Who/What Killed Grunge?

[haVoc 0]

Vote, discuss, flame, whatever.

[Golgo 13 0]

Meh. Despite the fact that grunge was more of a convenient catch all for the bands of the time, some of whom happened to be from Washington, Cobain's death seemed to spell the end of it. Around the same time the record companies were pushing more and more copycats, yet the angsty depressed kids were discovering Korn.

[nl5xsk1 0]

I chose 'other' because none of the choices really fit my answer, with 6 being the closest. What happened to grunge is the same thing that happened to punk or hardcore ... it became a form of self-parody. Bands that followed the initial wave seemed to be closer to a Saturday Night Live skit than a real band, and the whole scene loses credibility as a result.

[Skywarp! 0]

People were tired of the depressing shit. They wanted music to be fun again. Then the Spice Girls came along in '97, began the new millennium pop revolution, that ran its course, and here we are today.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

It never died. It simply (d)evolved into the angsty bullshit of Limp Bizkit and whatnot.

[Black Lushus 0]

yeah, what Inc said, because if you notice, when Korn, Deftones, Limp Bizkit etc. started blowing up Cobain was gone, Alice In Chains and Soundgarden were on the verge of going extinct, Pearl Jam started to stray away from grungy sounding rock and what not (those 4 to me were the main hub of grunge, btw, maybe im wrong)...so I wouldn't say it necessarily died, it just evolved, if you can call Nu-Metal evolution, maybe more like regression...

[Slayer 0]

Just for me personally, thinking back to my days of listening to the alternative radio station here in the early 90's, it seemed that things transitioned over the time after Cobain's death

 

Early 90's (around '92-'94): The big 4 (Nirvana, AIC, PJ and Soundgarden), STP, Metallica, Megadeth, and even some not-mainstream metal like Type O Negative and Morbid Angel ("God of Emptiness", the only time I've ever heard death metal on mainstream radio)

 

Mid 90's ('95-'96 or so): Offspring, Green Day, POTUS, Seven Mary Three, even Alanis f'king Morrisette... the only one of the big 4 that still got decent airplay was AIC

 

Nowadays, the same station is the Slipknot-Shrimp Bizkit-Deftones-Evanskank station, so I suppose the evolution does make sense

[razazteca 0]

...And the Reason is You...

 

Don't forget Incubus and 311

[Guest El Satanico]

I picked 2nd rate bands.

 

I remember the awful time period when boring paint by numbers watered down grunge like Goo Goo Dolls was everywhere. Cobain spelled the actual death of "grunge", but at that point it was a mercy kill.

[Spaceman Spiff 0]

Mainly 1, with liberal applications of 4 and 6.

[razazteca 0]

I think it was the day that Pearl Jam decided to stop making music videos and wanted to shun all forms of mainstream media. So that would be 3 + 4 = death of genre

[converge241 0]

i voted overexposure but really it was just that the music industry shifted and grunge was crushed under theweight of the "new"

 

same as grunge killing the hair metal that was everywhere

 

green day was already hitting big in the throes of grunge so the pop punk/punk thing wasnt it

 

the rock scene shifted towards metal/ nu-metal

 

emo is now the new techno as techno was supposed to be the new grunge in like 97 when prodigy were going nuts it gets a big buzz for a short while and then simmers down again

[moral suasion 0]

I chose 'other' because none of the choices really fit my answer, with 6 being the closest. What happened to grunge is the same thing that happened to punk or hardcore ... it became a form of self-parody. Bands that followed the initial wave seemed to be closer to a Saturday Night Live skit than a real band, and the whole scene loses credibility as a result.

I agree with this post. Six is closest but BUSH isnt the best example. Grunge died because of over exposure and crappy wanna be grunge bands

[Guest The Winter Of My Discontent]

Cobain's death. And it couldn't have happened a second too soon. The music was generally quite pitiful, and there would've been a major backlash against it. Even against the almighty Nirvana.

[B. Brian Brunzell 0]

the almighty Nirvana.

Three words that should never be used in a sentence ever again...

[Red Baron 0]

Cobain's death, which lead to the over exposure and over saturation of bands.

[Guest The Winter Of My Discontent]

the almighty Nirvana.

Three words that should never be used in a sentence ever again...

I was saying it more in the context of how people and the media of the time felt about them.

 

But as time has progressed, I too, have softened on my pessimistic Nirvana stance. Nevermind isn't a top 50 album of all-time, let alone of the 90's. But In Utero? That is truly Cobain's masterpiece. He bled his heart into every single second of that album. Its pure, genuine, raw human emotion. Sadly it took his suicide to truly drive home the urgent nature of his desperation; I guess he didn't scream loud enough or we had became too wrapped up in the gimmickatry of the music biz. The bottom line is that this album shifted more of an emphasis on "punk rock" than "grunge". It was one of the best and most important albums of the 90's. Its unfortunate that people feel the need to dismiss his place in music history because of his over exposure.

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

If record companies hadn't found a bunch of shitty-ass grunge-ish bands and signed them all up, grunge music would still be somewhat popular outside of kids listening to Nirvana now and then.

 

Also, all of these things really did contribute to grunge's demise. People got sick of the music because it was becoming overexposed, displaying the lack of true depth the music had (you can only try to be "deep" and "meaningful" for so long before you NEED to party), and then Cobain blew his fucking head off with a 12-gauge while on heroin, and since he was grunge's poster boy it fucked things up, but record execs still pushed grunge because they didn't want variety in their music, the depressed kids grew up and realized that being suicidal drug addicts wasn't the best thing to be considering now they're going to be working at a 7/11 or a Jiffy Lube for the rest of their lives, and people wanted to have fun again so dance-pop made a big bang, and then John Popper went "But Anyway" and ate a ham sammich.

[1234-5678 0]

Cobain's death. And it couldn't have happened a second too soon. The music was generally quite pitiful, and there would've been a major backlash against it. Even against the almighty Nirvana.

True, death has cache, baby! If only Axl would've died.

[KTID 0]

What killed grunge? The 14 year old kids that based their lives on it grew up, got a job and began living in the real world. I didn't want to say it but hey, there you go.