2 weeks Ago
A few days ago, a friend of mine got in touch to declare that , the crunching introduction to Soundgarden’s masterful , has to be up there as one of the all-time great grunge openers. A heated back-and-forth followed – hey, we’re a couple of guys in our mid-40s who own more than one flannel shirt, this is how we converse – and I decided the only way to properly win this argument was to take full advantage of being a music journalist and publish the definitive, no-comebacks-allowed top ten grunge openers. Yeah, that’s how petty I am: my list is on Loudersound.
com, , so I win. Here it is, from ten down to one, with the rules (that I made up) being only one entry per band. I also reserve the right to come back and rearrange the order if I change my mind in future, ie tomorrow.
OK, Let’s get to it...
No grunge band had a greater balance of cool and commotion as L7, as demonstrated on the ferociously excellent . The opener on their breakthrough 1992 record , it’s a snarling, riff-heavy gem. This list could be filled with Pearl Jam-affiliated bands from Temple Of The Dog to Brad to Mad Season, but I've kept it to one.
It’s impossible to listen to Mother Love Bone and not wonder what might have been. The opening track to their one and only record is one of their best, a grunge in its gladrags masterclass with Andrew Wood as mercurial ringleader. Speaking to this writer about their trailblazing debut release a few years ago, Mudhoney’s Mark Arm comically remarked, “We might have blown our wad on our first single!”.
There were still plenty of excellent Mudhoney moments to come, but the first track on set out their stall stunningly, its Stooges-y menace undimmed in the near-four decades since. Scott Weiland & co. had hit huge success with their debut album but everything – the songs, the sound, the attitude – was a step up on follow-up .
From the off, showed the quartet were a band seizing their moment in the spotlight, a scintillating combo of gnarly riffs and stop-what-you’re-doing-and-look-at-me vocals. Given the chaos that Courtney Love’s personal life was mired in at the time – husband Kurt Cobain had very recently died by suicide and her drug addiction and personal life were constantly splattered across the news – there is a clean, crisp edge to that showed Hole were a different beast to their peers. Rumoured to be about her ex Billy Corgan, it centres around the explosive, punky blast of its chorus but its indelible melodicism and sharp hooks were pop of the highest order.
No gently lulling you in on Alice In Chains’ imperial second record . gets right up in your grill from the off with its blistering combo of Layne Staley’s guttural roar and a jagged Jerry Cantrell riff that sounds like its climbing up your spine. Monumental.
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. in the top five. Sonically, Soundgarden always seemed to have something a little extra going on compared to other grunge bands, as if they had six guitarists and four drummers.
This deftly layered classic begins like a little like you’ve walked in halfway through, a criss-cross of screeching riffs and beefy drums giving way to Chris Cornell’s impossibly cool vocal. An outrageously good opener. A very tough choice between this and (and !) but .
opener just for how pummelling and impactful it is, a song that straps you in and rockets you along whether you want to join it or not. It introduced a band who sounded leaner and feistier than they did on , as if they had taken the questioning of their punk credentials personally. is a tightly-wound blockbuster.
spends 25 seconds laying down the building blocks of ’s kaleidoscopic sonic world and then charges into one of the best and most forward-thinking anthems of the 90s. It’s a hard rock epic that sounds like Led Zeppelin in space. It has to be really, doesn’t it? There’s probably a reader out there who says is a better opener and maybe the cut is a stronger representation of who Nirvana were, but for sheer oomph, it has to be .
In the same way that you don’t stop and go, ‘Isn’t air great?!’, it’s a song that has become so embedded in the cultural landscape that you can easily forget what a jaw-droppingly, generationally great tune it is. Niall Doherty is a writer and editor whose work can be found in Classic Rock, The Guardian, Music Week, FourFourTwo, on Apple Music and more. Formerly the Deputy Editor of Q magazine, he co-runs the music Substack letter with fellow former Q colleagues Ted Kessler and Chris Catchpole.
He is also Reviews Editor at Record Collector. Over the years, he's interviewed some of the world's biggest stars, including Elton John, Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys, Muse, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Depeche Mode, Robert Plant and more. Radiohead was only for eight minutes but he still counts it.
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