10 Legendary Albums That Will Make You Love Grunge

For every band that came out of the grunge scene, there weren't too many bands that sounded like each other. You were never going to mistake a Mudhoney song for a Soundgarden song, and each of the bands seemed to pride themselves on having their own unique identity that they carved out for themselves. There's no shame in pulling from the pages of classic rock though, and Pearl Jam have us visions of the glory days of rock.

When Mother Love Bone fell apart after the death of Andy Wood, Stone Gossard wasn't going to spend the next few years moping about it, getting right back to work fleshing out ideas before getting a tape back from Eddie Vedder out of San Diego. Drafting in Mike McCready on guitar, most of Pearl Jam's Ten is some of the most natural rock and roll that came out of the Seattle scene. Compared to their punkier counterparts, there's a lot of stadium rock energy on this album, with the hooks to songs like Alive and Even Flow having a lot more punch to them than anything going on at street level.

Thanks to Vedder's vocals, we also got introduced to the trademark yarl sound of rock singing for the first time, which would become both a blessing and a curse later down the line when you had everyone trying to copy it like Chad Kroeger from Nickelback. This was before any of the imitations came into play, and when you heard songs like Black for the first time, you knew that these guys had their hearts on their sleeves every time they played.