Episode #5: A History of Grunge with Mark Yarm

Everybody Loves Our Town: A History of Grunge by Mark Yarm - published exactly twenty years after the release of Nirvana's landmark album Nevermind - is said to be the definitive word on grunge.

Grunge, also known as the 'Seattle sound', is the sludgy fusion of punk rock and heavy metal that emerged from the Pacific Northwest in the early part of the 1980s. But it was the unexpected, seemingly overnight success of Nirvana's single 'Smells Like Teen Spirit,' in the fall of 1991, that made grunge a household word and launched an American music movement on par with punk and hip-hop.

20 years later, Mark Yarm captures that era in the words of those at the forefront of the movement (and the music's lesser-known champions). Everybody Loves Our Town will tell the whole story: the founding of originators like Soundgarden and the Melvins, the early successes of Seattle's Sub Pop record label, the rise of powerhouses Nirvana and Pearl Jam, the insane media hype surrounding the grunge explosion, the suicide of Kurt Cobain, and finally, the genre's mid-to-late-'90s decline.

Mark Yarm is an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia Journalism School and the former tech desk editor at BuzzFeed News (RIP). Prior to BuzzFeed, he worked at Input, BreakerMag, and Blender. In addition, he has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Wired, WSJ. Magazine, and Rolling Stone. His book Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge, was named as a Time magazine book of the year.