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One song that best encapsulates grunge

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Rocagnante
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11:35a, 4/9/22
AG
Say there's someone who has no idea what grunge is and never heard it before. If you could only play them one song to best capture the sound and the, ummm …… "spirit" if you will …. of grunge, what would it be?

For me it's Slaves and Bulldozers. Damn Chris Cornell could sing!



Badmotorfinger is a great album. Just put it in and hit play.
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Sea Speed
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11:46a, 4/9/22
AG
Smells like teen spirit....
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TequilaMockingbird
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11:46a, 4/9/22
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Bruce Almighty
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11:51a, 4/9/22
AG
It may be cliche, but Smells Like Teen Spirit. If I was going to pick my favorite, it'd be Yellow Ledbetter.
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gigemags-99
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In reply to Sea Speed • 11:57a, 4/9/22
AG
Sea Speed said:
Smells like teen spirit....


EOT
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Ervin Burrell
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12:00p, 4/9/22
AG
Lithium.
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Rocagnante
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In reply to TequilaMockingbird • 12:41p, 4/9/22
AG
Great song. It's fairly recent. I figured most answers would be more from "peak grunge" 91- 95 ish.
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Brian Earl Spilner
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12:44p, 4/9/22
AG
Thought this was gonna be pages of people trying to avoid mentioning the obvious.
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Rocagnante
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In reply to Bruce Almighty • 12:45p, 4/9/22
AG
Bruce Almighty said:
It may be cliche, but Smells Like Teen Spirit. If I was going to pick my favorite, it'd be Yellow Ledbetter.


I almost put a "no Teen Spirit" clause in the OP to avoid cliche, but decided against it. Certainly a valid choice.

Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to be some hipster. I love Teen Spirit…..one of those songs I'll never turn off on turn up if I can.

Unless your name is Redstone or you lived in the Pacific NW during the late 80's that's certainly the song that brought grunge to the rest of us.
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AgPediRPh
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12:55p, 4/9/22
AG
Other than teen spirit: Why Go by Pearl Jam just sounds very stereotypical Grunge.
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Enzo The Baker
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1:11p, 4/9/22
AG
I would say Nutshell captures the grunge mood pretty perfectly too.
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Ulrich
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In reply to Rocagnante • 1:12p, 4/9/22
Rocagnante said:
Great song. It's fairly recent. I figured most answers would be more from "peak grunge" 91- 95 ish.

I think if you're going to introduce someone to something new, you have to pick something from the era it started… something else may end up being "more typical" or a better technical achievement, but there's a chronological component to putting it in a time and place.

I will always introduce people to Star Wars via the theatrical release of Episode IV for this reason. Maybe Phantom Menace is the "real" beginning, and Rogue One leads directly into Episode IV, but part of the story of Star Wars is how it developed in our world. A New Hope is the purest distillation of what Star Wars is even if other movies had better effects and visuals, more sophisticated film making, subtler storytelling techniques, better dialogue, or whatever.

There'll always be something about a '65 Shelby Cobra even when we're all driving electric flying cars.
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Ulrich
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In reply to Ulrich • 1:13p, 4/9/22
That got kinda far off topic. And I don't know much about grunge. Feel free to ignore me.
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aTm2004
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1:47p, 4/9/22
AG
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GoAgs92
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2:30p, 4/9/22
AG
AIC Would
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Rocagnante
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2:37p, 4/9/22
AG
I always thought it was cool how Kurt was totally fine with Weird Al spoofing "Smells Like Teen Spirit". I seem to remember an interview where Kurt said that was one of the moments they realized how big they'd become.

https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/kurt-cobain-reacted-weird-al-yankovics-spoof-nirvanas-smells-like-teen-spirit.html/



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superunknown
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In reply to Rocagnante • 3:07p, 4/9/22
AG
Rocagnante said:
Say there's someone who has no idea what grunge is and never heard it before. If you could only play them one song to best capture the sound and the, ummm …… "spirit" if you will …. of grunge, what would it be?

For me it's Slaves and Bulldozers. Damn Chris Cornell could sing!



Badmotorfinger is a great album. Just put it in and hit play.


co-sign. Obligatory "username checks out" goes here.
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Unforgiven94
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3:34p, 4/9/22
AG
I think In Bloom is the song I consider to be the most grunge sound off of Nevermind. But that whole album is amazing and it hard to pick one song over another from it.

Different album but I would say Rape Me is very grungy as well.
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Rocagnante
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In reply to Unforgiven94 • 3:58p, 4/9/22
AG
So many good songs on that album. Think Smells Like Teen Spirit still my favorite but I also like Breed a lot.

I think there was an awards show or live tv program where one time the started playing the first few cords of Rape Me to freak out the producers then switched to Teen Spirit .
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Rocagnante
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4:27p, 4/9/22
AG
Been kind of rediscovering Mother Love Bone recently. The lead singer Andrew Wood died of a heroin overdose literally days before their major label debut dropped. They may have been the first of the Seattle bands to land a big deal (before Nirvana). He and Chris Cornell were roommates at one point as their bands were coming up. I didn't know this until I just looked something up but the AIC song Would is actually a tribute to Andrew Wood.

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An L of an Ag
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4:33p, 4/9/22
AG
Nirvana is an obvious answer, and you'd get no argument from me. But, AIC is awesome. They were supposed to be at the Southpark Meadows Metallica concert in 1994, but backed out at the last minute because Lane Staley "broke his foot".

Candlebox replaced them. I was not impressed. To tour day, my biggest concert miss.
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EastSideAg2002
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5:38p, 4/9/22
Several STP songs besides the obvious Nirvana ones
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swimmerbabe11
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5:41p, 4/9/22
I actually thought Come as You Are is more appropriate than smells like teen spirit because the lyrics kinda explain the grunge fashion too. The whole song emanates the grunge vibe to me.
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Bruce Almighty
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7:54p, 4/9/22
AG
I've been thinking about this all day, and while my original answer was Smells Like Teen Spirit, the one song that I keep going back to is Nutshell. Many songs are dark and showcase the loneliness and despair that grunge often tries to portray, but with Nutshell, it's not just the lyrics, you can feel it in Staley's voice and in the music.
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torrid
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In reply to Sea Speed • 8:11p, 4/9/22
AG
Sea Speed said:
Smells like teen spirit....
As a person who was just a little too old for grunge, this is the obvious answer. However, that may mean it is not the best answer.
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Hubert J. Farnsworth
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In reply to Bruce Almighty • 8:54p, 4/9/22
Bruce Almighty said:
It may be cliche, but Smells Like Teen Spirit. If I was going to pick my favorite, it'd be Yellow Ledbetter.


I love Yellow Ledbetter and that is one of the songs I think of when I think of grunge. Eddie Vedder made it hard as possible to understand the lyrics in that one.
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CrottyKid
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9:25p, 4/9/22
AG
Pearl Jam - Black

If plaid flannel was a sound, that would be it.
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gggmann
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In reply to Hubert J. Farnsworth • 9:32p, 4/9/22
AG
Hubert J. Farnsworth said:
Bruce Almighty said:
It may be cliche, but Smells Like Teen Spirit. If I was going to pick my favorite, it'd be Yellow Ledbetter.


I love Yellow Ledbetter and that is one of the songs I think of when I think of grunge. Eddie Vedder made it hard as possible to understand the lyrics in that one.


"Yellow Ledbetter" is Mike McCready doing his best Jimi Hendrix impersonation. That song sounds like it could have been lifted off of Electric Ladyland or Axis: Bold as Love. Doesn't sound like grunge to me.
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Ol_Ag_02
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In reply to aTm2004 • 10:09p, 4/9/22
AG
aTm2004 said:


This is a solid dark horse candidate.
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tk for tu juan
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11:30p, 4/9/22

or

or
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tk for tu juan
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11:44p, 4/9/22
Probably should just hand the person the Singles soundtrack CD as an intro to the world of grunge
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Win At Life
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12:24a, 4/10/22
AG
Screaming Trees - Alice said
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Tanya 93
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6:23a, 4/10/22
State of Love and Trust by Pearl Jam
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superunknown
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In reply to tk for tu juan • 10:13a, 4/10/22
AG
tk for tu juan said:
Probably should just hand the person the Singles soundtrack CD as an intro to the world of grunge


this. Or I also think Temple of the Dog's "Pushing Forward Back" is a good choice.
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Aust Ag
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In reply to tk for tu juan • 11:28a, 4/10/22
AG
Jeez, Breed is so powerful….
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