🎸 Top 10 Underrated Grunge Tracks You Forgot You Loved (CommonX Edition)

Top 10 Underrated Grunge Tracks we forgot we loved. Brought to you by Skull Candy and CommonX.

By CommonX

Before playlists and polished pop, we had distortion, sweat, and heartache echoing from basements and bar stages. Grunge wasn’t a sound — it was a generation finally saying, “We’re not okay, and that’s okay.”

Everyone remembers Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but the underground had deeper veins — songs that hit just as hard and spoke louder in the quiet moments between chaos.

So fire up the SONOS, close your eyes, and fall back into the feedback. Here are the 10 underrated grunge anthems that still deserve to shake your soul.

⚡ 10. Screaming Trees – “Nearly Lost You” (1992)

That voice. That fuzz. That groove. The soundtrack to smoky nights and restless hearts — forever under-appreciated.

🎤 9. Mother Love Bone – “Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns” (1990)

Where it all began. Before Pearl Jam, there was MLB — poetic, tragic, and pure Seattle soul.

🔥 8. Mudhoney – “Touch Me I’m Sick” (1988)

The filthy riff that started it all. Raw, snotty, and brilliant — the sound that gave Sub Pop its swagger.

🎧 7. Temple of the Dog – “Say Hello 2 Heaven” (1991)

Chris Cornell’s voice in its purest form — grief turned into grace. A tribute that became a movement.

🌀 6. L7 – “Pretend We’re Dead” (1992)

Feminist fury meets killer hooks. L7 proved you didn’t need to smile to melt faces.

💔 5. Candlebox – “You” (1993)

Melodic, emotional, and criminally underrated. Candlebox gave grunge a pulse that could actually break hearts.

⚙️ 4. The Melvins – “Hooch” (1993)

Heavy, sludgy, hypnotic. The godfathers of doom who inspired Nirvana’s heaviest moments.

🧠 3. Soundgarden – “Room a Thousand Years Wide” (1991)

Buried behind the hits lies one of their best riffs. Cornell and Thayil made darkness sound divine.

🚀 2. Alice in Chains – “Nutshell” (1994)

If you ever doubted grunge had poetry, listen again. Layne’s voice still echoes in every lonely apartment at 2 a.m.

🦇 1. Stone Temple Pilots – “Silvergun Superman” (1994)

Overshadowed by hits like “Plush,” this deep cut is pure STP swagger — bassline grooves, velvet vocals, and a solo that burns slow.

🎧 Honorable Mentions

Nirvana – “Aneurysm” | Pearl Jam – “Release” | Hole – “Malibu” | Bush – “Cold Contagious”

🧠 Excerpt

CommonX digs deep into the Seattle sound — the forgotten grunge tracks that still roar beneath the surface. Crank it, feel it, and remember why it mattered.

written by Ian Primmer

Concrete Waves and Power Chords

Sub Pop, Tony Hawk — still inspiring the world today

Concrete Waves and Power Chords

By Ian Primmer - Cohost, CommonX

There was a time when rebellion didn’t come from a phone screen — it came from the sound of polyurethane wheels chewing through cracked concrete and a power chord screaming through a Peavey amp. The soundtrack of the 90s wasn’t choreographed or corporate. It was raw, loud, and gloriously unrefined — born from garages, burned-out warehouses, and a record label in Seattle that changed everything: Sub Pop. The air was thick with sweat, smoke, and spray paint — the kind that stuck to your lungs and your memory. Every scraped knee and every snapped string meant something. You didn’t scroll for inspiration — you created it, one crash and one chord at a time. Back then, nobody was talking about going viral. You earned your audience by waking the neighborhood. You didn’t care who was listening — you cared that someone heard you. And that sound — that clash of motion and music — was everything. It was how Gen X spoke when the world wasn’t listening.

Author Ian Primmer used to wake the neighborhood with a rented Drum Set from DJ’s music in Port Orchard, WA. (Not Ian)

The Sound of Defiance

We didn’t just listen to music — we inhaled it. Those riffs and feedback loops were oxygen for every kid who didn’t fit the mold, who couldn’t afford preppy clothes or polished dreams. The noise was the message. Every distortion pedal was an act of defiance. Every garage was a stage. Every mosh pit was a therapy session no one talked about. Bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney didn’t just write songs — they wrote escape routes. They gave permission to feel broken, to question authority, to scream without explanation and then came the others: Tool with their precision chaos, Green Day with that punk edge that made you want to quit your job and start a band, Pearl Jam turning stadiums into group therapy sessions.

It wasn’t about fame — it was about the feeling. That hum of bass that hit your ribs harder than any lecture ever could. That echo of rebellion that made you believe — for just a few minutes — that the system couldn’t touch you. You didn’t need a producer or a million followers. You just needed a voice and the guts to use it. That’s what defined us. That’s what set Gen X apart. We were the first generation to realize that corporate America couldn’t commodify honesty forever.

The Streets Were Our Stage

Our culture didn’t come pre-packaged — we made it. Every cracked ramp, every sticker-bombed deck, every photocopied show flyer — that was our social media. Tony Hawk was the god we all prayed to, but our church was concrete, and our hymns came from cheap guitars turned all the way up. We didn’t talk about mental health. We lived it — through sound, motion, and scraped-up skin. Music and skateboarding weren’t hobbies; they were survival tactics for a generation that refused to sit still or shut up. When you were flying down a hill at midnight with Silverchair in your headphones and no helmet, that was freedom. It was reckless, stupid, beautiful — and it was ours. And right there in the mix — between the smell of asphalt and the static buzz of a cheap amp — was Tony Hawk. Not just a skater, but a spirit guide for every kid who believed a parking lot could be a playground and a bruise was just proof you tried. Hawk wasn’t fame; he was freedom on four wheels, soaring higher than the world said possible.

The ramps were our art galleries, our tricks our brushstrokes. And when the world didn’t understand it, we made them — one spray-painted tag at a time. Every halfpipe had a story written in Krylon. Every wall, every deck, every dingy garage door carried the mark of our generation’s graffiti gospel: make noise, make color, make something real.

Tony Hawk in 1986 tearing it up and inspiring his generation of misfits to go all out!

Sub Pop: The Label That Let Us Live Loud

Before Sub Pop, major labels told artists what to sound like. After Sub Pop, the world had to listen. Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman didn’t set out to start a revolution — they just wanted to bottle the sound of Seattle’s underbelly. But what they created was the most authentic record label of the modern age: one that ran on coffee, chaos, and community. Sub Pop gave the world a front-row seat to real. They didn’t chase trends — they documented truth. They didn’t sign acts for looks — they signed them for feel. Their offices were cluttered, their contracts were basic, their gear was borrowed — but their legacy was nuclear.
They found kids with four-track recorders and turned them into legends. They gave the outcasts a label, the misfits a megaphone, and the city of Seattle a soul.

It was never about selling records — it was about capturing lightning before the corporations bottled the thunder. Sub Pop’s logo became a badge of honor — a stamp that said, “This isn’t for everyone.” And that was the point. When Bleach dropped, when Superfuzz Bigmuff hit, when Sliver rattled through speakers across the country — you could feel the shift. The label wasn’t polished; it was powerful. It didn’t create a genre; it created a generation. And when the majors came calling, when MTV wanted a piece, when every mall brand started selling flannel — Sub Pop stayed Sub Pop. Still underground. Still imperfect. Still loud. They didn’t just distribute music. They distributed freedom.

CommonX and the Echo of the Underground

Fast-forward a few decades, and that DIY spirit’s still alive. You hear it every week when the mics fire up on CommonX. It’s not scripted, it’s not perfect — it’s raw talk from real people. Just like those garage bands, we’re making noise that matters. We might not be slinging guitars, but we’re still shredding through the same noise — the censorship, the fake trends, the endless filters. And we’re still powered by the same drive that once made a kid pick up a skateboard or a Stratocaster: the need to be heard. Because the truth is, the world doesn’t make rebels anymore. It makes algorithms. But for those of us who remember, we still feel it — that spark of distortion that said “don’t just consume — create.” Concrete waves. Power chords.
The pulse of a generation that never stopped moving forward — even when the world told us to grow up.

Graffiti-style CommonX logo on a cracked concrete wall — symbolizing the 90s Sub Pop spirit, Tony Hawk rebellion, and the raw Gen X soundtrack.

From the Underground to the Airwaves

The underground didn’t die — it just changed frequencies. It traded distortion pedals for microphones, basement shows for streaming platforms, and flyers on telephone poles for algorithms and hashtags. But the energy? The pulse? That raw, unfiltered truth? It’s still here. It lives in CommonX. Every episode, every post, every conversation we throw into the world carries that same Sub Pop DNA — the defiance of the overproduced, the rejection of the sanitized, the celebration of real.

We don’t have an A&R rep; we have a mission. To amplify voices that deserve to be heard. To talk about what others scroll past.
To cut through the digital noise with the same authenticity that once made a garage in Seattle sound like the center of the universe. CommonX was never built to trend — it was built to resonate. We don’t chase algorithms; we chase connection.
We don’t clean up the rough edges; we lean into them, because that’s where the soul lives. Like Sub Pop’s bands, we’re a mixed bag of thinkers, builders, and rebels — misfits who somehow found a frequency that makes sense together. We’re not mainstream. We’re main vein — the current running underneath all the noise. And just like that first wave of Seattle sound, we’re not here to fit in. We’re here to remind people what it feels like when something real hits — when art is dangerous again, when truth shakes walls, when you turn it up and say, “Yeah… that’s us.”

So maybe we don’t have a mosh pit anymore. Maybe we’ve swapped guitars for microphones and stages for studios. But the energy’s the same. The rebellion’s still alive. And the noise? It’s only getting louder. CommonX isn’t a podcast — it’s a movement. An analog heart beating in a digital world. A continuation of the underground spirit that refuses to fade out quietly. Because as long as there’s concrete to skate, distortion to crank, and stories to tell — Gen X will always have a sound.

Layne Staley (1967–2002): The Voice That Still Echoes in Us All

by Ian Primmer, Co-host-CommonX

When Layne Staley took the stage during MTV Unplugged, it wasn’t just another performance — it was confession through melody. His hollow eyes told stories the lyrics could barely contain. The lights were soft, the air thick with silence, and a generation sat frozen in front of their TVs watching a man unravel his soul.

Layne Staley performs on MTV Unplugged, seated under soft blue-purple lights, microphone in hand, delivering an emotional performance that defined the 1990s grunge era.

Staley didn’t just sing about pain — he made it sound beautiful. Every note was a war between addiction and truth, between the life he lived and the one he wished he could reach. In an era that taught Gen X to bury feelings beneath sarcasm and cynicism, Layne stood there — fragile, unfiltered, unafraid — and let it all bleed through the mic.

“I believe in love and what it’s done to me.”

Those words, that trembling voice, became the heartbeat of the 90s Seattle sound — a generation of latchkey kids, garage-band dreamers, and late-night thinkers who found comfort in his chaos.

The Weight of a Generation

For many of us, Alice in Chains wasn’t background music; it was a survival tool. Staley’s voice could make you feel less alone in the middle of a storm. Songs like Nutshell, Down in a Hole, and Rooster weren’t just tracks — they were lifelines. Every time Layne opened his mouth, it was like he reached into the static of our teenage bedrooms and said, “I get it.” Even now, his performances remain hauntingly timeless. Watch that MTV Unplugged session again and you’ll see it — the rawest honesty ever broadcast through a mainstream channel. It was unpolished, imperfect, and completely unforgettable.

Layne Staley live in concert — the soul of Alice in Chains. His delivery was never about perfection; it was about truth. Every lyric carried the weight of lived experience, making him one of the most honest voices to emerge from the Seattle grunge movement.

The Beauty in the Broken

Layne’s story wasn’t a fairytale. It ended too soon, and yet his voice never really left. His pain became a mirror for an entire generation still trying to understand why the brightest lights often burn the fastest. In the years since his passing, his influence has only grown stronger. You can hear his echo in every modern artist who dares to show vulnerability, who sings like they’ve lived every word. Layne Staley didn’t just define an era — he humanized it.

Still Echoing

Two decades later, we still hear him — in the static between songs, in the ache of every record player needle, in the hearts of every Gen X’er who refuses to let the past fade quietly. He was more than a frontman. He was a poet for the misunderstood.
And as long as his songs keep playing, Layne Staley will never really be gone.

Rare Vinyl logo and imagery symbolizing classic record collecting — stacks of vintage LPs, turntables, and album art — representing a global destination for authentic vinyl records.

About This Article

This tribute is part of The X-Files series by CommonX Podcast, where we celebrate the artists, thinkers, and cultural sparks that shaped Generation X.
🎧 Read more at commonxpodcast.com/thex-files