aeolianblues

[ID: the UK singles chart that week in August 1995 when the battle Of Britpop happened. Blur’s Country House is at number 1, Roll With It by Oasis at number 2. If you look at the WOC column, both songs remained on the singles chart only for one week: that week.]

You know, for all that the NMEs of the world like to claim that Blur vs. Oasis was the biggest thing in British music history and Britpop was this magic pedestal and ”back then, guitar music was so relevant” and everything, both Country House and Roll With It each only spent that one week on the charts at all. Next week, no one gave a shit. Even in America, where grunge was purportedly the biggest thing on the planet, the charts would merely highlight a Nirvana album for a couple of weeks, and then some pop star would top the charts again. Singles by rock bands top the charts even more rarely.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t despair. Indie and rock music were always underground. It’s another thing that mainstream radio, etc. doesn’t actively look out for them anymore (probably don’t think they’re a very good “investment” or something), but the movement is only ever as big as it is in your own eyes, and today’s music will probably seem bigger to kids from today than it will to someone over forty who has already spent their teenage excitement. Don’t despair, nothing much has changed.

The funniest thing I’ve heard Nirvana be called is “a Nirvana cover band”

This is about Pay To Play btw

keep popularising the body neutrality movement gang i wanna see how the makeup and weight loss industries try to capitalise on 'i literally do not give two shits about how i look'

take a look at what the fashion industry did to grunge and you'll know that they absolutely can

what did they do? /gen

alright, buckle up bc its time for a bit of a history lesson:

basically the whole idea behind grunge was "fuck consumerism, fuck capitalism, fuck beauty standards and gender norms and the fashion industry. do not give a fuck about what you look like or, alternatively, intentionally look like shit. refuse to buy into beauty standards and refuse to participate in fashion trends and literally just wear the cheapest, comfiest, most practical clothes you can get your hands on (preferably second hand so as to say fuck you to corporate) and then wear those clothes until theyre literally falling apart. dont obsess over hygiene; not everything has to be squeaky clean."

and since the birthplace and capital of the genre was seattle (a northern lumberjack town), the clothes that were cheap, comfy, durable and practical around there were flannels, beanies, and big, second hand blue jeans. docs were notoriously cheap at the time, and so were military surplus boots, so thats what the bands wore, essentially. in protest against fashion, beauty standards and capitalism.

then people started wearing the same clothes as the bands and then (as with every counter culture before them) the fashion industry decided to create a cleaner, less subversive version of that. so they started selling the anti-fashion, anti-consumerist look as consumerist fashion.

fast forward to 2014 and you see people wearing an all brand new outfit consisting of black skin-tight jeans that you cant move in and that are ripped before theyre sold and dont last more than a year, $500 docs, expensive "flannels" that are too thin to be warm, a $100 beanie and on-fleek makeup that cost more than those bands lived off of at the start of their careers, took hours to apply and finally a paper thin nirvana shirt sold for 50 bucks and worn without any idea what anything but "sounds like teen spirit" sounds like (which isnt a grunge song btw; its a satirical pop song made to mock the kind of music that it is). all of it bought from hot topic or H&M and made by child slaves in china or taiwan. so, like... actually the complete opposite of what grunge is supposed to be. completely against the values of the subculture. it would literally be more grunge to wear dirty sweatpants and a second hand baseball cap than the shit being sold today.

so, yeah. grunge is supposed to be "i literally do not give two shits about how i look" and yet... and YET....... the fashion and beauty industry totally butchered it.

like, no one even seems to know what grunge even is anymore. this is how they destroy countercultures: they tried arresting hippies and noticed it didnt work. what did work was stripping the movement of all values, making it fit corporate beauty standards and selling its empty, powdered husk of a corpse to the masses until it means absolutely nothing. they did it with the hippies, they did it with punk, they did it with grunge and they'll do it with any new subculture that dares challange and oppose capitalism.

Also, the entire point of the grunge look was that people were too poor to afford vogue clothes. They shopped thrift out of sheer practicality. Why buy a single shirt for $20-$50 when you can get more, slightly worn, for $1 at a thrift store? But as the cultural and musical grunge movement gained momentum and everyone wanted to, say, look like Kurt Cobain, it emerged that there were people who would pay to look like him, and there were people ready to make you pay to look like him. And so it came to be, that fabric was intentionally wasted, it became a trendy look, it became an aesthetic, and now genuinely grungey clothing is also overpriced because you're paying for the social look and not the clothes as grunge originally did.

Years ago I read Here We Are Now: The Lasting Impact of Kurt Cobain by Charles R. Cross, which is, as the title suggests, about the various ways that Kurt Cobain impacted pop culture and society. One point that stuck with me was an anecdote in the fashion chapter about his hair. Kurt had longish, messy, unwashed-looking hair, and, like everything else he wore, that look became highly desirable after Nirvana became famous. Some brands started selling expensive shampoos -- I’m talking like 25, 30 dollars -- that they promised would give its users messy hair exactly like Kurt’s. The kicker? Kurt’s hair was messy and gross-looking because he couldn’t afford shampoo so he rubbed a bar of 30-cent soap all over his hair when he showered as a substitute. The kids who wanted to look like him were spending a hundred times as much money on their hair as he was.

Rest In Peace, legend 💛

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAVE ERIC GROHL!

TODAY YOU’RE 52 YEARS OLD! 🧡✨🍰

“I just play drums. I just go out and have fun, and then I play drums, and it’s great, you know? And I wouldn’t have it any other way. ‘Cause I mean, you know, I don’t wanna sit behind a desk all day. And it’s really, you know, it’s kinda… it’s a dream come true, as far as that goes, but I just don’t really put too much thought into it. — Dave Grohl

Kurt Cobain at the Marquee, New York, US (September 28, 1991)