Axl's swan song will be Ac/Dc's retirement album next year I recon.

Yes Alive is played out. Appetite still sounds fresh to me. I also thought Bush's debut album was awesome but now it seems ordinary.

Whats really stranger to me now than ever, is the whole Kurt Cobain thing, and Nirvana's overnight success?  It's just not adding up to me, less so than before, and let me note I'm a huge Nirvana fan. One thing I always felt in hindsight, is that while "Nirvana" came out of nowhere, alternative music had been pushing thru for a while, REM, Depeche Mode, The Cure, Chili Peppers.  But also, on a heavier side even since Guns rock was looking to go more stripped down. The Black Crowes, Tesla etc, gone were the hair days and Aqua Net. Then in 90/91 Faith No More & another band I really can't think of right now The something, had a hit. Their music was grungy but they seemed a bit older, band members sorta looked like Kim Thayil, they were legit band, I think Cobain once even said he hoped he'd just have a minor hit like they did. There's also a soundtrack from 'Pump Up The Volume' which has Soundgaren, Concrete Blonde, The Pixies & more on it.

Anyway, then Jane's Addiction had a breakout hit of 'Been Caught Stealing'. IMHO that's where things started to change and build momentum. RHCP were more well known, and coming out with an album that summer. Metallica, no longer really 'underground' were also coming out with a monster album that summer. And Soundgarden had been building momentum for a long time, opening forr Guns & Metallica at different times I think, they appeared often in rock & guitar magazines early on. My brother had Ultramega & TOTD pretty early on by seeing their name in the mags. AIC was also a seemingly known up & comer. So, the entire year the labels are signing their bands & prepping for the releases, not to be outdone, and it's almost as if Geffen just hustled out their to keep up, and just signed this undrafted free agent out of a small school, because they needed a backup Quarterback or point guard, but didn't really expect much from him. So the fall hits, RHCP hit it with Suck My Kiss but also have Under the Bridge in their back pocket, Metallica come out swinging with Enter Sandman, and IIRC Soundgarden put Outshined out first, which itself did surprisingly well and put SG front & center.

Then slowly Teen Spirit begins it's climb. Why?  I'm not sure anyone who lived thru it can tell you, other than it was the right song, at the right time, for the right people. It just spoke "New" and anti "Everything That Happened Before" (before being music in the 80s). The lyrics did have some form of empathy to alot of alienated and bored youth ('Here we are now, entertain us' 'I feel stupid, and contageous') Words that were never spoken in that way before, so raw & vulnerable. Then it just snowballed, New Years hit, they played SNL, and it was over. Somehow, remarkably, he & that album left the others in the dust in a way. It's a great album, for what it is, but it seems a bit corny looking back a generation held it and Kurt so highly. In some ways, I almost feel bad and a bit to blame. I wonder if something which bothered him was he knew he wasn't the most talented one, or the leader of the Grunge/Alternative movement, and couldn't live with that, as if it were some lie he was living.

I still don't understand how Nirvana exploded. I mean I do understand how the media pushed them down our throats relentessly forcing everyone to like it until it caught on but I but I don't understand how everyone truly gravitated to it.  As you pointed out, there was so much going on musically in 90-92.  You could feel something coming before it came. The whole culture was shifting as the 80s wound down.

Teen Spirit....while catchy....wasn't truly worthy of its gen x anthem status. It just wasn't. Hell I'd say lyrically speaking Come As You Are would be the song from that album that could 'speak' to our generation.

By In Utero it was obvious the crash and burn was coming soon. His death the only thing that prevented that. It made him immortal and cemented a romanticizing of his music.

In the media's defense, they had to pick a horse and ride it.

AIC- We Die Young
Soundgarden- Outshined
Nirvana- Teen Spirit

Those first two songs are just a tad too heavy to push as a universal anthem for an entire generation to rally around. It also boiled down to timing. Not only had hair metal become a complete joke, MTV/radio was at a fork in the road. Grunge almost doesn't happen. The mainstreaming of speed metal was on the verge of blowing up. MTV and radio was pushing them hard and the main bands Slayer, megadeth, and Anthrax had just released their best albums within a couple months of each other that had songs that weren't noise pollution to average music lovers and even bands like Death Angel and Sepultura were getting exposure. In later years people joke about those bands shows being sausage factory conventions.....in 90-91 you were neck deep in pussy at these shows.

It was connecting with a large audience.

Then the biggest band from that genre releases an album that is about to be supermassive......Metallica. This should've taken that whole genre to new heights. It didn't. Just when MTV could've gave the genre an even bigger push, they change horses....here comes Man in the Box, Outshined, Teen Spirit, Alive, etc. They run with it.

Speed metal gets erased from their rotation and it never recovers or comes close to the mainstream acceptance it was getting in 90-91.

In May 91, AIC is opening for Anthrax, Slayer, and Megadeth. Had you told those three bands that in less than a year AIC would eclipse all three of them, they'd have died laughing.

Can never underrate the fact that they were all from one city playing a huge role in pushing grunge. It made it even easier to promote the whole Seattle thing.

A byproduct of grunge was it showed the media how easy it is to fabricate a movement. We saw this with hip hop a few years later. How they convinced a million white boys in the suburbs it would be cool to listen to songs talking about niggers, bitches, and Compton while wearing their pants down to their ankles and a bunch of girls finding this attractive will never cease to amaze me.