History YMMV / HuskerDu

** Many of their songs take on an even harsher double meaning after learning that Mould and Hart were both in the closet for the 80's.

** Really the entirety of ''Zen Arcade'' qualifies, being a ConceptAlbum about a teenager fleeing an abusive and turbulent home life only to discover that the outside world is even more cruel and terrible. At the end of the album, his new girlfriend [[spoiler: Overdoses and dies on heroin, causing him to break down and for it to be revealed he imagined the entire album and he's actually still living in his abusive household.]]

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: The narrator of ''Zen Arcade'' claims in the 2nd song that his parents are abusive, but we later learn that they've both economically supported him when he fled home and are still trying to communicate with him. Are they really as abusive as we've been lead to believe or it filtered through his [[UnreliableNarrator viewpoint?]]

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Pretty much the entirety of ''Zen Arcade'' and ''New Day Rising'', and a good number of individual songs as well.
** We also shouldn't forget ''Flip Your Wig'', ''Candy Apple Grey'', and ''Warehouse: Songs and Stories''; while some fans objected to their more polished production, they're still great albums. Even their early releases before they Grew the Beard still have a lot of good songs on them.
* ChorusOnlySong: "New Day Rising" and "If I Told You". {{Justified|Trope}}, since they are also {{Single Stanza Song}}s.

* EpicRiff: Also lots of them. “Newest Industry”, “Chartered Trips”, “Somewhere”, “Plans I Make”, “Reoccurring Dreams”, “Pink Turns to Blue” (which even has an EpicRiff in its ''guitar solo'' that sounds more than a bit like it may have influenced Music/{{Metallica}}’s “Enter Sandman”), “Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill”, “Powerline”, “It’s Not Funny Anymore”, “Divide and Conquer”, “Ice Cold Ice”… They’re not all limited to guitar, either; no fan of hardcore is likely to mistake the opening of “Something I Learned Today” (drums) for any other song, while “Standing by the Sea” has one on bass.
* FirstInstallmentWins: Of a sort. ''Zen Arcade'' isn't actually their first full-length album, but it's their first studio album to break twenty minutes and it's their first release of any sort to break past the thirty-minute mark (unless you count ''Everything Falls Apart and More'', a compilation of early material released in 1993). It remains probably their best-loved album and is considered their most representative and defining release.

* VindicatedByHistory: They never managed to break out of the underground while they were still together, though after their demise they would come to be widely regarded as one of the most influential rock bands of their era. Grant Hart's death received coverage in mainstream sources across the Internet and in print media up to and including the ''New York Times''.
* TheWoobie: The protagonist of Zen Arcade. He's kind of jerk, but he's not even mean enough to be a JerkassWoobie.

* AlternativeCharacterIntepretation: The narrator of ''Zen Arcade'' claims in the 2nd song that his parents are abusive, but we later learn that they've both economically supported him when he fled home and are still trying to communicate with him. Are they really as abusive as we've been lead to believe or it filtered through his [[UnreliableNarrator viewpoint?]]

* NoHitWonder: Of the "more influential than commercially successful" variety. They had middling chart success outside the U.K., and nothing that qualifies as a hit outside that country, but they wound up being one of the most influential hardcore/alternative bands of their era - some sources, such as Allmusic, consider them co-{{Trope Maker}}s of the entire genre of AlternativeRock (alongside Music/{{REM}}).

* EarWorm: Lots of them. Excellent examples include "Every Everything", "Turn On the News", "Don't Want to Know If You Are Lonely", "New Day Rising", "Something I Learned Today", "Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill", and "Makes No Sense at All".

* TearJerker: Songs such as "Pink Turns to Blue", "Keep Hanging On", "Don't Know Yet", "Too Far Down", "Hardly Getting Over It", and "No Promise Have I Made" certainly qualify for this trope. In particular, if they made a SurprisinglyGentleSong, chances are it will also be a TearJerker.

* ChorusOnlySong: "New Day Rising" and "If I Told You". {{Justified|TropeÇÇ, since they are also {{Single Stanza Song}}s.

* ChorusOnlySong: "New Day Rising" and "If I Told You". [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], since they are also {{Single Stanza Song}}s.
* CrowningMusicOfAwesome: Pretty much the entirety of ''Zen Arcade'' and ''New Day Rising'', and a good number of individual songs as well.

* SweetDreamsFuel: "Don't Know Yet", the instrumental closer to ''Flip Your Wig''.

* VindicatedByHistory: They never managed to break out of the underground while they were still together, though after their demise they would come to be widely regarded as one of the most influential rock bands of their era. Grant Hart's death received coverage in mainstream sources across the Internet and in print media up to and including the ''New York Times''.