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Hot take but Nirvana ruined rock

Lone Wolf

Member
Nirvana is one of my favorite bands. So I obviously disagree. Alice In Chains being my number 1.

I can’t stand bands like Everclear and Foo Fighters. Generic garbage IMO, but hey whatever floats your boat.
 

Lone Wolf

Member
In my opinion, yes, if you look globally

Such as:
Sweden (they always have good rock bands though)


New Zealand:


Mongolia:


Australia:


India:


Japan:


And, errr, Germany

Holy shit The HU and Alien Weaponry fuckin rock! First time I’ve heard of any of these bands. I will keep sampling. Thanks for this.
 

Wildebeest

Member
Eddie Vedder is a complete hack who is known for his rambling and incomprehensible lyrics. From that era I do really like Alice in Chains, Mudhoney, and Soundgarden though.
At the time, people took the piss for me listening to Mudhoney. They said that out of all those US bands, they were lazy and boring. Playing fast, heavy and neglecting the pop hooks is lazy and boring?
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
Nirvana is one of my favorite bands. So I obviously disagree. Alice In Chains being my number 1.

I can’t stand bands like Everclear and Foo Fighters. Generic garbage IMO, but hey whatever floats your boat.

Hey! Criticize Everclear all you want (please don't) but that circus + beach country drawl was unique AF. Plus that dude could write some killer lyrics.

Rock died after Down on the Upside was released and we started getting bands like Papa Roach and Seether for some reason.
 

Drizzlehell

Banned
Rock music is too broad to be defined by just one band. There were still plenty of bands that were rocking out at the time, and more bands that came after it. Nirvana was just a poster boy because they made the biggest splash in the mainstream music, but that wave is long gone by now. Rock and metal stopped being mainstream years ago and it wasn't because of Nirvana but because the popularity of these genres faded on its own and there weren't any new cats who would keep the momentum going.

Anyway, trends change so just deal with it.

I mean, one of the biggest rock bands today is Panic At the Disco and these guys make leather daddies from 80s hair bands look like heteros, so go figure.
 
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poodaddy

Gold Member
I get what you're saying OP, but honestly my advice is to stop listening to radio rock. Kick ass Metal and Rock still exist and they're thriving, you just have to seek it out these days. Go listen to some Cauldron and Skull Fist right now, then call me in the morning.
 

Smiggs

Member
Hey! Criticize Everclear all you want (please don't) but that circus + beach country drawl was unique AF. Plus that dude could write some killer lyrics.

Rock died after Down on the Upside was released and we started getting bands like Papa Roach and Seether for some reason.
I actually started listening to country music in the mid 2000's because I was so, so fucking tired of Seether and all the other new bands that sounded just like them. In fact, the consolidation of radio stations under large corporations is what killed mainstream rock. The stations started pushing nu metal like CRAZY, and big bands in the 90's that enjoyed lots of radio time, suddenly fell off a cliff.

And let's be honest, turning on the radio and hearing nothing but Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Seether, Korn, Staind, Godsmack, Saliva, Disturbed, and a myriad of other bands that sound the exact same killed mainstream rock, and now kids just listen to rap and don't even want to play instruments anymore. It's too bad.
(BTW I don't hate all those artists, I just got so tired of everything sounding the same)
 

dem

Member
The rap rock numetal era was the death blow.

Grunge era is full of respectable music. It will still be played for a long time.

The raprock/numetal stuff is embarassing. Aged as poorly as that hokey ass early rap that people will pretend to like.. but is dog shit.
 
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Tokio Blues

Gold Member
It was grunge... so it's an alternative rock sound. So, no it didnt ruined, it was one of the best bands ever existed and continue it with Pearl Jam.
 

Woggleman

Member
Another bad affect is that once grunge moved music went to the other extreme. In the late 90s we had all those boy bands and pop stars plus Limp Bizkit and the bling era in rap.

Some of the best music of the alternative scene like Pixies and Sonic Youth actually came out in the 80s before Nirvana was ever heard of. Surfa Rosa and Daydream Nation were 80s albums. After Nirvana blew up it gained a whole lot of fans who had no understanding of alternative was about and then the masses moved on to the next trend rock was a shell of it's former self.
 
C'mon it's pretty good cruising music. You should at least be able to appreciate the melody to Green Day's Basketcase, as it is a rock interpretation of Pachelbel's Cannon. Infinitely better than the four cords most modern rock uses.
 
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SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
Yes Kurt was talented and yes they had some good songs but if you ask me they took the fun out of rock. Hair metal was bad but the cure was almost worse than the disease. They took almost all the sexuality, fun, joy and swagger from rock and replaced it with angst and depression. Rock has never fully recovered from it. Kurt was openly against the masculine swagger that almost defined rock and roll in past decades and the genre turning it's back on that deeply hurt.

Nirvana weren't trying to redefine rock, they weren't trying to be vanguards of a movement, and Kurt wasn't even comfortable with his own success. You're misdirecting your criticism here.

Every cultural touchstone is followed by a gold rush of imitators failing to truly capture the genuine article.

So yeah, you can blame Nirvana for Staind and Nickelback, and certainly those bands wouldn't have existed without Nirvana, but why not just blame Staind and Nickelback?

It's no surprise that rap and hip hop really crossed over to white America in the 90s. While rock was busy being grungy, sexless and eschewing the things that made rock and roll in past decades so fun rappers openly embraced those things and they became the new rockstars. Even the last gasp of hard rock in the mainstream borrowed heavily from rap and hip hop. Today what passes as rock as softer than what we hear on easily listening stations.

Like I said Nirvana were a good band and they made some great music but rock suffered from following their lead.

I think you're ignoring how much the trends of hard rock and hip hop had in common in the first half of the 90s. Both of these genres went through a complete redefinition at almost the exact same time.

In both cases, they were being redefined around a concept of authenticity. Hair Metal and New Wave went out the window for the same reason as and MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, because they were fake, glitzy, corny, and inauthentic.

90s hip hop artists stoped dressing like genies and rodeo clowns, and started wearing regular street clothes. That was the same thing that happened with rock music as well. That's where the culture was at.
 

ÆMNE22A!C

NO PAIN TRANCE CONTINUE
Preface: no knowledge.

Isn't music inherently dynamic and interconnected with influences/generations and thus creates an ever changing manifestation of ones expression in musicality in general?
 
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SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
I actually started listening to country music in the mid 2000's because I was so, so fucking tired of Seether and all the other new bands that sounded just like them. In fact, the consolidation of radio stations under large corporations is what killed mainstream rock. The stations started pushing nu metal like CRAZY, and big bands in the 90's that enjoyed lots of radio time, suddenly fell off a cliff.

And let's be honest, turning on the radio and hearing nothing but Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Seether, Korn, Staind, Godsmack, Saliva, Disturbed, and a myriad of other bands that sound the exact same killed mainstream rock, and now kids just listen to rap and don't even want to play instruments anymore. It's too bad.
(BTW I don't hate all those artists, I just got so tired of everything sounding the same)
The passing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the near immediate mass consolidation of radio stations into mass conglomerates that followed has a lot to do with it.

Radio stations used to operate independently and DJs were tastemakers who had to know music and know their audience. After all the stations got bought up by two or three countries, that's when it switched to these really focus tested corporate formats. That's when Britney and Backstreet Boys took over, that's when all the real rock was replaced with adolescent butt rock, that's when rap turned into pop.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
I'd listen to the argument, but not in defence of fucking hair metal.

Needs to be resigned to annals of history yet Def Leppard just won't die (as a band).

This is my 10,000th post on NeoGAF and I'm proud to use it to call 80s rock mostly trash.
 
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Scotty W

Banned
Kurt was openly against the masculine swagger that almost defined rock and roll in past decades and the genre turning it's back on that deeply hurt.
I am probably one of the biggest Nirvana fan on these forums, but I can admit that Kurt was not a beautiful soul. He was an extremely low iq individual, and selfish past the point of blindness.

He was the product of his environment, and complicit enough to be blameworthy.



However, we should still pay attention to his environment: he lived in a town with a band called The Melvins who are probably his biggest influence. The Melvins turned their back on masculine swagger, but they weren’t pop geniuses.

Then there is the social engineering part of all of this. Look at rap. It suddenly gets vicious in the late 80’s glorifying criminality, gets popular, the crime bill is signed, the mega prisons are filled, racial tensions are enflamed, and then they call you a racist.

How organic was this popularity? We can ask the same of grunge and nu metal. If the answer is ‘partly’ the reason is clear. “They” want us to hate ourselves.
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
Those hair bands ruined music all on their own. How many power ballads can you possibly want to hear?
ALL OF THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Glam got too full of themselves, but at least europeans kept power metal alive.

It's bugs me to no end that nearly every damn american rock song is about abuse, mental health, fighting the system, or all that shit. What happened to having fun, meeting girls, or telling a story outside of your own head?
 

simpatico

Member
Agreed. They took a high energy, masculine genre of music and made it mopey and depressing. Blink 182 destroyed punk rock with the same efficacy and for the same reasons. Garbage bands. They're success impacted the minds of so many young men.
 
I know I’ve heard that shade of criticism towards Nirvana before. I would say I’ve only met a few people who would go that far with it. I would say that Nirvana made the Rock industry start to pivot towards a similar look and sound for a lot of MTV and some radio.
I wasn’t in a major city but close enough where Nirvana didn’t rule the airwaves. I know I heard Green Day’s “Dookie” album or PJ’s “Ten” waayyy more than Nirvana’s “Nevermind” on the radio. But Nirvana had a big edge on MTV, especially once their Unplugged session came out.
In my area most people were over Nirvana by 93. They just moved onto other bands and started to get more into Metal or Hip Hop.
What was really interesting about the 91-96 years was there was so much variation of music being released. Rock (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Oasis, Sound Garden, Smashing Pumpkins, Bryan Adams, The Cure, Green Day, The Offspring, Metallica, REM, Chili Peppers, Radio Head, U2, Nine Inch Nails, etc).,.Country Music put out one the biggest selling artists of all time (Garth Brooks)…Hip Hop was breaking out (Snoop , Dre, 2Pac, Biggie, Beastie Boys, Wu Tang Clan, Tribe Called Quest, Fugees).
I wouldn’t say Rock is dead but it’s definitely a game of hide and go seek to find the better stuff. No longer delivered fresh to our door step like back in the day.
 

Muffdraul

Member
I can't relate to the OP point of view whatsoever. I got into punk/hardcore in 1982 and that thread eventually led to the rise of the stuff that started coming out of Seattle in the late 80s, from the vestiges of their local punk/hc scene. From my perspective in the LA scene, that stuff started blowing up around 1988 and it just so happened that Nirvana eventually rose to the top and stumbled into mainstream success... which, I admit, I did not see coming at all. I remember the day Nevermind came out, I bought it and took it home and listened to it, and I thought "This is a fucking great record. This would probably be pretty popular, if people heard it. But they never will, so oh well." A couple of months later I felt pretty dumb. But to me Nirvana didn't suddenly appear and "kill" anything. Whatever they killed didn't really exist to me anyway, I was all in on underground angry, dark shit years before Nirvana existed.
 
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UncleMeat

Member
I don't like Nirvana anymore like when I was a kid and Kurt seems like an obnoxious junkie but they didn't do anything to kill rock.

I blame Nickelback and their various clone bands by simply making it so incredibly uncool. Sure 90's rockers were a little whiney but that was cool then. But Nickelback, Hinder, etc., are just too lame.
 
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Days like these...

Have a Blessed Day
From my perspective in the LA scene, that stuff started blowing up around 1988 and it just so happened that Nirvana eventually rose to the top and stumbled into mainstream success...
You mean cherry picked by MTV to replace hair metal? I used to listen to all kinds of stuff as a kid Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Black Flag, Bauhaus, Killing Joke, Sonic Youth etc so Nirvana got a big meh from me.
 

midnightAI

Member
I'd listen to the argument, but not in defence of fucking hair metal.

Needs to be resigned to annals of history yet Def Leppard just won't die (as a band).

This is my 10,000th post on NeoGAF and I'm proud to use it to call 80s rock mostly trash.
You must have listened to the wrong 80s metal


(Admittedly you did say 'mostly' trash so I presume that does not include 80s thrash metal)
 
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Wildebeest

Member
How come Rock isnt popular anymore? I dont seem to see it in mainstream like before.
The short answer is that it is hard to make money as a three or four-piece band any more because there is less money in it. The genre was carried by album sales. If there isn't a vibrant scene with lots of new acts, then young people are not going to find it exciting.
 

Woggleman

Member
Too be honest society is too soft for good rock which is not soft music. It is not for those with delicate sensibilities. The whole culture around rock and roll is incompatible with both ends of the culture wars these days.
 

Teletraan1

Banned
They definitely ruined metal. Not so much Nirvana but the industry reaction to them. Metal post grunge was terrible and absolutely ruined some of the top bands in the genre. I am not sure if it was their record companies pushing it or envy for radio play but Metallica and Megadeth both put out weaker shit post grunge. They went from putting out songs with complexity, multiple timing changes and solos to repeated riffs and short songs fit for radio consumption. The grunge era was a sad time if you liked actually good music only born from extremely talented people. It was like the british invasion with the Beatles every record company was signing every shit band that had that same sound, that was what was popular and talented people played to the lowest denominator. Pre grunge metal is like a civilization that reached it peak only to be snuffed out.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
You must have listened to the wrong 80s metal


(Admittedly you did say 'mostly' trash so I presume that does not include 80s thrash metal)


No, not counting Slayer, Slayer are dope. Saw their last ever UK show (well some of it).
 
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