I have excellent news for the world. There's no such thing as grunge.

It's the 20th anniversary today of the release of Nirvana's Nevermind and that's got me thinking about the whole "grunge" phenomenon of the 90's.  I've already been into why Nevermind was such a defining album in the 90's so I won't rehash that here.  Head over here to read that post.

I think that the way Nirvana exploded took the music industry, particularly the marketing side of it, by surprise.  Nobody expected it to happen and the prevailing trend in music at the time was definitely pop.  Suddenly, here were these punk kids making a lot of noise, selling a lot of records, and someone needed to capitalize on it.

Oh well, whatever, Nevermind, 20 years on.

20 years ago this year Nirvana released their sophmore album Nevermind, an album that somehow changed the course of music in the 90’s.  But why did it become such a popular, well-loved album; an album that an entire generation is able to reminisce on?

Let’s face it, it wasn’t the greatest album ever made – musically it was simplistic, Kurt could barely sing, the ideas weren’t original and the band themselves admitted as much.

Regardless of the facts, it did go on to become an album that effected a generation – from their attitudes and values (or at least confirmed those attitudes and values as legitimate), to lifestyle, to clothing.