Echoes of a Generation: A Multimodal Analysis on Grunge as A Means of Cultural Expression in Pearl Jam's and Timoria’s Music

Abstract

In both the USA and Italy, the 1990s have been an ambiguous decade in terms of politics, society and culture: on the one hand, the decade was characterized by the rise of the Internet, new musical genres, and cultural trends; on the other hand, following the prosperous 1980s, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the end of Cold War, the new decade began with economic instability, political upheaval, corruption scandals, and episodes of violence and terrorism, all of which contributed to a widespread sense of uncertainty. This restless atmosphere greatly affected the younger generation, the so-called Generation X (Klosterman, 2022: 9), who started feeling disillusioned and disconnected from the society they lived in. Struggling with alienation and lack of motivation, younger people felt abandoned by society. In response, the powerful but short-lasting grunge movement emerged (Chaney, 2024): originating in Seattle, the genre quickly became a global phenomenon that gave voice to the angst and confusion of a generation adrift. The present study focuses on the multimodal critical discourse analysis of the musical output from two pivotal bands in grunge movement: Pearl Jam from the USA and Timoria from Italy. By analyzing their work, the aim of the research is to reveal the bands’ commitment to articulate the struggles of their contemporaries. This study makes use of two different methodological approaches to analyze two different kinds of materials: Norman Fairclough’s (1995, 2003) Critical Discourse Analysis framework will be applied to the analysis of the lyrics of Pearl Jam’s song “Even Flow” and Timoria’s song “Senza vento”, while Anthony Baldry and Paul J. Thibault’s (2006) framework for Phasal Analysis will be employed to examine the music videos for Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” and Timoria’s “Sangue impazzito”. Through these analyses, the thesis highlights how these songs and music videos represent the grunge genre, as they provide a harsh criticism on social inequalities and serve as a voice of the worries and anxieties of ‘Gen-Xers’.