No. Linkin Park is more like Winger.
Poison had some talent (which lied in C.C. Devielle basically).
Ever since the beginning of MTV, well especially in the mid 80's when hair bands were at its peak, bands were trying to copy the same style as Motley Crue, which had the biggest success of them all. They had the image, good songwriting, a great formula for the time, and appealed to many people at the time, and when Home Sweet Home was a major hit on MTV, which instated the "Crue Rule" later hair bands can take it into formula for success, such as Def Leppard, Whitesnake, Poison, and the later bands like Winger, Warrant, Skid Row, and all those one hit wonder hair bands. If you did not like hair bands, then you went to like Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, and the lesser thrash metal bands like Testament, Overkill, Motorhead, etc...Power Metal was a dying breed as Iron Maiden and Judas Priest being the only two bands really lasted the entire decade successful.
In the beginning of the 90's we had the grunge movement, though no one knows what the hell what is the exact term of grunge is minus the actual attire. People weren't hanging up their Brett Michaels, Nikki Styx poster for Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder. A new sound, darker, moodier, with angst lyrics, completly different than something Poison would write, and try to write. As again, we see bands like Nirvana, Jane's Addiction and Pear Jam starting out, then following; Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Blind Melon, Tool, Stone Temple Pilots and Smashing Pumpkins coming along. While you never see some of these bands one the same tour with the exception of Lullapalooza, Alice In Chains, Tool, Soundgarden would hardly tour with other grunge acts, and usually tour with other heavy metal acts, like Slayer, Megadeth, Metallica, etc..
When Kurt died, a whole culture was simply vanished. There was no real poster boy anymore, and nothing was easily marketed as Kurt Cobain. A plethora of different styles, marketable people were being looked at. Green Day, Bush, Silvercahir all new bands, making it huge after the death of Kurt Cobain, while the grunge bands were fading away, except for a few, like Smashing Pumpkins and Tool, were successful during the 90's, and Pearl Jam was driving away from the mainstream, and focusing on their core fans. This era between 94-97 was now focused on Rap, Hip-Hop, with the big East vs West fiasco which the media started and was blown out of preportion, and saw the lives of two talented musicians/lyricist as Tupac Shakur and Christopher "Nortorious B.I.G." Wallace was both shot, and killed, both the same way, and neither of the cases are solved.
During between 96-98, we see something happening. The Backstreet Boys, Hanson and Spice Girls were the new popular thing, especially for the Spice Girls, and Girl Power. Hanson was teenagers playing simplistic pop music for teens, and the Backstreet Boys came out and grabbed nearly every teenage girl heart. That formula later carried when N'Sync came out in the later 90's, while Hanson and the Spice Girls went M.I.A, but that formula still exists.
Britney Spears, Christina Aguliera, Pink, Destiny Child were on the rise, eye candy for the guys, and girls suddenly started to dress like them. Boy bands were coming and going, with O-Town and 98 Degrees, as you can look on MTV and not see one of those artists on MTV.
Also resurging back was the dominance of rap, with Nelly, Puff Daddy, Usher, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Jay-Z, and of course, the person to take most of the credit in bringing rap so popular, is Eminem. White Rapper, sure, he's not going to last, making a parody video, but when his second album came out, people bought it up, and the dominace figure showed that rap is very popular with all sorts of culture's, and how one person can be so marketable.
In the beginning of 2000 "Rock" went in all sorts of directions, we get the nu-metal style, where Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Korn, Papa Roach were the successful artists, while Sevendust, Godsmack, Staind, were getting their fair share of radio. Later we see a later wave of pop-punk, from bands like Blink 182, Sum 41, and with lesser bands like New Found Glory, Less Than Jake, hitting the scene. In 2002, we get the retro, classic rock vibe, from The Strokes, The Hives, The White Stripes, The Vines, The Led Zeppelins (okay lame). With this people start looking back to the classic rock stuff like Rolling Stones, The Doors, The Who, etc, looking back at the time where it was harder to be succesful.
In 2000, we have the introduction of Napster, a globalization of media sharing music files to be stored on the computer. With this and with additions to programs like Morpheous, Kazaa, and many other programs, people can listen to music that is currently being popular with out paying a price, or for people who want to branch out from the music today, and explore new music, and bands people might not heard much about. With this and the combination of the internet, and message boards such as this one, people can discuss on different types of music. With declining sales for buying CD's especially to popular artists, the surprising thing is that some bands benefit from this because people are listening what they like instead what they are being fed.
Now we are in 2004. A year so far filled with different types of music mix into one bowl, yet the good stuff is the salad, and the crap that is fed to us is the dressing. Everyone talks about the dressing, yet no one talks about the salad.
