Walking down the hall at VHS, or any American high school for that matter, you are likely to find teenage girls wearing t-shirts featuring artists such as Nirvana, The Ramones, ACDC, and The Misfits.  So has music from the 80s and 90s made a comeback?

Not exactly.

Instead, it has become a new marketing technique for stores to promote these band tee-shirts, portraying them as something that you HAVE to have.

So it has become the new trend for girls to purchase these band t-shirts because they think it’s “cool,” not because they listen to the music. So suddenly Grunge is popular again, forcing girls to run out to stores such as Brandy Melville, H&M, and Urban Outfitters that carry these shirts, just to seem trendy.

Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain once said “The worst crime is faking it.” If the law agreed with Cobain’s philosophy, then there would be a lot of teenage girls in jail right now.  The advertisement of musical interests manifested in the form of these band t-shirts just for the popularity of the style, is almost insulting to the musicians.  It is highly unlikely that Kurt Cobain would approve of 16-year olds wearing Nirvana shirts just to be trendy.

“Honestly, take off the t-shirt if you can’t name one song by the band on it,” says senior Brendan Lesko.

“I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I’m not,” said Cobain.  It’s a sentiment not shared by certain stores and teenage girls of America.