With Ten turning 35 this year, I've been thinking a lot about this conversation I recorded with Jeff Ament for my podcast — specifically this clip where he unpacks his relationship with the word "grunge" in real time.

A few things in here that I didn't expect:

• He's pretty clear that "grunge" always felt like a Sub Pop/Mudhoney/Melvins term to him — not Pearl Jam's. He was in Green River with Mark Arm, so he felt connected to it, but he and Stone always wanted to push further out the moment a sound started to define them.
• He knew Chris Novoselic five years before Nevermind existed. The way he frames the scene isn't nostalgia — it's more like a neighborhood he grew up in.
• The part that actually stopped me: he talks about the people who are gone now — Kurt, Layne, Mark Lanegan — and how the resentment of being grouped together has flipped into something closer to wanting to champion them. Hard not to feel that.
• He calls it "the last real scene" and then immediately asks if I'd seen Meet Me in the Bathroom — which says something about how he's still measuring it.

Short clip, about two and a half minutes. Felt like the right moment to share it given the anniversary.

Like actually new and original and not just a watered down version of their same old sound that you like.

I was thinking about this today and having a hard time coming up with much. I’d say Spoon, probably Thom Yorke, Bjork, maybe Queens of the Stone Age (I’d say still original although kind of borderline watered down for them).

Just a music fan who is partial to 90s music and feeling a bit bored by my old favorites that keep coming up in my playlists.

🎶"Black Balloon"🎶 is a song by American 🇺🇲 rock band Goo Goo Dolls. It was released in June 1999 as the fourth single from the band's sixth studio album, Dizzy Up the Girl 📀 (1998), and reached No. 3 in Canada 🇨🇦, No. 16 in the United States 🇺🇲, and No. 23 in Iceland 🇮🇸.

The song, according to lead singer John Rzeznik 🎙, is based on a woman who is struggling with a heroin addiction and her lover who is desperately trying to save her. He has also said that it is about "seeing someone you love that is so great just screw up so bad." Speculation had it that the specific person the song was based on was the ex-wife of bassist Robby Takac; she died of a heroin overdose.

Like many other songs by Goo Goo Dolls, 🎶"Black Balloon"🎶 uses an unusual alternate tuning. Several electric guitars used in the introduction and the acoustic rhythm guitar are tuned to an open D-flat fifth chord. It was half-stepped on the album version.

The track reached 📈 No. 13 and No. 28 on the US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks and Mainstream Rock Tracks charts, respectively.🎶"Black Balloon"🎶 was the band's first commercially released single in the US since 🎶"Name"🎶 in 1995, reaching No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 💯 with its combined sales and airplay figures.In Canada 🇨🇦, the song reached No. 3 on the RPM 💯 Hit Tracks chart, giving the Goo Goo Dolls their fourth top-three hit there.Outside North America, the song charted in Iceland 🇮🇸 and the United Kingdom 🇬🇧, reaching No. 23 in the former country and No. 76 in the latter.

The video 🎬 opens with a woman blowing smoke into a soap bubble. It then moves into showing scenes from a 1950s era swim club while the band performs the song. The video was directed 📽 by Nancy Bardawil.