If there was a Mount Rushmore of grunge, it would be pretty easy to choose which four faces would be carved in granite. Of course, one of the defining characteristics of being a grunge icon is that none of them would actually want that sort of recognition – or, at least, they'd have to say they wouldn't want it.

But grunge – that nebulous, unclassifiable genre that sprung up out of the Pacific Northwest during the late '80s and promptly reshaped the pop culture landscape in the '90s – has a legacy littered with anti-heroes and underrated geniuses who made the phenomenon possible with little to no widespread fanfare. In fact, in Seattle – the accepted epicenter of grunge – everyone thought the "scene" in the Athens, Ga. and Minneapolis sense of the word had run its course long before anyone outside of Aberdeen had even heard of Kurt Cobain.

In the list below, we shine a spotlight on 19 of those grunge musicians or progenitors who were influential within the genre. Although you might have heard of some (and have definitely heard of some of their bandmates), they rarely get mentioned until after the Vedders and Cornells.

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