Ixnay, I was a teen in the mid 90s. The thing about Nirvana's music, while it was a welcome change from the hair metal era which had become a bit of joke by ~1990, it was not really a good sound to try to copy. And everyone and their grandmother did.. Really only Nirvana, STP (with some reservations) and The Offspring were worth listening to as far as grunge but there were so many copycats (Candlebox, Bush, Silverchair, etc.) as wells as established bands adopting the sound (Smashing Pumpkins) it got tiresome real quick. (Note, I'm not counting AiC, Soundgarden or Pearl Jam as grunge, just because "they were all from Seattle". Their music was very different, AiC/Soundgarden was more like heavy metal was PJ was more of rock/blues hybrid)
As pop/rock goes, my personal favorite era is probably late 70s/early 80s, when I was like 3 years old. There was a large variety of sounds, its not like everyone was copying EVH (though with hindsight he was a much better musician to try to copy than Cobain)
I don't think this is wholly a subjective opinion, at least as far as rock music goes - pop and hiphop were a different story of course - and "pop" starting adopting more of hiphop in its sound (e.g, Brittney Spears) In the Washiungton DC suburbs, its telling when local alt rock radio station WHFS switched over to Spanish music I think in like 2000. By that point no one was listening.