Grunge…Again: 90s Music Is On Its Way Back, But Should It Be?
By Joseph Oliveto
For those of us suffering from a severe case of Nineties nostalgia, in theory, it’s been a great couple of years. Not only are bands like Pearl Jam and Radiohead still going strong, but some of the defining acts from the era, such as Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden, and Smashing Pumpkins (albeit with Billy Corgan as the sole remaining member) have reunited, recording new music as well as touring with the old hits.
Grunge, again? Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Like a high school sweetheart calling you after years of separation. Except, when you start to spend time with that sweetheart, you realize the attraction you initially felt was a product of the circumstances, and although those memories will always have a special place, you’ve come to understand something: that special place is the past.
Bands tend to work like that. The initial magic that sparked their success is difficult to replicate in later years. And, sad as it is to admit, even the most talented artists can get a boost from the musical climate in which they produced their best work. The world of pop music is not much different than a suburban high school, complete with cliques, fashion statements, and attention-seekers. Was Nirvana a brilliant, cutting-edge band? Sure. They just happened to be made even more brilliant and cutting-edge by the fact that they were writing their songs around the same time that listeners wanted someone with balls to knock Michael Jackson off the charts.
Of course, Kurt Cobain ended the Nirvana legacy without question, leaving no room for a 20th anniversary reunion tour somewhere down the road. To his credit, the band’s drummer, Dave Grohl, has never looked back. Sure, it seems like every subsequent Foo Fighters album starts to sound more and more like Nickelback, but side projects such as Them Crooked Vultures prove that he’s the kind of musician who knows that true rock ‘n roll has always been about being fresh and authentic.
A young Cobain doing what he does best.
To be fair, all the alt-rock geezers who are trying to recapture the glory days of plaid shirts and teenage angst have also tried to move forward in progressive, new directions. Scott Wieland of the Stone Temple Pilots had a stint as the lead singer of supergroup Velvet Revolver. Similarly, Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell teamed up with guitar god Tom Morello to form Audioslave.
Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction sang in Porno for Pyros and Satellite Party, neither of which matched the success of his first band. Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins frontman, has never been content to rest on his laurels, releasing one album with the short lived prozac-pop Zwan as well as a solo album (he also decided he would write a book of dreadful poetry, Blinking With Fists).
Some of these projects caught on with fans. Velvet Revolver and Audioslave both got their fair share of radio play, the latter staying relevant enough that a younger generation of listeners probably had no idea that the guys in the band had ever been in other groups. Others, like Billy Corgan’s underrated foray into electronica/shoegaze, TheFutureEmbrace, haven’t been as enthusiastically received.
So, are the reunions justified? Yes, we have to accept the fact that the scene these bands belonged to is dead, and along with it the excitement and energy of those early days, the sense of revolution that comes with every movement in rock history. Still, if the new music is good, we can’t complain.
Stone Temple Pilots, reunited. Worth it?
But, here’s the rub: it’s not good.Stone Temple Pilots were never that original, predicting the likes of Creed and Puddle of Mudd in their attempts to filter the grunge sound through a corporate machine, but regardless, some of those old tunes like “Sex Type Thing,” still kick ass anyway. The new stuff sounds like witless self-parody. Same goes for Soundgarden; their heart just isn’t in it anymore.
Smashing Pumpkins are going an interesting route, releasing 44 songs for free through their website, and although the tunes range from catchy pop-psychedelia (“Freak”) to Led Zeppelin-esque ballads (“A Song for a Son”), none of it begins to sound as pure as Siamese Dream or as haunting as Adore. As far as Jane’s Addiction goes, if past “reunion” albums (Strays) have proven anything, it just ain’t the same band without bassist Eric Avery laying the solid foundation. No reason to expect the future to be any different.
Of course, there are a few bands who have not only managed to stay together, but also managed to create music that doesn’t sound like a pale imitation of their glory days. 311 comes to mind; listen to them now, and you’d never guess that they were part of the 90s crowd. They sound as fresh as ever, and if a band is capable of that remarkable feat, more power to them.
Still, maybe it’s the responsibility of the fans to reject this urge to see our old heroes back in action if they decided to move on to other projects. Nostalgia isn’t a bad thing, but rock is about looking forwards, embracing new sounds and band dynamics. Like someone once said: it’s better to burn out than to fade away.
Friday, September 3, 2010 10:18AM
you are full of shit.."grunge" if thats what you want to call it(i call it great hard rock and roll) never went anywhere.you just have to know where to look(cleveland) stp true,has always been generic..but SOUNDGARDEN..are you serious? they're fucking inspired.
Friday, September 3, 2010 1:52PM
Just another writer who knows little about the actual music of that era and appears to be informed by public sheep opinion and similarly uneducated headlines. First, anyone who uses the word "grunge" to describe the genre loses some credibility, since those bands ranged from hard punk sounding (Nirvana) to classic/folk rock (Pearl Jam) to psychedelic Sabbath (AIC) to a progressive/indy sound (Pumpkins), and "grunge" was just a corporate word used to lump them together. What all of that music DID have in common was its authenticity–none of the above were commercially organized or manufactured for the masses. The world is in need of real artists and another revolution like that we felt in the early 90's to inspire a new generation to discover and appreciate music for themselves rather than gobble down uninspired, radio-fed drivel that will be forgotten in a few months. Also, all of these artists are only in their 40s, and are still capable of putting out material acclaimed by critics and loyal fans alike (see Chains, STP) that is anything but a "pale imitation of their glory days."
And comparing STP to Creed? Have you actually listened to either band's catalog aside from their radio songs?
All music is ultimately subjective, but it's irritating to read "articles" like this that reduce a number of important and influential artists to a category and dismiss them as a washed up fad and/or irrelevant. And, if such musicians want to build on their legacy (they're all releasing new music) and continue making art, why in the world would you want to stop them?
Friday, September 3, 2010 7:44PM
"Sure, it seems like every subsequent Foo Fighters album starts to sound more and more like Nickelback…" glad somebody said it.
Friday, September 3, 2010 7:50PM
You forgot to mention Tool.
Friday, September 3, 2010 8:09PM
lost all credit when he said 311 sounds as fresh as ever. they havent sounded fresh since transistor
Friday, September 3, 2010 8:20PM
meh, i'm not ready for 90s grunge to return. weren't they played enough at that time for a lifetime? i think so.
Friday, September 3, 2010 8:28PM
STP and Smashing Pumpkins…grunge…really? Really!?
Friday, September 3, 2010 8:34PM
I guess this would be an OK article if the author didn't sound like a 25 year old hipster who was in grade school when this stuff happened the first time around. I just get the feeling this is a postmortem piece from someone who's looking at the 90's rock scene through the lens of history without experiencing it firsthand.
Friday, September 3, 2010 9:00PM
I don't understand the point of this article. Because there is a chance of a '90's rock resurgence in the mainstream media he is trying to decide if that is good or bad? And if there were a point to be made his analysis of the '90's scene and the bands therein is so shallow that everything he states has no merit to me.
Friday, September 3, 2010 9:03PM
Sooooo easy to dump on bands trying to come back. I hate reading all of these types of articles. There is almost no such thing as rock and roll anymore and I'm happy to have any of it.
Friday, September 3, 2010 9:18PM
gotta love a guy bashing somebody elses dream, and you just compared one of the best rock bands of all time to Nickelback…..I actually stopped reading the article right there. Just like everyone raggin on Linkin Park for not sounding exactly like their first album….bands evolve and try new things…..they dont care what YOU want….they play what makes them happy in hopes that you'll enjoy it as well…..they arent here for your sake, they do this b/c they love it and sometimes a lot of people love them for it.
Friday, September 3, 2010 10:28PM
The 'Grunge' scene was an odd title even for us living through it and loving it. 'Alternative' worked ok until it became what was most popular and then made no sense and included everything under the sun.
There was an overall theme though to so many of these incredible early 90's bands that seemed to largely break all at the same time -like the late 60's British invasion and you can see a lot of similar parallels bands. They stabbed shallow, flashy 80's hair metal in the heart more importantly than toppling Michael Jackson in a totally different genre. I call it the 'Seattle scene' (and this included bands not from Seattle just like the British invasion rightfully includes American artists like Hendrix).
How does this article not mention Alice in Chains' come back that was very rare in how really fitting and amazing it was despite losing the totally irreplaceable Layne Staley. Cantrell was half-way in the lead position before AIC broke up in the first place so many years ago. Black Gives Way To Blue sounds like it was recorded right after Jar of Flies and is mostly better (though different and debatable) than their last album with Layne. So many failed reunions proved how impressive this one was.
Cantrell's first solo album and parts of Degradation Trip are really good too.
Smashing Pumpkins is a mystery to me. The word always was that Corgan pretty much did everything other than drums on their purest, best album Siamese Dream and probably could have done the same on their too overblown but still mostly amazing follow double album. So how can he on his own not make a single song that lives up to that large pile of fantastic work? I don't know, but he can't. It mostly just stinks.
STP never gets the respect they deserve. Never. Core was pretty good with a few classic fast and slow stuff, but Purple was a landmark album full of work as good as any 'best album' from any other band of this era. Pearl Jam's Ten, AIC's Dirt, S.P's Siamese Dream. Their several later albums were mixed with weak tracks, but there's a LOT of great stuff there if you just weed out the weak filler. They also matured their style along with us fans in a way most others don't try to do. Scott W. might be a huge jerk (I don't know, but seems like probable) but he's one of the best singers of an era of astounding singers and he never copied Eddie Vedder. Scott sounded like Jim Morrison if you want to claim any rip-off, but STP was better and did more than the Doors ever did. Sadly STP's latest album is totally worthless. Another reunion failed.
Pearl Jam kept making album after album but each one sounds like it's a long lost and failed reunion attempt. There's never anything as great and flawless as Ten (the best album of the 90's). Then went downhill during their second some great, some not 2nd album and mostly that's it for like over a dozen more albums or whatever they're up to now (the somewhat recent track Nothing As It Seems is the shockingly great and tragically rare exception that proves the rule here).
Friday, September 3, 2010 10:29PM
Nirvana broke the whole scene open with Teen Spirit, but flamed out so fast you have to call them over-rated (though I loved them so much back then) and give as much credit to the producer of Nevermind who had a huge hand in shaping that sound from the raw, would-never-make-it-big, punk metal band that made Bleach (which is a good album to. Just not at all mainstream or like Nevermind).
Too often unmentioned was Mother Love Bone. They sounded like a perfect combo of 80's hair metal and the 90's dark blues grunge that was about to hit. They were signed to be the first band to break out from Seattle but their singer O.D'd before they could get anywhere. Two of the guys went and formed Pearl Jam. Also the tribute album to this O.D.'d singer Temple of the Dog was an amazing one-off work combining parts of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam (famous for the one track Hunger Strike with C. Cornell and E. Vedder, the whole album is stellar with Cornell alone on vocals).
The extremely hard to find Layne Staley side-band Mad Season is a great album too. Very dark, bluesy, and makes up for his poorer effort his last album with AIC's.
Jane's Addiction was gone before this scene broke -though they do did in it perfectly. Strays was very mainstream and not raw and drug-addled like their original work, but it was still good. The album is solid.
Did Soundgarden release anything new? I know they got back together sort-of but if there's no album then why the comment that they're not as good? I always thought Soundgarden was the most imbalanced of all these bands. At their best they were amazing, but they always had plenty of bad songs on their later albums and they sounded like uninspired childish thrash in their early days.
Pearl Jam has been the most prolific in all
Radiohead doesn't belong on this list. Their first album was generic sell-out 'grunge' (though I still like it and Creep is a classic track), but then they totally changed their sound away from this scene (to great effect for their next three albums at least).
NIN/Trent Reznor can't seem to get back to his talent of Downward Spiral or the under-rated, difficult masterpiece The Fragile. Maynard Keenan and his two amazing bands Tool and later A Perfect Circle seemed to have both run their course, but he's brilliant so I wouldn't be surprised if he did something new and great again (the track The Mission he did as Pusifer is addictive and killer).
Like this article mentions, it's really incredibly rare to get that original creative magic back. But it's not just for bands. It's for everyone. There's something about being in your 20's. An adult in your prime, as fearless and raw and ruthlessly creative as you'll probably every be that you just can't hardly ever get back. Einstein's famous papers were done when he was young though we know him as an old man on a poster. George Lucas created, wrote and directed Star Wars and helped create Indiana Jones when he was young. And then made utter crap for the rest of his life. The people who keep doing great work mostly just keep doing the same thing over and over again. Copying themselves at age 25.
Saturday, September 4, 2010 2:27AM
Well, anything representing actual music and no the s**t rap that is out there today would be welcome.
Saturday, September 4, 2010 4:32AM
Loved Nirvana, but what followed in their wake was just goddamned depressing. This is coming from someone who thought Pearl Jam’s “Ten” was one of the worst pieces of drivel in the 90′s. The followers of that type of singing really have never left us. I don’t consider this stuff a comeback. It’s never really gone away. Thankfully, there are plenty of other bands out there who draw on what made the 80′s great and just forget some of the shit that rose up in the 90′s.
Saturday, September 4, 2010 9:19AM
The musical climate has changed since then, obviously, and the 90's symbolized the end of a musical era, it was the last generation of bands that sold records on the old model, before downloading…..music is so fragmented now, and is mostly coasting on momentum left over from the past (rap anyone?)…not to say that the new model isn't exciting too, because now the listener has more power over what he/she can hear, and can be exposed to a huge range of music…only problem is, theres so much to sift through, it's almost like sensory overload….
Saturday, September 4, 2010 10:11AM
Ive seen Smashing Pumpkins live recently in their new incarnation, and shit……they are f'ing amazing! That man can really play guitar, and i actually really like the new material.
Saturday, September 4, 2010 11:15AM
like someone said, neil young isnt just someone
Saturday, September 4, 2010 11:28AM
Jesus Christ QOTSA and no mention of Kyuss. No offence but the rest of your list looks like whatever was flavour of the month in NME during those years.
You're talking arse about the last ten years too. 86-92 was good in the less heard of genres, but bar a few diamonds (Reznor's output, Tool and a few others IMO) the mid to late 90s was a cultural wasteland for guitar and alternative based music.
However from about 2002 onwards it's been amazing, (off the top of my head) heavier stuff like Mastodon, Baroness, Kylesa, Torche, drone stuff like ISIS, Earth etc, metal in general and the Canadian alt scene, all fantastic. Honestly, for me the last 7 or 8 years has been the best ever in popular music (and that's speaking as someone who's the same age as you) I've been to more gigs in the last year than I would've been to 96-2000 which sums it up for me.
Saturday, September 4, 2010 11:38AM
right on man!
Saturday, September 4, 2010 4:38PM
Neil Young is a tired old hack
Saturday, September 4, 2010 10:22PM
The awesome music from the early 90's never really went away. It's always been here. But people haven't really been paying attention to it because there lost in the new crap music being put out today ( justin bieber, lady gay gay, Ke$ha, clearly that money sign is all what she's about) When you have music that has artists as bad as the ones today, we need a new revolution of music to wipe out this shit. The 2000's music reminds me of the 80's music. Music right now, like back in the 80's ( with an exception of a couple of good bands) is bad. Seriously, i don't care if you think the 80's were great, to me and a lot of other people, it was bad. Thats why music in the early 90's was so big. because people were tired of the shit that came out of the 80's. Lets say that Justin Bieber, Lady Ga ga, Ke$ha, Rihanna, is like a modern version of hair metal ( which a lot of people think is horrible. Even though i hate hair metal, its clearly a lot better then the artists out today) and some other bad artists that came out in the 80's. After a while, people realized it was crap, wanted something new, better. Then came that "grunge" sound that 90% of the people in the 90's liked. I think that because the 2000's is sooooo similar to the 80's, that bands similar to the bands in the early 90's will come and knock out these horrible artists. Great music that is similar to the early 90's bands will come back. You may think Im a dumb ass for this statement. but honestly just really think about it and consider it a possibility for a moment we'll have to wait and see what happens. and if it does. Remember where you heard it.
Sunday, September 5, 2010 7:22PM
Sorry, but those who insist that this is a bad era for music clearly have not been paying attention. The early 90s featured Kriss Kross…doesn't mean all the othe rmusic of that time period was lame. Same concept applies now. We've got a ton of quality artists: My Morning Jacket, The Arcade Fire, MGMT, Silversun Pickups (very similar to early Smashing Pumpkins), Band of Horses, Temper Trap, The Gaslight Anthem, Animal Collective, The National, Ray Lamontagne, Queens of the Stone Age, Wolfmother, Julian Casablancas, Them Crooked Vultures, just to name a few.
Monday, September 6, 2010 5:41AM
"Same goes for Soundgarden; their heart just isn’t in it anymore." Wow.. You got that from a magazine interview and 1 concert.. in which everyone I was around seemed to think they were incredible?? If you are going to go out of your way to bash someone, at least bring some sort of facts to support your pathetic opinion.
Monday, September 6, 2010 4:11PM
What a load of shite.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010 9:53PM
lol Sound Garden has not released any new music as of now, Black Rain is an unreleased tune from Badmotorfinger they just redid the vocals and fine tuned it a bit. Your bias is not even done well with no facts, just guessing.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010 8:08AM
The Soundgarden comment was not in reference to any new music, but rather to the general half-hearted attitude surrounding the reunion. No one seems genuinely enthusiastic about it; if they were, they would at least try to record new music.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 5:45PM
I wouldn't mind if "real" grunge came back. u know like Mudhoney,Tad,Jesus Lizard,Gruntruck,Big Greasy Italian Meatballs,early Nirvana,Melvins and Dinosaur Jr. Actually, that music has never really gone away, if u know where to look. Mainstream Rock did and always will S-U-C-K.
Saturday, October 23, 2010 8:15AM
Wow, not a single mention of Alice in Chains? They’ve somehow managed to put out an excellent new album without the legendary Layne Staley (RIP), and it doesn’t even merit a mention? This author has no credibility as far as I am concerned.
Saturday, October 30, 2010 11:50AM
There was no such genre as grunge, it was just a slack term to describe a bunch of bands from one city and the bands that copied them. The main bands of the "genre", Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in chains were Hard rock/heavy metal bands, and Nirvana had little in common with them.
Stone temple pilots were pretty close sonically to Pearl Jam during the record "core", with just a more than a little smigen of the more dirgelike qualities of alice in chains, but moved away from that sound to one that was more their own, sort of hard rock with psychedelic touches, and found their own sound on "purple" and "tiny music……", two very good records. Purple in particular has two wonderful songs, "Interstate love song" and "still remains", which is one of the greatest love songs of all time (not to mention one of the weirdest). Maybe they could be compared to creed circa 1992, but not now, as creed have stuck to one awful sound that is a rehash of pearl jams sound, while stone temple pilots found their own during purple.
Saturday, October 30, 2010 11:52AM
Nirvana were never like any of those bands. they were basically a punk band with some metal influences, but far more underground indie stylings that happened to have one of the heaviest drummers of all time on the traps, and had far more in common with the pixies, throwing muses and other similar bands than soundgarden or AiC. No one was comparing heavy metal bands such as Corrosion of Conformity or Life of Agony to nirvana, for the simple reason that they sounded nothing like Nirvana. But they did sound like Soundgarden or AiC (Sabbath like sound, miserable lyrics, and brutal guitars). If Soundgarden, Pearl Jam or Alice in Chains were from any other city, nobody would have made that connection to Nirvana.
Saturday, October 30, 2010 11:52AM
On the 90s music coming back, its never really gone away to be honest, with the biggest band of tha era (pearl jam) never going away. But the pearl jam of 2010 has little musically in common with the pearl jam of 1991-94. The band has changed from a straight up Hard Rock band into an alternative one that sounds more underground, with country tones a la Neil Young. The guitars sound different, and Eddie Vedder sounds like a different singer to the one that sung "Alive".
I don't hold out much hope that the music these guys produce to be as good as their seminal 90's stuff, but they could suprise us all. After all, Neil Young said that its better to burn out than fade away, but he did produce some of his best and most aggressive work in the late 80s and early 90s. Maybe one of them will make a "Freedom" or "Weld".
Friday, November 5, 2010 3:34PM
m/,
Alice in Chains for life.. even with the new singer… My radio station plays Alice all day long.. and lets see what soungarden puts for 2011!!
Saturday, January 15, 2011 7:30PM
Weren't 311 just a joke/sidenote band in the first place? Haven't heard any new stuff, but unless it's at least 10x better than their old stuff, they have no place in this discussion.
Friday, January 28, 2011 7:02AM
I disagree with this comment completly. Grunge music is the only geniune good music. All this new shit thats out right now gives me a damn headace abnd grunge is real relaxing music that talks about real life things. New music has no comparison to late 80's and 90's rock. And i'm said that Alice In Chains is not even mentioned thats like the #1 grunge band and they are not even mentioned so whoever wrote this article is kinda an idiot
Saturday, April 14, 2012 2:06PM
Grunge is almost back….. Bush returned, Soundgarden still amazing, pearljam… well is pearl jam, alice in chains new is also great, my favorite 3 grunge albums are: 1. In Utero (Nirvana) , 2. Sixteen Stone (Bush), Marcy Playground (Marcy Playground)