ABSTRACT
In the early 2000s no style of rock music met with more critical disdain than the “post-grunge” bands that followed in the wake of ’1990s alternative rock icons such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Looking back on the post-grunge era a decade later in 2012, music critic Sasha Geffen offers a defense of the oft-maligned genre. Where Dyer frames disco within the aesthetics of gay experience, Geffen gives voice to the many pre-teen and teenage girls who like herself once found a resonance in post-grunge’s emotional palette. Homogeneity itself isn’t usually enough to provoke the hatred that the post-grunge moment still inspires, a moment that Chris Molanphy calls “possibly the most loathed period for music of the last half-century.” Post-grunge was a surge of vanilla pop hits costumed in flannel and shaggy hair. The post-grunge moment suffered from an overpopulation of solid pop songwriters who got shoehorned into trendy, corny production choices.
