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Smells Like Hubris: Marilyn Manson says he ‘coined the term grunge’ in a review of Nirvana’s ‘Bleach’


Marilyn Manson wants to clear something up: He coined the term “grunge.”

In a new interview with Noisey, the self-proclaimed God of Fuck nonchalantly drops this nuggets while discussing his early days as a journalist, claiming he used the term in a review of Nirvana’s 1989 album, Bleach.

“I hated rock n’ roll when I started,” Manson says. “It was on the cusp of grunge and a lot of bands that I used to call ‘commonist rock’ because everyone wanted to be like the common man with the flannel shirts and Pearl Jam and their fight against Ticketmaster and all this horse shit.”

He then drops the bombshell: “Nirvana was different. That was one of the bands I covered first as a journalist and I’m just going to go ahead and say I coined the term ‘grunge’ in a review of Bleach. You’re welcome.”

Whoa. Thank you! Does Courtney Love know about this?

As Consequence of Sound points out, Mark Arm of seminal Seattle bands Green River and Mudhoney is usually credited with first coming up with the “grunge” tag, cited in a 1981 letter to Seattle fan zine Desperate Times. That’s eight years prior to Manson, but maybe the man born Brian Warner came up with it as a child in the late-’70s and only published it while reviewing Bleach.

Either way, Marilyn Manson’s new record, The Pale Emperor, is out January 20, and he and the boys come to Boston’s House of Blues on January 28. Here’s the third and latest cut from The Pale Emperor, titled “Cupid Carries A Gun”…