GRUNGE

What came first, the grunge or the misery? I'm asking because I'm three miles into this playlist and I can't tell if I'm running from something or toward it. That's the thing about grunge—it's the sound of not knowing, of sitting in the discomfort. Pearl Jam's "Even Flow" opens this thing and Eddie Vedder's howl feels like the first mile always does: a lie that tells you this won't hurt.

Here's what nobody tells you about grunge and running: they're both about endurance through discomfort. You don't run because it feels good. You run because not running feels worse. You don't listen to "Territorial Pissings" because it's pleasant. You listen because Cobain's screaming "gotta find a way, a better way" and that's exactly what your legs are doing at mile two when everything hurts and you're still going.

The sequencing here tells a story I know too well. It starts with Seattle's big three—Pearl Jam, Screaming Trees, Nirvana—then gets heavier, darker, more sludge-metal as it goes. That's not random. That's the arc of every run I've ever done: optimism, reality, survival mode, then something like transcendence if you're lucky. By the time Soundgarden's "Rusty Cage" hits at track six, you're not the same person who started. The tempo shifts. Chris Cornell's voice climbs and you climb with it.

Top 5 Reasons This Playlist Understands What Grunge Actually Was:

1. It knows "Even Flow" belongs first—that's the song that made Pearl Jam mainstream but kept the Seattle grit. Stone Gossard's riff is a heartbeat. You run to heartbeats.

2. "Nearly Lost You" by Screaming Trees is here. Mark Lanegan's voice is gravel and whiskey and the Singles soundtrack. If you know, you know. If you don't, Dick would tell you it's their only radio hit and they deserved ten more.

3. It includes "Seether" by Veruca Salt. Riot grrrl adjacent, Chicago not Seattle, but the energy is right. That bass line is Louise Post and Nina Gordon playing together before they stopped speaking. You can hear the friendship and the future lawsuit.

4. "Siva" from Smashing Pumpkins' Gish—not Siamese Dream, not Mellon Collie. Gish. Sub Pop-adjacent raw Billy Corgan before the strings and the concept albums. This is the version of Corgan that still worked.

5. It ends with "Epic" by Faith No More. Not grunge, not Seattle, but Mike Patton's "it's it" breakdown is exactly what mile six feels like when you're almost done and nothing makes sense but you're still moving.

Here's where I make this personal because I can't help myself: I bought Gish on cassette in 1991 at a store that's now a Starbucks. I made a mixtape for someone who didn't deserve it and put "Siva" at track three, side one. She never mentioned it. What came first—the playlist that failed or the relationship that was already over? Barry would say I sabotaged it by putting a nine-minute song on a mixtape. Barry might be right.

But listen to how this thing moves. The Tad, the Stone Temple Pilots, the Jane's Addiction at the end—this is the whole ecosystem of 1992-1994. Not just grunge. The noise around grunge. The bands that got lumped in because they were loud and angry and didn't fit anywhere else. "Sex Type Thing" is problematic as hell but that bass line makes you run faster. That's the contradiction you live with. Running is full of those—this hurts, keep going; you're tired, speed up; you hate this, do it tomorrow too.

By the time Nirvana's "About A Girl" comes in at track twelve, you're near the end and Cobain is singing something almost pretty off Bleach, the Sub Pop album before Nevermind changed everything. That's the moment this playlist reveals its hand. It's not about the hits. It's about the deep cuts, the B-sides, the stuff you had to know to know. "About A Girl" is Cobain trying to write a pop song and almost succeeding and that tension—between melody and noise, between wanting to connect and wanting to destroy—that's grunge. That's also running. You're trying to feel better and feel worse at the same time.