Grunge Music

[lainey]

I was asked to research the philosophy of grunge music, and this is what I found. This article talks about the ideology of grunge music:

That grunge is a variety of punk and that heavy metal, with lyrics that “are
angst-filled, comprising themes of alienation, apathy and desire for freedom from established
norms.” [snip] “Another important thing expressed in lyrics is ideology which opposes
mainstream.” This ideology included a refusal of all things mainstream, and emphasis on the
importance of remaining original, underground, and real. [snip] a key difference
between metal and grunge was the content of their songs. Metal bands tend to write about “sex,
drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll”, the devil, demons, and the apocalypse, while grunge bands focus on
“negative feelings in general, like failure, boredom, [and] loneliness.”

This person looked at the song lyrics, determined the main themes of the lyrics and linked it to mental health:

People often experience themselves as empty, lacking, traumatized, and without a consistent life narrative connecting past, presenet and future selves. [snip] Psychologically they internalise the lack of overall cohesion in modern social intitutuons.
Main themes of Grunge Music
Reflexivity and narrative, the challenging of existential issues of meaninglessness and death, and the experiences of interior life, relationships and the world in grunge experience of self, relationships and the world

Here it talks about why the grunge style was popular:

Another reason for the success of grunge was the social context that a whole generation identified with, young people with a hopeless view of the future. All these bands reflected the nonconformist, rebel attitude and disillusionment felt towards society. Unlike other genres, grunge focused on expressing the apathy and indolence felt by an entire generation, unimpressed with the times and rejecting the ever faster and programmed world that started emerging with the rise of new technologies in the early nineties.

And here is a suggestion why it was popular in Seattle where the genre began:

Seattle, where grunge originated, was yet another hotbed for this political tension. In the late 1960s, Seattle’s main employer, Boeing, went bankrupt, causing massive layoffs. A generation of teens felt abandoned and neglected. Cast off by their parents as no good slackers, they looked inward to attack the system that hurt them.

 

[Martina]

Music for eternal teenagers.

 

[Musicinventor]

I was asked to research the philosophy of grunge music, and this is what I found. This article talks about the ideology of grunge music:

Good work lainey! Your findings made me recall this from another thread…

Don Juan had a broad smile on his face. He was as pleased as punch. He explained that sorcerers see infant human beings as strange, luminous balls of energy, covered from the top to the bottom with a glowing coat, something like a plastic cover that is adjusted tightly over their cocoon of energy. He said that that glowing coat of awareness was what the predators consumed, and that when a human being reached adulthood, all that was left of that glowing coat of awareness was a narrow fringe that went from the ground to the top of the toes. That fringe permitted mankind to continue living, but only barely.

As if I had been in a dream, I heard don Juan Matus explaining that to his knowledge, man was the only species that had the glowing coat of awareness outside that luminous cocoon. Therefore, he became easy prey for an awareness of a different order, such as the heavy awareness of the predator.
He then made the most damaging statement he had made so far. He said that this narrow fringe of awareness was the epicenter of self-reflection, where man was irremediably caught. By playing on our self-reflection, which is the only point of awareness left to us, the predators create flares of awareness that they proceed to consume in a ruthless, predatory fashion.

They give us inane problems that force those flares of awareness to rise, and in this manner they keep us alive in order for them to be fed with the energetic flare of our pseudoconcerns.