When Nirvana’s Nevermind knocked Michael Jackson’s Dangerous off the top of the charts in 1991, rock, after years of taking second place to dance music, re-emerged.

Grunge became the title that the recording industry and media gave to the sound of the Seattle, WA music scene, which was subsequently plundered for all available talent.

Grunge signified a style—long hair, flannel shirts and torn jeans laid over a slacker ideology—as much as a sound—roughly a punk-metal fusion, with Nirvana at the pop/punk end, Pearl Jam in the hard rock middle and Soundgarden at the metal/punk end.