There wasn’t much crossover between the hip hop crowd and the rock and roll crowd back in this period. Just because a bunch of affected white guys gave up their makeup and overly-stylized hair doesn’t mean that everybody did.
I was never a big fan, but I credit the death of big hair bands to the day Iron Maiden cut their hair. They were the first heavy metal band I remember losing the long hair. I wasn’t really into that scene so I am ready to be corrected 
Well, I disagree with your premise. Nirvana was huge when the album broke. Did it take a year or two before high-end clothing designers incorporate grunge style into their designs? Sure - but stuff like that is not the only signifier of crossover success.
At the time, anything getting big play on MTV was a big deal. Nirvana was played constantly.
…and I am not a mod, but your last sentence is pretty uncool. No need to go there.
You must have lived in somewhere kind of backward… you’re off by a few years on all that.
I recall hearing “Smells like Teen Spirit” in heavy rotation on Houston and College Station radio in the fall of 1991, which is about as mainstream as things get. By January of 1992 the ALBUM was #1, ahead of Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous”.
By 1994, Nirvana had come out with “In Utero”, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard album charts in 1993.
I think generally what people are talking about when they say things like grunge killed 80’s culture is more of a musical concept and to a lesser extent, a fashion idea. Yes, the synthesizer-heavy pop of the 80s was pretty much gone by this point, to be replaced by grunge and a different sort of pop, and yes, a lot of the 80’s fashion was kind of sliding, but by and large, it took a LONG time for hairstyles and fashions to change significantly. I mean, I started college in 1991, and by the turn of the millenium, hairstyles had changed a little bit, and so had fashions, but for the most part unless you were some kind of grunge kid, people dressed more or less the same, with minor changes.
Knock it off, both of you.
Also, Alice & Chains had already had a popular grunge song in mainstream radio play months before Nirvana, with “Man in the Box”, which was nominated for a 1992 Grammy.
By 1994, the grunge acts were firmly mainstream and had been for years. They just hit it big by that point.
You don’t think think an album being #1 on the Billboard charts equals being part of the “mainstream” culture at the time? Nevermind was a huge success at the time it was released. This was when MTV still played music videos and Nirvana’s videos were in heavy rotation. Kids had the album, posters, T-shirts, etc.
What does college radio have to do with mainstream shopping mall culture? :dubious: Being #1 on the charts doesn’t mean that instantaneously everyone including soccer moms are wearing their pants with holes in the knees and calling each other out on being “nirvana-wannabees”. That came later with followup albums In Utero and Unplugged and Cobain’s death certainly established him as an icon. The OP isn’t about radio airplay, it’s about “videos on YouTube about old malls”.
I believe you’re thinking of Metallica, who cut their hair between The Black Album and Load. The only person in Maiden that ever cut their hair was Bruce Dickinson, and that was during his solo years. He cut it in order to get his commercial pilot’s license. In the last couple years, he piloted the band’s 747 during their world tours. (They were in the process of landing in Japan when the Earthquake/Tsunami hit and had to divert away) But neither Maiden or Metallica was really thought as “hair metal”
Metallica’s Black Album was pretty much the beginning of the end of the 80’s metal movement, while it was still heavy, the long progressive songs were made into more radio friendly, shorter songs. Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s Ten and Soundgarden’s BadMotorFinger, seemed to take away any of the rest of the steam that metal had.
Interestingly enough, Nirvana’s Nevermind was released after the Black Album’s release, and Cobain commited suicide before Load’s release, so the bulk of Nirvana’s success came between those two albums.
Nirvana was simply the face the media used to describe the new trend in music, and at the same time, the end of the previous trend.
Nirvana/Grunge/Alternative/1991 wasn’t the end of 80’s spandex…it was the beginning of the end.
Weird Al had one of his biggest mainstream hits of his career with Smells Like Nirvana in early '92. He couldn’t have done that if Nirvana wasn’t already mainstream itself.
And the movie *Singles*came out in '92 as well, which I think was just about the peak of grunge becoming mainstream.
He didn’t say college radio. He was talking about mainstream radio in a town called College Station, TX.
And you’re way wrong on this. Nirvana went “mainstream” by the beginning of 1992, using any reasonable definition of the word. They were huge, as were Pearl Jam and others.
Also, Nirvana was on the cover of Rolling Stone in April of 92.
More importantly, it was playing on 101.1 KLOL and 104.1 KRBE in Houston back then, which at the time, were Rock & Top 40.
ISTR that it was on 92.1 in College Station back then. It was the local rock station- I think the call letters were KTSR.
None of the 3 were “college radio” by any stretch of the imagination.
Soundgarden and Alice in Chains had a lot more metal in their sound than Nirvana and Pearl Jam and some of the other bands from that scene. And it’s worth noting that some bands of those bands were signed to major labels before Nirvana was - so record labels did see a market for bands like Sonic Youth and Soundgarden pre-Nevermind even though they didn’t expect them to sell huge numbers of albums.
I actually saw their plane when catching a connecting flight at Heathrow- I think it was a 757 or 767.
I don’t think Nirvana was the turning point. It seemed kind of gradual.
Look at the MTV Music Awards performances from 88 to 92. There doesn’t seem to be a distinct change and none of the years screams 80s!
1988-Rod Stewart — “Forever Young”
Jody Watley — “Some Kind of Lover”
Aerosmith — “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)”
Elton John — “I Don’t Wanna Go on with You Like That”
Depeche Mode — “Strangelove”
Crowded House — “Better Be Home Soon”
Cher — “Main Man”
The Fat Boys (featuring Chubby Checker) — “Louie Louie”/“The Twist”
Guns N’ Roses — “Welcome to the Jungle”
INXS — “New Sensation”
1989-Madonna — “Express Yourself”
Bobby Brown — “On Our Own”
Def Leppard — “Tear It Down”
Tone-Loc — “Wild Thing”
The Cult — “Fire Woman”
Paula Abdul — “Straight Up”/“Cold Hearted”/“Forever Your Girl”
Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora — “Livin’ on a Prayer”/“Wanted Dead or Alive”
The Cure — “Just Like Heaven”
Cher — “If I Could Turn Back Time”
The Rolling Stones — “Mixed Emotions”
Axl Rose and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers — “Free Fallin’”/"Heartbreak Hotel
1990-Janet Jackson — “Black Cat”
Mötley Crüe — “Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)”
MC Hammer — “Let’s Get It Started”/“U Can’t Touch This”
INXS — “Suicide Blonde”
Sinéad O’Connor — “Nothing Compares 2 U”
New Edition (featuring Bobby Brown) — “Poison”/“Tap Into My Heart”/“Rub You the Right Way”/“Sensitivity”/“If It Isn’t Love”/“Mr. Telephone Man”/“Can You Stand the Rain”
Faith No More — “Epic”
Phil Collins — “Sussudio”
2 Live Crew — “Banned in the U.S.A.”
World Party — “Put the Message in the Box”
Aerosmith — “Love in an Elevator”
Madonna — “Vogue”
1991-Van Halen — “Poundcake”
C+C Music Factory — “Things That Make You Go Hmmmm…”/“Here We Go”/“Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”
Poison — “Talk Dirty to Me”
Mariah Carey — “Emotions”
EMF — “Unbelievable” (Live at The Town and Country Club in London)
Paula Abdul — “Vibeology”
Queensrÿche — “Silent Lucidity”
LL Cool J — “Mama Said Knock You Out”
Metallica — “Enter Sandman”
Don Henley — “The Heart of the Matter”
Guns N’ Roses — “Live and Let Die”
Prince and The New Power Generation — “Gett Off”
1992-The Black Crowes — “Remedy”
Bobby Brown — “Humpin’ Around”
U2 and Dana Carvey — “Even Better Than the Real Thing” (live via satellite from Detroit)
Def Leppard — “Let’s Get Rocked”
Nirvana — “Rape Me” (intro) / “Lithium”
Elton John — “The One”
Pearl Jam — “Jeremy”
Red Hot Chili Peppers — “Give It Away”
Michael Jackson — “Black or White” (from his Dangerous Tour in London)
Bryan Adams — “Do I Have to Say the Words?”
En Vogue — “Free Your Mind”
Eric Clapton — “Tears in Heaven”
Guns N’ Roses and Elton John — “November Rain”
Okay, hadn’t heard of that town, but I already acknowledged that their songs were on mainstream radio, as with any #1 hit. But mainstream radio versus mainstream dress codes. It takes a few years for most pop culture to fully disseminate into mainstream culture. I don’t think minions of workaday people were dressing grunge until mid-90s, and movies like Wayne’s World (1992) had more to do with that trend.
When was that … about '88, '89 or thereabouts?
As for the Pixies, I don’t think they were popular outside of the college radio crowd until after Nirvana made it big. Hell perhaps not even until their song was in Fight Club, but I could be totally wrong here. 