direction of Siamese Dream, the mash of shoegaze and psychedelia and Sabbath and alt-whine rock they captured on that early stuff is so unique for its time.

I've never been able to really get into them. My brother loved Gish and Lull when they came out and the way he described them made them sound amazing, so I borrowed his tapes and I was pretty underwhelmed. Then they got really popular with Siamese Dream and hearing them so much made me like them even less. That said, there are a few of songs of theirs that I've liked over the years. "Rhinoceros" is decent except for the guitar shredding stuff. I used to like "Disarm" until I got tired of hearing it everywhere. I liked "Ava Adore" when it was new, but I don't think it's aged well. I've always liked "1979" no matter how many times I've heard it. And now I kind of like "Cherub Rock", I guess, because it gives me high school nostalgia.

[Lexi Darling]

I discovered them around my freshman year of high school (2003-2004) and they meant a lot to teenage me. I definitely only really listen to them nostalgically these days, but I have a ton of fond memories. I connected with a friend who I hung out with a lot in high school (and briefly dated in college) and we used to get high and have rooftop stargazing sessions to Siamese Dream. We also saw them (well, Billy Corgan and the Billy Corgan Band) in 2010 and that was a very fun experience.

But I get you, there's a lot of stuff that was popular in my youth that I just didn't like. For me, just as an example, I never liked the Strokes, Interpol, Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, a lot of the wave of 2000s indie always left me cold and wondering what I was missing that made it so incredible and the immense, inescapable praise of them made me dislike them more. So I feel you on not getting the hype for some things.

[Janszoon]

I discovered them around my freshman year of high school (2003-2004) and they meant a lot to teenage me. I definitely only really listen to them nostalgically these days, but I have a ton of fond memories. I connected with a friend who I hung out with a lot in high school (and briefly dated in college) and we used to get high and have rooftop stargazing sessions to Siamese Dream. We also saw them (well, Billy Corgan and the Billy Corgan Band) in 2010 and that was a very fun experience.

But I get you, there's a lot of stuff that was popular in my youth that I just didn't like. For me, just as an example, I never liked the Strokes, Interpol, Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, a lot of the wave of 2000s indie always left me cold and wondering what I was missing that made it so incredible and the immense, inescapable praise of them made me dislike them more. So I feel you on not getting the hype for some things.

It's interesting how that goes. People have such different experience with music at different ages. For me, Smashing Pumpkins (and a lot of other bands mentioned in this thread) were so popular and inescapable when I was in high school that it made me dislike them. For you, I assume, Smashing Pumpkins were older music that you were discovering for the first time. The equivalent for me would be a band like Bauhaus, who I "discovered" at around 15 (though I had already been a fan of Love & Rockets since I was 11 or 12) and ended up being one of my favorite bands. Then there's that weird flip that happens to people when they approach their mid-twenties, where popular music no longer feels so inescapable and you may not even really know what is or isn't popular. That's the age I was in the early 00s, and I really loved the first Strokes album. But I bet it had a lot less context for me than it did for you. I knew a couple of people who liked them, but that's about it. I knew they weren't an obscure band but I didn't really know their level of popularity. Because of that, there was no hype for me going in really.

[SGR]

For a long time, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was my all time favorite album. I discovered them around 2009 (I was in ninth grade), so you can imagine how refreshing it was to hear that over the contemporary music of the time. They're still a favorite band of mine. Love em to death. Seen 'em in concert twice.

[Janszoon]

For a long time, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was my all time favorite album. I discovered them around 2009 (I was in ninth grade), so you can imagine how refreshing it was to hear that over the contemporary music of the time. They're still a favorite band of mine . Love em to death. Seen 'em in concert twice.

I don't remember 2009 having a lack of good music and I've never liked that album, but to each their own. We all have music that blew our minds at that age!