11 Grunge Songs That Made Their Debut on Movie Soundtracks

As noted above, the Singles soundtrack was loaded with songs by Seattle grunge artists. So, we're kicking things off with its opening track, Alice in Chains' "Would?", and you'll see some others ahead that follow the actual track listing too!

Regarding "Would?", Crowe approached Jerry Cantrell about writing a song for Singles and the result was a tribute to late Mother Love Bone vocalist Andrew Wood, who died in 1990. It appeared on Alice's album Dirt later that year, though they it was recorded separately from the album.

"It sounds just a little bit different, if you listen to the rest of Dirt, those 11 songs have a little bit of a different sound than 'Would?'," Cantrell told Louder Sound in 2023.

Alice In Chains performed the song in the film too.

Pearl Jam actually contributed two songs to the Singles soundtrack, "Breath" being the first of the pair to appear on the track listing. Both songs were recorded during the sessions for their 1991 debut album Ten but were left off it in the end.

"Breath" wasn't originally intended for the soundtrack, but fans heard it there for the first time.

Chris Cornell's "Seasons" came about in a really interesting way. The Soundgarden vocalist recorded a set of songs on a homemade cassette tape based on the character Cliff Poncier, the frontman of the fictional band Citizen Dick in Singles (portrayed by Matt Dillon). "Seasons" was one of the tracks on the cassette and Crowe wanted it for the movie.

"This is Chris Cornell, as Cliff Poncier, recording all of these songs, with lyrics and total creative vision,” Crowe told Rolling Stone [via Jeffgarden.com].

A silly idea based on a fictional storyline resulted in Cornell's first ever release as a solo artist. He made a cameo in the film as well.

Cornell didn't just write a solo song for Singles but a blistering Soundgarden track too, which the band performed in the movie.

It wasn't an outtake from the Badmotorfinger sessions and was never included on a studio album, just their 2010 compilation Telephantasm.

This is the second Pearl Jam track that appears in Singles and was originally intended for the movie, unlike "Breath. "State of Love and Trust" was written by Eddie Vedder after Crowe presented him with the Singles script [via Vanity Fair].

Both were ultimately left off Ten and included on the soundtrack for the movie. And Vedder, Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard all appeared in the movie too.

Mudhoney, one of the pioneering bands of the Seattle scene, were also approached by Crowe and asked to contribute a song to the film. Led by Mark Arm, the group took it as an opportunity to poke fun at the fact that their once-underground scene was now under a spotlight — they wrote an original track called "Overblown."

“In typical wise-ass fashion, we wrote ‘Overblown,’ taking the piss out of the glorification and aggrandizement of the scene,” Arm told author Everybody Loves Our Town author Mark Yarm [via Vice].

Screaming Trees didn't write their mega hit "Nearly Lost You" specifically for Singles — the band was working on their 1992 album Sweet Oblivion when someone at Sony suggested its inclusion during a meeting after hearing it.

"At some point, they played ‘Nearly Lost You’ in a staff meeting and thought, ‘That’s a great song. We got to put that on the Singles soundtrack,'" Screaming Trees' Barrett Martin recalled [via Yahoo].

Alice In Chains contributed two songs to the soundtrack for the 1993 film Last Action Hero. The first that appears, "What the Hell Have I," allegedly was originally written for their 1992 album Dirt. Funny enough, "Would?," which wasn't meant for Dirt, was included on the album but this one wasn't.

Nevertheless, fans' first time hearing the song was in Last Action Hero.

The origins of "A Little Bitter" are unclear, but it's certainly an underrated Alice In Chains song that also appears in the critically-panned/cult favorite Arnold Schwarzeneger flick.

Stone Temple Pilots originally planned to contribute the song "Only Dying" from their Mighty Joe Young EP to the soundtrack for the 1994 film The Crow, but they went with "Big Empty" after actor Brandon Lee was accidentally killed onset during the film's production.

"Big Empty" later appeared on the band's second album Purple. 

While this one isn't quite a "grunge" song, it's still an underrated gem by Cornell. He wrote "Sunshower" for the 1998 film Great Expectations starring Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow, so it was after Soundgarden had already disbanded.

While never released as part of an official album track list, "Sunshower" was included as a bonus track on some editions of Cornell's debut studio album Euphoria Morning.