The last two posts were about the sound and lyrical themes of grunge. Now let’s talk about what makes grunge weird.
Beyond angst, I believe what makes grunge unique is a commitment to the abstract, foregrounding wordplay and free association in lieu of obvious meaning. Here is another way (beyond the sound) that grunge is indebted to classic rock, specifically Beatles songs like “I Am the Walrus,” which John Lennon says he wrote to confuse the English teachers dissecting Beatles lyrics. Lennon perfected this cryptic style on tracks like “Come Together,” and grunge artists carried that torch in the 1990s.
Take “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Cobain sings about “a mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido.” Soundgarden’s biggest hit is similarly inscrutable, riffing on the sound of the word “in”: “In my eyes, indisposed / In disguises no one knows / Hides the face, lies the snake / In the sun in my disgrace.” Is there a message in these songs? Maybe. But we might listen to Scott Weiland, who sang, “got no meaning, just a rhyme.”
I recently came across the works of Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). He’s the Russian painter often credited as the first major abstract artist in the West. Apparently Kandinsky was trying to get people to think about art in new ways, contrasting color, shape, and concept in works like Soft Hard and Big and Tiny.
Kandinsky made me think of grunge. The opposites featured in these paintings—juxtaposing colors, shapes, and textures—resemble grunge’s contrasting aesthetics, from the typical “loud-soft-loud” song structures, to paradoxical band names like Mudhoney or Daisy Chainsaw, to contradictory lyrics like “Take your time, hurry up.”
When I’m writing King Dutch lyrics, if a song starts to feel a bit too real, a bit too obvious, I turn to the abstract, using wordplay or free association or a non sequitur. The idea that a song doesn’t always mean what you think it does is front and center in grunge. And beyond intentional obscurity I find writing this way keeps me interested. Committing to the abstract lets me occasionally surprise myself with my writing.
To Conclude…
Maybe people on the outside look at grunge and just see a bunch of drug addicted and suicidal lead singers. Or others may agree with Variety’s senior music editor, Jem Aswad, who called grunge “a rock genre that shook the globe but was obviously destined for a short shelf life.”
But to me, grunge has always been more than a self-destructive fad. It is a genre with a compelling mix of musical components, from its dark and catchy hybrid sound, to its introspective and thoughtful lyrics, to its abstract aesthetics and philosophy. I believe that is a combination with a lot of musical potential.
It’s what gives us energy and direction in King Dutch.
Thanks for reading.