Was Nirvana Really Grunge

Did Nirvana and/or Grunge really kill off the 1980′s culture?

No, the 1980’s culture died of natural causes. Like every trend the eventual end arrives. It is hard to define what the 80’s culture really was anyway. Was it hair metal teenage headbangers or yuppies?Musically the decade brought us Madonna, Culture Club, Duran Duran, Bon Jovi, Guns and Roses, Miami Time Machine, etc. It was very diverse! It is impossible to describe an 80’s sound.Fashion wise, the decade began with parachute pants and ended with Pleated Slacks. There were leg warmers along the way but nothing that definitively defined 80’s style destined to die with the re-birth of flannel.In fact, Grunge was not original. Flannel shirts and angst driven lyrics over guitar rock had been done before. It was nothing new, just a re-branding marketing scheme by Geffen records. They didn’t invent the term, but they sold it to the masses. Grunge did not even go on to define the 90’s.Nirvana was just one band in the Grunge movement. They are the quintessential Grunge band today because they ended at the height of their popularity. Grunge bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains and Radiohead have endured despite Grunge dying and have secured a legacy separated from the idiotic Grunge label.The only thing Grunge killed was itself. It died in the garage with Kurt Cobain on April 5, 1994. Despite every hair band of the 80’s blaming it for their ultimate demise, Grunge had nothing to do with the death of the 80’s!

Is grunge really a genre?

Surprisingly, Grunge is a genre that was never intended to be. The term "grunge" that described the genre of these bands originated from Green River's  vocalist, Mark Arm. Having been in a band called Mr.Epps and The Calculators, he split with the band and called them "Pure grunge! Pure noise! Pure S**t!" Being from Seattle, the term "grunge" was thenceforth used to describe rock music originating from the area. As such, bands like Alice In Chains, Nirvana, Mad Season, Soundgarden and Mudhoney were grouped under the genre "grunge". If a band was not from Seattle, yet had a similar sound to these bands, they were described as grunge. Examples of this are Stone Temple Pilots and Hole.The reason you hear other genres in these bands is partly due to grunge fusing elements of hardcore punk and heavy metal, and some bands performed with more emphasis on one or the other.The term, however, never got a positive response. Soundgarden and Alice In Chains have publicly stated that "grunge" is only a marketing tool, and that they play rock and roll, hard rock and alternative rock. While Mike McCready of Pearl Jam responded with "NO. WE ARE A ROCK & ROLL BAND. WE PLAY ROCK. WE PLAY HEAVY ROCK. WE'RE A HARD-ROCK BAND."Fun Fact : History would repeat itself when nu-metal became a genre, and was not positively recognized by bands classified under the genre. Disturbed's David Draiman went on to say "We play a blend of modern and classic rock" while Linkin Park's Chester Bennington said that "nu-metal puts us into a tiny box, that doesn't represent what we as a band are." System of a Down's Daron Malakian also stated that "We don't belong to any one scene" and that "I don't like the nu-metal sound; it is not my thing, at least not yet."

Why is Nirvana the most popular grunge band?

Nirvana was really just a highly visible early proto-type of grunge that had widespread and meteoric success. The crushing tragedy of Cobain's suicide at the height of their success pretty much cemented that band's name in the history books.There were plenty of other very accomplished and highly influential bands in that genre - Pearl Jam, for example.Alice in Chains, Our Lady Peace, Stone Temple Pilots, I Mother Earth, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, Blind Melon etc etc were all reasonably successful other examples.But we do have to wonder just how much more we loved that genre after Kurt broke our hearts.

Why is Nirvana considered a grunge band?

Grunge is a collective name invented by MTV [and the pop-media] because of the really terrible sales-figures (and declining popularity). So, by making “smells like teen spirit” a hit by playing it for more than a week every hour”(and way more often afterwards), and having a hook, they (also the magazines) gathered every indie-, college- and alternative band existing in the USA, giving it the name “grunge”. The matter that the music or the bands had nothing to do with each other [extreme variety in styles], and the bands themselves detested it, didn’t damage anything of the succes of this marketing-stunt.Grunge has never existed, but in the heads of benefiting music-journalists / -media (MTV!), or easy to be-fooled adolescents. Please read the interviews given to this subject (grunge as a marketing-tool / a hoax) by the bands & artists themselves.Nirvana was MTV’s main marketing-attraction, the flag ship of the station’s invented name. It copied the indie of the 80’s [Sonic Youth!], and had f.i. nothing to do with Pearl Jam, that came directly from Neil Young & alike.They just knew each other, merely because of all the festivals.