Why do people blame Nirvana for killing Hair Metal?
 

Hey Music banter I am feenin for some music knowledge. As you guys know Rock is not really my forte so I wanted to get some info. I commonly hear Nirvana is the blame for the decline in Hair Metal in the late 80's and I wanted to know your opinion on it. I always thought Hair Metal was a fad that had already declined by the time Nirvana really became popular which was in the early 90's. Did Nirvana's popularity influence generic rock bands like Nickleback, All American Rejects, Panic at the Disco, Foo Fighters or Creed?

How would you define grunge music and was it something that really impacted rock music for the better?

I have always been confused with why Nirvana are so highly regarded (not that they don't necessarily deserve it but just want more clarification as to why)

I notice a lot of the rock bands have really faded out commercially.

I.ve always felt Nirvana was overrated but if they did kill hair metal then they deserve all the praise they get. I think Pearl Jam had more to do with influences on the crappy generic bands like Creed, Nickleback...etc. The mainstream market for the most part ignores rock acts as they can make more sales using one of their near pornographic pop stars with their generic dance music featuring some randon hip hop act guest appearance.

I have never heard anybody claim that Nirvana killed hair metal. What I do know is that Nirvana was one of the couple bands that were one of the big dogs when it came to the rise of grunge music, specifically in the Seattle music scene during the 90's, which they definitely deserved. Are the overrated? To me personally, I wouldn't say so. The reason I think they're so highly regarded is the same reason why people see the Big 4 of thrash as being highly regarded. They, along with Alice in Chains and the like were just "those guys" that really knew what grunge was and is about.

I just think it is very interesting because there was a time rock bands like Green Day, The White Stripes, AFI, My Chemical Romance, Alien Ant Farm, All American Rejects, etc ( I can not believe I can name all these bands from the top of my head lol) ruled the commercial scene for a bit at least until the mid 00's.

Why is Nirvana overrated to you? If Kurt Cobain had not passed away so young, do you think they would still be considered icons?

Maybe middle-aged dudes who never let go of their mullet still say that, but the only people I ever hear saying grunge killed anything are the whiny tools who bitch about it killing thrash metal. As if it wasn't a genre which had already been stale for several years.

It is a pretty well established music cliche which is why I really wanted more info about it since this is a rock oriented forum.

How would you define grunge music? Can you post some examples? When I looked some info on the genre I notice there are apparently sub genres within grunge itself.

I always thought KISS and hair metal was corny not sure why some rock fans are mad that it died off. It is actually good that it did...

I find that listening to the "pioneers" of the genre would be a better way to understand the genre. Alice In Chains, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Mudhoney would be a great start. Though I wouldn't say Mudhoney was much of a pioneer, though i've been proven wrong before.

Probably because they were the most prolific band of the sub-genre that took over rock after hair metal was starting to die off. I don't think they killed it, hair metal was becoming popular in the early half of the 1980s, and if you consider it an extension of glam rock even longer than that.

Grunge and hair metal aren't really all that different. Alice In Chains actually started out as a hair metal band in the late 80s.

Let me explain this by way of my firsthand experience: I started high school in the fall of of 1991 and at that time the biggest, most popular new music among my classmates was Guns 'n Roses simultaneous album releases of Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II and the Van Halen song "Right Now". Nobody in my high school except myself and my friends listened to alternative music at all. Then Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" came out, and at first it was only popular among my friends, but suddenly it spread like wildfire, in a way that was completely unprecedented for an alternative type song to do at the time, and by the time winter rolled around everyone at my school loved Nirvana. After that came groups like Pearl Jam and the hair metal and hard rock that had totally dominated the consciousness of my classmates rapidly began to fade away. It was really pretty incredible how fast it happened. In retrospect, hair metal was kind of running out of steam, and changing to be a lot less flashy, by the time Nirvana came along, but it's definitely true that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was the thing that really knocked it out of the game.

I can remember stuff like Janes Addiction, Faith No More, RHCP, Pixies, Soundgarden, Fishbone, Sonic Youth, Monster Magnet & Nine Inch Nails, hell even Neil Young edging out hair metal on rock shows on TV & radio long before I ever heard of Nirvana around 1989/90.
If Nirvana were the death blow those bands did the damage first.

I also think Hip Hop's role in this has kind of been ignored too, I know a hell of a lot of rock music fans bored of rock music who basically turned their backs on it to listen exclusively to hip hop around that time too.
Imagine you're a pissed off angry 14 year old Urban Hatemonger, are you going to pick up that Warrant album or are you going to pick up It Takes a Nation Of Millions.
No fucking contest.

Plus Hair Metal was never a really huge deal in the rest of the world as it was in the States. You look at the UK before Nirvana yes Guns n Roses, Bon Jovi and the bigger Hair Metal bands sold a lot of records but the most popular bands at that time here were bands like The Stone Roses, Primal Scream, Happy Mondays, Carter USM, Inspiral Carpets The Wonderstuff & Ride.