I wasn’t in that first wave of fans.

But it was a massive shift that was partially driven by backlash against the pop of the era, and the pop/hair metal scene.

Since what the grunge bands in general, and nirvana in specific were doing was relatively unknown to the general populace, and that first wave of grunge (again, with nirvana in specific) being really good, and the first songs reaching for the whole wave of depressed realization of how fucked the world was getting from the generation that was in their late teens/early twenties then, it was the right thing at the right time.

Hell, I didn’t really like a lot of grunge at the time (and I’m still picky about it), but I don’t think you can underestimate how hard Smells like Teen Spirit hit. Even those of us familiar with the punk influences of nirvana could tell that shit was fresh. It was an explosion of a new expression of rock that hadn’t been explored in the public at large yet.

Yeah, it got vacuumed up and churned out by later bands as labels went crazy trying to shoehorn other bands into the style, or unsigned bands tried to copy it, but the first few years there were pretty exciting, even for a non fan just because it was obvious that a new genre was forming.

There’s times I regret that I didn’t click with nirvana at the time ( it took years for that to happen), but there’s also a good bit of satisfaction that I didn’t because when I did click with them, it was a powerful thing, and I could do a deep dive rather than having to explore their music one album at a time.