Hmm... Quite the opposite for me. I found Kurt's voice to be fairly grating and underdeveloped which hurt the raw emotion that he packed in his songwriting. I don't mean polished though... You don't need polish or excellent production to grab me as a vocalist. Chris Cornell I feel is actually a good example of that.

I'm not a huge Kurt Cobain fan or anything. I just mentioned him because he was part of the conversation. Truth be told, I'm hard pressed to think of a grunge vocalist I like less Chris Cornell.

Just as an OT aside what defined an artist as grunge? Seems like a fairly loose category to encompass Nirvana and Soundgarden.

It just was a tag to describe a scene, not a genre. Grunge is not a style of music, but a way to market bands out of the Seattle scene from the late eighties and early nineties as well as bands trying for a similar sound, see The Stone Temple Pilots.

It's music that sounds the way the word "grunge" would suggest

I agree. I always saw it as more of a marketing term than anything else. Basically, in the early to mid 90s if you played rock music that was sort of gritty and you were from Seattle, you were grunge. Also if you weren't from Seattle but you played rock music that was sort of gritty and couldn't be easily defined as punk, metal, 80s college rock, or a few other things, you'd probably be considered grunge.

Think of it like nu-metal. Its not a style of music, just a loose descriptor to market bands from the late 90s early 00s.

it sounds like mud

That's what I'm saying.

Sorry meant to quote stephen again.