Filming completed in January 1992, only for Cameron to hit a roadblock as Warner Bros. shelved the movie for nine months, sceptical of its commercial appeal. “Then Nirvana hit, and they wanted to call the movie Come As You Are,” he later told Rolling Stone. “Then, finally, I think their kids were telling them, ‘You have Pearl Jam in a movie and you’re not putting it out?!’ Later, people were like, ‘Oh, Hollywood is capitalising on grunge’ – but we fought to get that movie released.”
Critically well-received, Singles was nowhere near as lucrative as its soundtrack album, which Cameron planned to feel “like a mixtape you would make your friend”, with previously unreleased Pearl Jam and Soundgarden tracks, and career-best moments by Alice In Chains and Screaming Trees. And perhaps neither soundtrack nor movie quite capture the snarling cynicism that was also a part of the Seattleite character – only scene pioneers Mudhoney’s contribution, Overblown, achieves that sardonic note – but as artefacts of the moment the city’s homegrown underground rose up to invade the stadia, they are precious indeed.
And while it never quite set the box office alight, Singles was a key influence on another cultural phenomenon that would define the ’90s, with the producers of Friends going on to develop their show only after Cameron Crowe refused permission for them to spin his movie into a weekly sitcom.