They might not have known it yet, but anyone who ever felt the remotest fandom for/identification with Kurt Cobain, Mark Arm, or Kim Thayil back when the word “grunge” still needed to be clarified for a mass audience on a regular basis (1991, say) was about to learn a harsh lesson in the pleasures of corporate cooptation. Once Nirvana’s Nevermind hit #1 on the U.S. charts in January 1992, the feeding frenzy was on, with Marc Jacobs introducing a “grunge” fashion line for Perry Ellis and a receptionist for Sub Pop Records successfully passing off a bunch of made-up grunge slang to the New York Times.

In truth, the attempts to cash in on grunge were only partially successful. Cameron Crowe set his 1992 movie Singles in Seattle and populated it with well-known and authentic grunge practitioners like Tad Doyle, Stone Gossard, and Jeff Ament, but that didn’t make the movie any good or (even if you liked it) any less stilted. Grunge resisted the spotlight, and in the long arc of history, the big winners ended up being, er, Matchbox 20 and Foo Fighters maybe?

Exhibit A in the deliciously tricky process of marketing the grunge mindset is this hilariously awkward “grunge” commercial that Bud Light put out, apparently in 1993, which ought to have induced a gag reflex in anyone who might be considered the prime target audience. According to the YouTube info, this commercial ran for four years, but I barely remember it, which may mean that it was just barely innocuous enough to escape the derision it so richly deserved.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Just like punk, except it’s cars’: Subaru’s unintentionally hilarious ‘grunge’ commercial