Nick1976

The post-grunge landscape (late 90s) was so depressing in terms of rock. The grunge movement really started in 1992, but it wasn't a "shock" or something, and it actually COEXISTED with the successful hair/heavy metal bands. The hype was huge, but no one took the music seriously. Nevermind, elevated that scene and gave it pop credibility, but that is all. Grunge was a marketing term that lead to an early death for a bunch of music. This will sound stupid, but I honestly think Weird Al was responsible for getting more kids into Nirvana than Nirvana themselves were. Mostly I remember kids making fun of them for the lyrics being "impossible" to understand when "Teen Spirit" first came out, and those of us who were into music were still too wrapped up in our Poison and Motley Crue or Guns n Roses or whatever albums to care much for a while. But I'd wager that Weird Al's record sold way more copies to kids at that time than Nevermind did, and I actually knew kids who didn't like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at first but started liking it after "Smells Like Nirvana" broke.

For me I remember just not "getting" SLTP at all when it came out. Why the hell is MTV playing this crap and not the new Slaughter video!? But as for the other kids? I don't think you really saw the changeover take place until at least late 1992. I'd bet everything I own that more kids in this area bought Def Leppard's Adrenalize than bought Alice in Chains' Dirt that year. Plus, I don't think I ever really saw any of the huge backlash against metal/hair-metal like you read about around here - all the kids I knew who loved grunge also still liked Guns 'N' Roses and Ozzy and Metallica and whatnot. You'd probably get made fun of if you were still a huge Winger fan or something, but it seemed like most kids just went along with the "alternative revolution" because that was what was happening at the time, not because they suddenly woke up and hated metal one day. I like Winger. Yes they probably deserve to be lumped as a "hair band" but they were one of the better ones. Bands like Bulletboys, Little Caeser, Black N Blue, etc were awful. Winger actually wrote some good pop metal songs and their ballads I think were pretty damn good. Their 3rd album came out during the grunge era and MTV was actually playing the first single from it and sales were OK but then Beavis & Butthead came along and helped kill the album for them by having their nerd friend in a Winger shirt and making fun of their videos. So many 80's bands kicked guitar ass, people took it for granted back then. It's indeed useless to name 80's band with strong guitar presence because generally it was guitar dedicated decade. Million pages won't be enough to name all the great guitarplayers and the great guitar oriented bands that reigned through this epoch. Quite different than todays music. Warrant had good tracks and were intentional about letting some of their bluegrass rise to the surface in some of their songs. Seriously, how many songs can anyone id that kicks ass and has a banjo in the intro? The lead singer, Jani Lane, died at age 47 from alcohol poisoning. He had such a sad story, I saw him in an interview talking about how all of a sudden grunge was popular and anyone who had anything to do with 80's music was screwed and that his record label dropped him because he was no longer relevant. He turned to alcohol and his life just fell apart and he wound up dying because of it. So sad because he really did have a lot of talent and I thought his voice was great. The problem that Warrant faced is that they were mixed into the Hair Glam Band era along with too many bands of much lesser talent. It was difficult for the good bands to segregate from that label. Another was Winger.

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... Give any semi competent guitarist a Motley Crue song and guess what, they'll be able to play it. If it's complex musicianship you want, you shouldn't bash Tool. Most of the bands you mentioned couldn't go anywhere near what Danny Carrey can do.

The Sane Psycho

You keep criticizing Alice In Chains and Soundgarden as bands that helped kill metal, but both bands are more metal than the likes of Def Leppard, Poison, and Motley Crue. Btw, I love hair bands AND grunge. I don't see why it's impossible for me to enjoy both genres.

Akai

Not even a TL;DR, f*ck this thread.

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''To be honest, in my opinion, of course without offending anyone who thinks differently from my point of view,
but also by looking into this matter from a different perspective and by considering each and every one's valid opinion,
I do believe that I forgot what I was going to say.''


S p o t i f y

Nick1976

AIC was a heavy metal grunge band and yes there are different fasits of grunge not just grunge period and that's all. Nirvana is the most overrated band of all time. Basic story telling, masked as genius narrative, combined with absolutely mediocre guitar and drums, leaving only one thing I find decent, Kurt's voice. I remember many people around me then still loving the same bands they had for a while, but were just getting into these new bands that were coming along as well. No one was dropping bands they had long standing fandom with.... I still viewed Nirvana as a new band when they found Kurt dead! I remember thinking to myself when it was announced, "That's it??" Because, it had only really been three albums and a compilation up to then. In my mind at the time, they were just getting started. I didn't really notice people turning on 80's bands until closer to '94/'95. Whenever I read things regarding the way things changed in the early 90's, it seems like a lot of people either think or convince themselves that it all happened in an instant. The way I remember it was more like a snake shedding its skin. Not a snail's pace, but like a flash of lightning either. Just gradual. Hair metal was still pretty popular until late 1992, even mid-1993. Warrant's Dog Eat Dog (1992) went Gold, Leppard's Adrenalize (1992) went triple platinum, Scorpions Face the Heat (1993) went to #21 and probably close to Gold, Winger's Pull went to #41 in early 1993. Etc.

I would say, 1994-1999 was really the dead period. Cinderella's Still Climbing (1994) is good; but went mostly unnoticed. The vast majority of these bands had little real commercial success after late 1993 at the last. Anything that even remotely resembled hair metal didn't really have a chance to have a hit after 1993.

Bon Jovi was still huge but their sound moved away from pop rock to quadi-adult contemporary. They had to distance themselves from hair metal in order to survive the 90's. For me the best albums of that period 1992-1996 in the genre were Bon Jovi's Keep the Faith, Motley Crue s/t and Slang by Def Leppard. I always thought Motley Crue's s/t was really underrated and failed simply because it had the name Motley Crue attached to it, which wasn't "cool" in 1994. I bet had they changed the name for the new lead singer, the album could've gone over bigger. Hooligan's Holiday did get a bit of radio/MTV airplay but at that point in time, the name Motley Crue carried baggage of 1980s excess... a different band name could've led to a bigger album. I remember people who mostly listened to grunge and the sort who were actually shocked at how good that album was, but were hesitant to actually buy the album simply because they were teens and owning a "Motley Crue" cd to them would've been like owning Vanilla Ice or Tiffany.

The Batlord

Could you please trim it down? It's way too much of a commitment to read constant walls of text, and you're just saying the same things over and over again anyway.

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I bet you also like to complain about how most pop stars don't play real instruments anymore. Hair metal died the same way everything dies. It comes along and captures everyone's imagination til they grow sick of it and walk away from it to whatever comes next. It's what happened to psychedelia in the sixties, punk in the seventies, synth in the 80's, alternative rock in the 90's, and so on. Grunge didn't kill anything. It simply had its moment in the sun.

Nick1976

Bon Jovi weathered the Grunge takeover quite well. Keep The Faith was still a huge album that spawned some big hits. The Crossroads compilation was also a huge success, and Always was one of their biggest hits ever. They were still one of the biggest bands in the world in the early 90s. It didn't change overnight and both genres coexisted for quite awhile. I think the two bands that most successfully weathered grunge, artistically if not commercially, are Warrant and Motley Crue. The grunge/alternative take-over didn't happen overnight and was gradual. Several bands still had popular singles/albums through '92/93 (Skid Row, Mr. Big, Extreme, Ugly Kid Joe, Saigon Kick, Damn Yankees, Jackyl) and the more established hard rock / hair bands still had big album sales through '93 (Kiss, Def Leppard, G n R, Alice Cooper, Coverdale/Page, Scorpions, Aerosmith, AC/DC). Warrant just kept getting better as they went. I love Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich and Cherry Pie, but you can't deny the quality of such albums as Dog Eat Dog and Ultraphobic. Warrant adapted to the change of climate pretty well. In fact Warrant Live 86-96 is one of my favorite Warrant albums as it contains a good mix of "hair metal" stuff with their more grungy stuff.

Poison also put out quality stuff. Although, Native Tongue was a commercial flop it contained some pretty solid tunes. Until You Suffer (Fire and Ice) is one of my favorite Poison songs.

Def Leppard is another one who put out pretty decent stuff at the time as well. Adrenalize had some pretty cool stuff and so did Euphoria. I think the song Promises can stand on its own with anything from Pyromania or Hysteria. Winger's "Pull" is a Helluva album. The narrative, largely created and driven hard by rock critics, that grunge killed hair metal is a complete myth. Many of those bands were already on their death bed, and bands like Guns N' Roses, Def Leppard and Bon Jovi still did well after grunge exploded.

And what's great is that hair metal has aged well as a fun part of rock history, while grunge, by and large, died a quick death, and ended up having no more than a handful of bands that are still looked fondly upon. During the time period, 1991-1994, Guns N' Roses sold more records and sold more tickets than Nirvana. And that's even with GnR being dormant from 1994 on. GnR headlined stadiums on their own, Nirvana played stadiums at a few festivals with 25 other bands. GnR played 4 sold out nights at the Forum in 1991, Nirvana was playing clubs at the time. Even at Nirvana's height I don't think they sold half as many tickets as Guns N' Roses. Nirvana played clubs, 3,000-5,000 seat venues, and some arenas on their last tour. GnR were playing huge arenas and stadiums at the same time, with many multiple dates in big cities. And I'm just using GnR as an example, there were other bands at the time that were just as big. GNR were bigger back then, no doubt. GNR sold more records and I think had a more worldwide appeal than Nirvana. Going on that alone Guns N' Roses was the bigger band and much more larger than life than Nirvana. Anyway, the "Illusion" period was positively huge for Guns N Roses - much, much bigger than even the Appetite era. Nirvana are about as original as the band Green Day. If you didn't notice Punk existed before Nirvana. They were so original that the riff to their biggest hit is pretty much "more than a feeling" by Boston and the band admitted to it. Please, Nirvana weren't original at all. They wrote a few catchy songs, a multitude of mediocre bands spawned in their wake and it quickly died off. There was zero original about Nirvana. I've been going over Billboard charts for, identifying musical trends, tracking the evolution of the pop industry, that sort of thing.

here's one thing that jumped out at me: the record companies and MTV screwed up in 1991 when they switched their focus away from straight ahead melodic rock and towards alternative and grunge. The charts don't lie: grunge went over with pop audiences like anchovies on ice cream.

Here's the evidence: From 1986, when Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name" became the first hard rock/metal #1 hit since "Metal Health", the "hair bands" became a constant presence on the charts. Those of us who lived through that wonderful era know this. But then 1991 and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" came, and that was the end, right? Grunge dominated, game over, end of story.

Well, it didn't work out that way. Smells Like Teen Spirit peaked at #7. After Smells Like Teen Spirit, there were still hair bands hitting the top 10 all the way until 1993, when Firehouse's "When I Look Into Your Eyes" became the last top 10 hit in the hair metal genre. Between 1991 and 1993, except for Smells Like Teen Spirit, not a single grunge song cracked the top 10, despite heavy MTV airplay. Only a few, softer alternative hits, like Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train", and Spin Doctors "Two Princes", became genuine hits. Grunge, while certainly popular among rock audiences, had no crossover appeal. The early 90s were almost totally dominated by rap and R&B. Ah, the glory days of "Baby Got Back" and "Whoomp! There it is!" So what was the music industry thinking? They managed to make it uncool to listen to hair bands, yet the alternative they put forward was never really as popular as it was supposed to be, and pretty much died out by 1995. MTV during that period was pretty much alternative around the clock, and some really weird stuff, too, much of which will probably never be shown again, even on VH1 classic. If you watch and episode of Beavis and butthead, there's some pretty weird videos there. It was a really strange era for music, most of it was garbage and quickly forgotten. Again, what were they thinking? An alternative band gets one #7 hit and that's a reason to dump your whole roster and sign anyone with a pulse from Seattle? Yet Meat Loaf had a #1 hit for five weeks at the end of 1993, and no one saw that as a reason to push more straight ahead melodic rock groups?

The Sane Psycho

Why don't more people realize that both grunge and hair metal were great? I don't understand why people in both camps feel a need to jump on the hate bandwagon towards the other genre, all over some stupid, silly rivalry that's been dead for over two decades. I think both genres had some awesome music.

The Batlord

Guns n Roses suck though.

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