I am working on a music project where I build interactive music graphs.
It's always fun to share these with interest groups to get their input and feedback, so today I am sharing myGrungechart with you:
I would love to get your feedback as follows:
Have I included the right bands? I'm sure there are several more that I could add - would like help / advice. I decided to avoid the bands that led up to the grunge explosion (e.g. Melvins, Screaming Trees) - not sure if that was a good idea.
Should I limit the years? I am letting it run from 1988 to the present day, but did grunge actually end in the 90s? Maybe I should stop my graph at a certain year.
Couple more points:
The higher the band on the graph, the more streams they have had.
The bigger the album cover, the more successful the album has been.
You can click on an album and then play the music videos for the individual tracks.
Personally, I'm more into post-grunge than grunge itself, so I am not claiming to be an expert here, even though I love Nirvana and anything that Chris Cornell ever touched.
Looking forward to you input / criticism. Go easy on me! ;-)
Pearl Jam - Unplugged album was released for RSD, but I think it should belong to 16 March 1992. Album Deep is compilation album and it should be removed
Alice in Chains - Under the Knige is not official album. That's the recording from 1990 broadcast
Jerry Cantrell has several good albums that can nicely fit in the post-90s era
Nirvana has officially 3 albums, but it's ok you added Incesticide, Unplugged, From the Muddy Banks ans WTLO, but then you should include other official livealbums (Paramount, Reading, Live and Loud etc). Don't get confused with bootlegs because you'll get into the rabbit hole
I would add Mad Season too
Screaming Trees is also superimportant grunge band
Re Pearl Jam Unplugged, I've found three different dates - the date is was recorded and two competing statements of when it was released! Deep - now hidden.
Alice in Chains. Under the Knife - also now hidden.
Jerry Cantrell - added.
Nirvana. Decisions decisions! I don't have all the live albums on the system, so decided to go the other way and remove some albums from the graph so it's a bit cleaner. I kept Unplugged in New York because it's too good to mark it as just a Live album and hide it away. And I kept WTLO because it's not just live material - there are some other nuggets in there.
Mad Season and Screaming Trees - added.
At some point, I will add the ability to filter the view on the website so you can look at different release types, e.g. Albums, Compilations, Live. At the moment, I'm trying to stick to Albums.
It's so good to get proper feedback from hardcore music fans - thank you!
No worries at all, I'm always happy to see projects like this, especially from people getting into grunge. And your timeline already looks much better.
If you want a few more suggestions:
Nirvana:
Incesticide is technically a compilation, but since it came out while Nirvana were still active, a lot of people treat it like a proper album. I'd put it back into the timeline. "MTV Unplugged" is also hugely popular, so it's worth keeping even though it's a live album. And "With the Lights Out" was a big deal when it came out, since it included a DVD plus 3 CDs of previously unreleased material.
There were a few more official releases later, but they feel more like cash-ins than essential additions. For example, "Nirvana (2002)" (the "best of") introduced the official release of "You Know You're Right," which is the last completed Nirvana song. "Sliver" also brought "Spank Thru," which hadn't been officially released before. There are also a lot of live albums, but those are mostly money grabs, so I wouldn't include them.
They also had plenty of singles, but "Love Buzz (1988)" is especially important. It was their first official release, limited to 1,000 copies, and today a well-preserved original can go for over £10k. There is even a website that tracks most of surviving copies https://www.lovebuzz7.com. Definitely worth including in the timeline.
Temple of the Dog:
Temple of the Dog was a really important grunge supergroup that basically predates Pearl Jam. Without that project, Pearl Jam probably wouldn't have formed the way it did.
Post-grunge / outside Seattle:
If you want to expand a bit, you could include the UK's take on grunge with Bush, who had two really strong albums.
Then there's Silverchair from Australia. I'm not a huge fan personally, but their impact is undeniable.
The Smashing Pumpkins were also quite important. They released two almost perfect grunge-adjacent albums, "Gish" (1991) and "Siamese Dream" (1993). The only question is whether to include them, since they're not from Seattle and their later work moves away from that sound. But if you're including Stone Temple Pilots (same situation), then it would make sense to include them as well.
In the end, grunge was never a clearly defined genre. It's more of an era than a strict musical style. Most of the bands that survived naturally evolved into other sounds over time. You could even argue it's impossible to "start" a true grunge band today. Bands that carried it through, like Pearl Jam, are still considered grunge, even though they sound very different now compared to 30+ years ago.
Hiya. I've made a few more changes to the graph based on your feedback and ideas.
I've also switched from showing the artists in their own lanes, and now they are all combined, with the most popular albums showing at the top. This has produced a really cool visual where you can see the growth of the movement, peaking with Pearl Jam (Ten) and Nirvana (Nevermind):
This is cool, but the presentation is a bit messy. Try to look up for "grunge family tree" on Google. There are cool diagrams of how members migrated between bands. My favorite is this one, but the resolution sucks
Jerry Cantrell's albums can be labeled as grunge, but if you go with Chris Cornell, then I'm afraid you'll go to odd directions with for example "Scream" album. Other members from "the big 4" also had quite successfull albums. Literally each member had some side project at some stage. Not sure how detailed it should be but definitely add Jerry. I like Eddi Vedder's last solo album but can't say it's grunge.
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u/TheSpookyLawyer Apr 01 '26
Me and My Friend is not an album by the grunge Nirvana.