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The indie soda in a glass bottle with a customer-submitted photo on every label — weird, grainy snapshots of real life where the big brands would have put a logo. And once a year, flavors like Turkey & Gravy turned the whole company into performance art.
Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and Dave Grohl didn't invent grunge—but their 1991 album Nevermind accidentally blew it up worldwide, displacing Michael Jackson from #1 and making flannel shirts and angst the uniform of the decade.
A goofy three-piece from Seattle armed with a two-string "basitar" and a three-string "guitbass"—and no apologies. The 1996 single off their triple-platinum debut hit No. 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 and charted around the world. The video put them in an orchard where the trees grow cans of peaches, until ninjas ambush the band mid-song. "Movin' to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches" has lived in heads rent-free ever since.
Seattle's other grunge titans: Eddie Vedder's baritone over the anthems of Ten, then a career spent actively refusing rock stardom — no more music videos, few interviews, and a one-band war against Ticketmaster.