Grunge
Grunge is a style of alternative rock from Seattle that mixes the heavy riffs of metal with the rawness of punk.
It emerged in Washington state in the mid-1980s and became a worldwide success in the early 1990s. The sound is thick, distorted guitar, songs that shift between quiet verses and loud choruses, and lyrics about alienation and self-doubt. It is slower and sludgier than punk and far less polished than the hard rock it replaced on the charts.
Artists it is known for: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains.
- Family
- Rock
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A genre
- From
- Seattle, mid-1980s
- Also called
- Seattle sound
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 14%
About 12,000 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have grunge among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Grunge artists
Nirvana
The Smashing Pumpkins
Alice In Chains
Pearl Jam
Foo Fighters
Stone Temple Pilots
Soundgarden
Audioslave
Hole
Keo
The grunge artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.
Sources
The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.