Exactly. People forget that hair metal literally had a ten plus year run. It was inevitable that it was going to be dethroned. By the end of the 80's the party fatigue had set in and a lot of hair bands were fixated on writing power ballads at the behest of the record labels. Even if the Seattle scene didn't blow up, something else would have.
By the late 80's hair metal had reached its expiration date anyways. If grunge didn't 'kill' it, it would have been something else. I remember before Nirvana and Alice In Chains blew up on MTV, most hair bands were putting out sappy power ballads meant to appeal to female audiences at the behest of record labels.
People forget, some of the "real" metal bands like Megadeth, Anthrax, Ozzy, Metallica etc. had some of their greatest success during the early 90s when grunge was taking over. Fans just got sick of the hair bands, that at that point, had gotten cheesy, over the top, and hard for angst ridden teens to connect with.
The Black album is the best selling metal album ever and it exploded exactly at the same period as the grunge scene. If anything Mettalica killed hair metal.
When I was in high school in the mid to late 80’s, myself or any other guy wouldn’t be caught dead listening to Bon Jovi, Poison, Motley Crue, or any of those pop metal poser bands. It was about Slayer, Metallica, Ozzy, Iron Maiden. The real metal bands.
@@HitsTownUSA Same here. I loved Maiden, Megadeth, Priest, Dio, Metallica and Ozzy growing up. Couldn't stand all of those "pop metal" bands you listed. I did like some of the heavier hair bands like Ratt and Dokken, just because both bands had such great guitarists.
Grunge didnt Kill Hair Metal. If anything Hair Metal Killed itself. The oversaturation of all those sub par bands was beyond obnoxious. Alternative rock was already on the rise by the late 80s. Not to mention mainstream music media helping make grunge popular as the culture shifted into more creative yet simplistic music & style..
These interviews always talk about Nirvana, who never sold out Arenas, they were just in magazines all the time. Bands like Pearl Jam, Hootie & The Blowfish and Spin Doctors were constantly on the radio. The 90s were the beginning of everything sucking hard.
The 90's was definitely the beginning of fun going out of music. Not saying that there any wasn't fun music in the 90's but Grunge or whatever was the beginning of the downer vibe that so music and culture is today. Gangsta rap contributed too.
80's, hair, glam metal bands killed themselves. The one hit single, and one power ballad formula to be a hit band got old. Also, many of these bands were more focused on image than in good quality music. People got tired of the same thing and wanted something new. That's when grunge took over.
What's funny is how Disco bands said the same thing of Pop and Metal. Each new decade (until the 21st Century) always, and we all know it, ushered in a new sound. The 50s sound very different than the 40s, the 60s sound very different than 50s, and up the years to 2000. That's when the rise of the computers finally took over, and now we are stuck with an enormous amount of meh everywhere. Thus the reason for resurgent nostalgia tours of any decade from the 20th century to escape the meh.
the thing that hurt disco was the right wing at the time successfully tied it to homosexuality. And I can find the kind of music I want to listen to on YT, even new stuff. If you like 80s pop stuff try synthwave , and NWOTHM if you want some heavier stuff.
I agree because everything I hear on the radio that is metal sounds exactly the same and what I mean by that is it sounds like they were all recorded by the same person engineered by the same person the drum sound the same the guitar sound the same like they all got recorded on the same day
30+ years later and we're still beating this dead horse, huh? 😄 I'm so glad I stopped identifying as a "metalhead," stopped fussing over genre boundaries, and learned to just be a music fan. Highly recommended.
Wait, is your premise that THIS is "Metal"? It's not, actual Metal is MUCH heavier. It's just 80s Hair Metal/Glam. Being a Metalhead isn't seen as "dated" or even exclusive. It just means you like it the most, which I do. Also Metal has expanded to a massive amount of subgenres that often sound nothing alike, they're just heavy af. I love MANY genres of music, including many which other Metalheads find "lame". Doesn't stop me from "identifying" as such. Metal musicians often have extremely diverse "nerdy" tastes, btw. 🤘 ✌
There were plenty of bands that kept going. These hair bands just became cliches of each other. Listen to the songs, read the titles, they are pure silliness. How many “baby baby tonight tonight, yeah yeah” songs can a person hear before it just gets stupid
@@Kyush4 well maybe by the 90s when the record companies all wanted nirvana, the bands had to change, but up to that point, the closer we go to 1990, the worst the hair bands become
As a metal-head who lived through the 80s, particularly tn the clubs on Sunset Strip, what killed metal was that their fans grew up, got careers, married and had kids. While we still listened to music of that time, but we really weren't interested in following new music from these bands.
Grunge never killed 80's metal, it was the final nail in its coffin as all the labels/MTV jumped ship to Grunge after they had oversaturated the market, but in reality Guns n Roses was the start of the slow death of 80's glam/hair rock & metal. Irony being that Grunge and Nu Metal 90's music were 5 min wonders compared to the almost decade of dominance of the 80's bands
Virtually every classic metal band was struggling. Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Dio, Saxon... they were all fumbling their way through the decade. Even the big thrash bands ended up selling fewer and fewer copies of each album (with Metallica's cover album being the sole exception).
This documentary is priceless! Concise and to the point. Every second of it is worth watching. What better way to document the 90s musical shift than describing it from the perspective of iconic musicians who experienced it first hand.
Metal is alive and well, nothing killed it. The hair/ glam bands had run their course and it was time for them to go. Most the guys in this video are from the Hair/ Glam genre. Dream Theater, Pantera, Faith no more, Korn became popular in the early 90's and once we got into the late 90's you had Slipknot, SOAD, Static-X and a multitude of other metal bands, so where was metal "Killed". Men dressing up as girls got killed, nothing more.
Ronnie James Dio said the same thing in the mid 2000s and he was correct. Your typical vapid American only cares about iPhones, Starbucks and who used to be/ who going to be president.
If we're talking about mainstream pop/rock/metal bands, yeah they were killed off by an industry that saw them as disposable -to get rich off of and then be pushed to the trash heap of history. Metal was ALWAYS underground, so metal didn't need to survive grunge because there was a metal underground around the world that was thriving. Maybe not making the kinds of money the mainstream pop/rock/metal bands were but it didn't need to. Extreme metal in all its various subgenres became, well, more extreme, more brutal, and more harsh. There was never going to be anything that killed it off except itself. This did happen to a degree in the late 80s when thrash, or the more mainstream bands started to die off or change their sound. The mid-90s saw death metal start to stagnate. Black metal, once the most anti-everything of the extreme subgenres started to soften and stagnate by the end of the 90s. But extreme metal never died. It stayed underground. The mainstream pop/rock/metal variety died due to what many here are saying: oversaturation. With the formulaic approach many bands seemed to be taking and the general yawn of the audience as the 90s came, bands just weren't as exciting as they once were in the early or mid-80s. That doesn't mean some bands didn't do well, or others didn't reinvent themselves to become a better, heavier, or darker version of what they once were. The 80s era mainstream pop rock/metal bands were done in by their labels and themselves. Grunge was merely the replacement. Grunge was brought in as a new taste formed in audiences wanting something different. Grunge didn't have to kill anything. And as another commenter mentioned there were grunge bands that were/are still metal. Mainstream pop/rock/metal died but years later resurrected with new variants of bands, or some bands reforming intact with former members. The underground scene always remained, surviving stagnation because it doesn't give a rip about mainstream appeal. Metal never died, it was and still is festering and stewing in the underground. Whatever your taste is in metal, the underground scene has it.
MY BROTHER! Thank you. Gojira just played the Olympics opening ceremony, FFS! If Metal is dead, it's a RABID ZOMBIE hungry for brains! I hate how Hair Metal is conflated with all Metal by normies still. 🤘 ✌
Grunge didn’t kill metal, it was just another metal genre. What killed metal was the record companies saying that there were too many metal bands saturating the sound, yet there are a crap ton more rappers out there and no one says anything about that.
Zeppelin, Clapton, and YES. Floyd and Aerosmith were huge, multi-platinum selling, arena and stadium bands in the 80s, Punk bands never sold records and played dive bars.
@@ernesteison7979Rush got bigger than Aerosmith or KISS and did on their own terms. Styx were a juggernaut until Tommy Shaw quit the band in a drug induced haze and Dennis DeYoung refused to replace him. Genesis were selling out arenas as of 1980
@@ernesteison7979selling arenas doesn't make you a good band. I'm a huge yes fan but the fact that they were huge at one time isn't the reason they're good.
Exactly! Sex Pistols and Ramones are to The Eagles and Foghat what Nirvana and Soundgarden were to Poison and Warrant! It's generational AND cultural. You can thank Capitalism for this phenomenon, btw.
Not really. It inspired a whole new era of hard rock music that brought songwriting back to the forefront... Not my favorite era of music but it has it's place in music history.
The opening statement says it all. People in the business killed this music. Grunge and 80's hard rock could co-exist with their own separate fanbase. Bands like Guns n Roses, Aerosmith, Def Leppard were extremely popular during 1991-1993 at the same time when the grunge bands were going multiplatinum. Some people liked both, some people wanted the new stuff, some people wanted the old stuff. Record companies pretty much decided to go one sided
The album buying generation that was into hair metal was getting old. The target market for the music biz at least since the 50s has always been teens to mid 20s. It was more of a generational shift that always happens then anything else.
Now grunge is dead 💀, and classic 80s rock is making a comeback on the road, but not on regular radio, that's why I only listen to satellite 80s stations.
No I just got heavier black and death metal you can't consider 80s hair rock metal I like that shit too but when you listen to it now it's like just rock
Only as nostalgia. Pearl Jam's last album, Dark Matter, reached no.5 on the Billboard chart. Poison, on the other hand, could release a new album next week and hardly anyone would bat an eyelid.
My musical education started with Slade and the Sweet but Sabbath was my first love. I was listening to Van Halen and the Scorpions when punk was the flavour of the month. Many great bands fell by the wayside once grunge took off. My opinion was punk was played by people who couldn't play and grunge was played by people who were too miserable to be bothered to play. Sabbath, Van Halen and the Scorps still grab my attention to this day.
It is nonsense to say that punk was played by people who couldn't play. they might have dressed it up to seem like that, superficially at least, but all of the major bands featured competent musicians. At the time, I was bigoted against punk and wouldn't have admitted this, but it is true. It all depends on how you define punk asw well.
Thrash is hardcore with solos and a cleaned up sound. The difference between punk and metal is like the difference between Mariachi and Flamenco. One of them knows how to get in tune.
No such thing as Grunge. No such thing as Hair Metal. No such thing as Nu Metal. Just different types of Rock n Roll based Music. Don't let the journalists and industry people dictate what you listen to. Zeppelin, Floyd, Van Halen , Ratt, Slayer , Overkill , The Cure, Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam. Deftones. Faith no More . Fugazi ,Failure I love them all
Thanks not a fan of labels : however it is somewhat necessary- there are WAY TOO MANY variations of rock / metal soooo it does need some separation My son plays & loves death core - which is vastly different from Saxon / Raven & Motörhead……..
There def is such thing as grunge. Hair metal. Nu metal. Etc. They're labels made up to help categorize styles of music made by journalists & record label suits. Btw, GREAT List of bands. I love all them too
There is a difference in structure . Maybe for some it doesn’t but the distinctions are there and easy to tell apart though I do get what you are saying it all has its roots
People make it way more complicated than it needs to be. The younger generation killed hair metal because they don't want to do what the previous generation did. It happens with all music trends.
All music magazines, TV stations and record companies not only killed Glam, but literally buried it deep. Today no glam bands are formed. If you show a person today what the glam image looked like, they'll laugh and say WTF man?! Listen to the great 80's rock music first and then you can judge. There are plenty of heavy, speed, power, thrash, groove, progressive, "alternative" metal (what a similarity to grunge), blues, punk, rock bands, but no glam.
I was a kid with one of those little fake Boombox radios in the 90s I saw it firsthand and I'm getting kind of tired of when people try to cover it up and say it didn't happen that way. What's left of glam metal is basically a o r and it's not quite underground in America I would recommend a station called Rock melodic radio
another thing people miss is they don't understand the capitalism element and many of the people commenting were not even born in the 80s. If you notice , they softened the look and sound of bands so they could market it to kids. You bring home Venom or even Iron Maiden you parents might throw it away and ground you , but you could get away with Poison or Ratt. Same thing with rap. Run DMC didn't come out talking about shooting cops and dropping N bombs. They did an Aerosmith song. The early rap stuff was really friendly and there were movies made that were more like musicals in the 50s than the gangster stuff. Then around 86-87 everything gets harder , then you have gangster rap. Just enough time for those new customers to age a bit and get some independence from their parents. then some went backwards , like Motley Crue went from "Shout at the Devil" to "Smokin in the Boys Room" they even got praise from Tipper Gore for softening their tone. This is where the hair bands start coming in. Night Ranger takes off with "Sister Christian" and suddenly every album needs a ballad. Even Metallica did it. We used to call them Balladtallica. But when you have teen girls buying "metal" even if it's watered down pop metal, the rising tide lifts everyone's boat. And that is why metal ruled the 80s and on, and still lives to this day.
The industry bigwigs and A&R guys consciously and deliberately decided bands like Nirvana were the next wave and stopped promoting the "hair bands." I was working in radio at the time and saw the change.
Record companies when they see a new thing that becomes big...they want 100 of the same again and the previous big thing gets dropped, problem is for me anyway while I liked the new thing.....I also liked the old thing. I have noticed after a period of time people would go back to say glam metal and say....actually there was a lot of good stuff their, like for example while Warrant-Cherry pie was massive when you look at other songs like Uncle toms cabin there is more to it.
@@craiggerrard5117 I should also add drugs especially heroin killed grunge big time. Soundgarden broke up, Pearl Jam retreated then pop punk like Green Day/Offspring & later on Nu Metal. And when I partially blamed record labels because they looked for copy cats which is why people got bored with it. Pearl Jam & you can say Dave Grohl survived from the grunge hype.
It was a combo : many of the guys that listened to hair metal moved to Metallica and thrash. Then you had rap , many of the girls started listening to it , and then boy bands. Grunge was pointless. A flash in the pan. There's still tons of metal bands now and I can even find new bands that are the old school sound thanks to YT.
Music goes through cycles and hair/glam ran its course. Metal carried on in different forms. Nu-metal rose along with hardcore and a small band named Pantera. What’s old becomes new today u have gen z discovering the classics. Tik Tok, pop culture like Cobra Kai brings the good stuff to a new generation. Metal never dies 🤘🏽
WTF are you talking about? Are you implying that Metal survived but Grunge didn't? I agree, no doubt! But that doesn't means Grunge DIDN'T kill the HAIR Metal scene, which is what this video's about. I wish they'd made that distinction clearer. Maybe they don't like being a forgotten "Dad Rock" subgenre for us Gen Xers...
@@QuinStifler Record companies were complicit in letting metal not record or tour, replaced with green day style, grunge and rap and sell more records, look at Taylor Swift.
@@jamieburgess1460 I agree, but isn’t that just “the free market at work”? Sure, they were complicit because it wasn’t selling anymore. Look at how (assuming you were around then too) these bands' stupid POWER BALLADS were mass-produced and manufactured. What’s that? There’s your “Taylor Swift” factor right there? (She abandoned Country for Pop, btw. Interesting example!) Metal isn’t meant for the mainstream generally, it’s outsider music like Goth/Industrial or Punk. The only reason HAIR Metal was a thing back then was because Quiet Riot had a massive hit in the early 80s (with a COVER the band hated, no less!) and after that blew up (US festival in ’83 and Mtv helped), record execs smelled BLOOD IN THE WATER. That’s how it went down. Sure, Rap (early 80s, really) blew up bigger than ever as this stuff died out with white, suburban kids (like us?) just as “Pop Punk” like Greenday or Offspring did. But not because “record companies pushed it” so much as they jumped on the bandwagon. This is why I’m SO GLAD record companies aren’t the “king makers” they once were now! They CREATED these fickle trends just as much as they exploited them. I think you’re putting the cart before the horse….and yet, the cart DOES do some work, ironically. Blame Capitalism for this "Selling out" stuff. Even Metallica succumbed....
metal is not dead in my world. 54 and i still keep metal CD's in my car, bluetooth youtube metal in my shop out back, and finally 100% vinyl on my house stereo...all 100%HEAVY METAL! LONG LIVE METAL!!!😎😎❤️❤️☠️☠️🎶🎶
This so true! I was in a prominent metal band coming out of high school when I heard the rumor that the record companies were no longer signing metal bands. I didn’t believe it at first but less than a year later, it was all over. Hell, I remember going to go see The Clash of the Titans Tour(Slayer, Megadeth & Anthrax) where Alice in Chains took the place of Death Angel. They got booed! I thought unjustly because they were really good, just not thrash at the time. That tour ended & thrash was killed off by the business & and AIC were super stars. But the metal still lives on & the greats of the grunge era are all dead.
Once the bands started looking more like groupies with the looks becoming more important than the music it was inevitable that it would die off . Best metal/hard rock came out prior to 85/86 then the power ballads became more important
Funny thing is Metallica which hit the scene in 1984 survived throughout everything & kept going. The same thing with Van Halen when Sammy was in the band & Bon Jovi. Megadeth put out an album in 1992 that hit Top 10 & sold 2 million copies. KISS released a album called "Revenge" debut in the Top 10 and this was during the height of the Grunge era. Guns & Roses could had survived but they couldn't get their shit together. I think George Lynch was correct when he said every generation has a speaker and the har metal generation couldn't speak to the kids in the 90's. But the record companies & MTV has some responsiblity on the down fall too.
Grunge didn't kill anything except itself eventually. Danzig, Metallica, pantera etc. all thrived during that period. They are still here and grunge only exists on the radio playlists.
I was and still am a die hard metal head. I loved the 80s hair, sleaze and thrash. Even death metal. When I saw the premier of Nirvana Smells like teen Spirit on Mtv, i was an instant fan. I wore the Nevermind tape out. 3 copies. I bought the CD after that. I studied Kirk. I emulated his guitar playing and stopped playing metal guitar altogether. I played guitar in grunge and alternative bands throughout the 90s. Great genre
No Grunge didnt kill metal. Theres was tons of great metal that emerged in the 90s. The 90s saw the rise of Death metal, Groove metal, Black Metal, industrial metal, alternative metal, and funk metal. The metal genres that suuffer❤ed were Glam and Thrash. I was super int 0:000:00 o Fear Factory, Machinehead, Cathedral, White zombie, and a shit load of metal in the 90s. ,
The grunge/alternative takeover was orchestrated to promote drugs and mental illness. Metal was primarily good time music, escapist music that made people feel good and that had to be changed. Cobain openly promoted the use of pharmaceuticals in his music, Lithium for example, and putting on this persona of being inwardly conflicted and depressed and in need of drugs to make it all go away. Heroin was massive in this new wave of rock, and this was also reflected in the lyrics of many bands, but never telling anyone not to do heroin but rejoicing in it. The resulting fallout of the grunge takeover made billions for big pharma, mental health professionals and the illicit drug cartels that continues to this day. As always, follow the money and keep in mind that everything is advertising.
yeah Grunge turned people on themselves , I was hoping the 90s would have made the 60s look like the 50s but it didn't happen. But in fairness to the music companies, we were not the crowd they wanted. They wanted the preppies. Even at some hair metal shows you'd have fights and that's not good for business , even tho it might be fun
U2, Peppers, Metallica, Ozzy GNR all had Monster records in 91. Megadeth, Pantera, VH, Aerosmith, STP all had huge success 92 and beyond. It wasn’t just Nirvana, or the Seattle sound, it was fans sick of the hair band formula. Music took center stage and the looks became irrelevant. 91-92 has all time great rock/ metal records. By the way, Metallica’s Black album out sold them all - Metal not Grunge
Rush released their best album in years Counterparts in 1993 and sold out arenas. Only Pearl Jam kept them from Number One on Billboard. Pink Floyd released their best album since Wish You Were Here out of The Division Bell in 1994 and it debuted at Number One on Billboard and stayed put for FOUR STRAIGHT WEEKS and they played to sold out football and baseball stadiums across North America and outgrossed them all except The Rolling Stones who made more money with charging $100 plus a ticket out of jealousy to Pink Floyd.
Hair 'metal' is kind of just hard rock, not Metal. I got into grunge in a big way at the time, but I was also still listening to Metal. Bands like Death, Testament, Overkill, Iron Maiden, Accept, Paradise Lost, Sepultura, Amorphis, and loads more. Yes, some might say grunge also 'killed' thrash metal, but I don't see it that way. A lot of those bands started around the same time, and so around album 5 or 6, they naturally were wanting to shift gears and try different things. But they were still Metal. Grunge was great, Metal is great.
I saw another interview with Riki Rachtman and he said there was a big G that killed 80's metal, but it wasn't grunge it was Garth. Really with a lot of my friends that was true. We were hitting our early 20's when grunge hit and they stopped playing "hair bands" on the radio and MTV, and my friends didn't feel the angst and whatever Nirvana was about but here's this guy in a cowboy hat basically making the same type of songs but with a twang and putting on huge production, energetic concerts,and selling a crap ton of albums so they drifted that way, along with other guys like Tim McGraw,Travis Tritt,etc.
To sum up what Brad Gillis (Night Ranger) said about the simple chords & Lead Guitar bring it all back to basics, that's true if (like me) you were there far enough back to even before official "Metal" bands, to the simple, raw sounds of late-60's-70's Hard Rock bands. So for me, again, to sum it up, Grunge was like hitting the "Reset" button. 🙂
If you count post grunge then technically it had a longer life. Also, it inspired butt rock but then again you could say butt rock is a mix of hair metal and post grunge.
when MTV started getting weird , the hair bands should have pooled some money together and started their own video channel - the arenas would have stayed full - all those metalheads did not evaporate !
For me, record company execs killed metal. Record companies started putting out anything that resembled Cinderella or Ratt. By 88, i rolled my eyes every time i saw one of these copies. When Slaughter came out in late 90, they were the 1st hair metal band in a long time, i really liked, but i knew this kinda music was already on the way out. MTV Unplugged was good, in that new grunge artists AND hair metal bands were both appearing. Headbangers Ball was already bringing in Alice In Chains and Nirvana, and less Ratt and Crue. I was on board with BOTH hair and grunge. I thought Great White put out their best album in 91 - Hooked, while i loved Pearl Jam Ten. I think the hairbands SHOULD have went early 70s retro glam - like Sweet or T Rex. Slaughter did their best album in 1997, but nobodys ever heard it, cause it was 97 and they were Slaughter lol. Revolution starts with " american pie", which is EXACTLY the direction hair metal bands should have went in 91, to save their career
I grew up in Seattle. turned 18 in 84. we didn't call it grunge. we called it melodic. it was what we needed at the time. it was either hair glam or hard core bandsthe time so when lovebone and skin yard and tad started playing around town it was great. it had a familiar sound to it, like your collection. the girls listened to motley and that stuff. nobody killed hairmetal. everybody just outgrew it.
it killed Hair metal, which was a damn good thing. Traditional metal killed itself as it failed to evolve. Grunge was heavily inspired by metal, especially classic Black Sabbath
Funny hownmany folks here forget that hair metal is not typical metal. Many metal bands and fans hated hair metal. I wouldn't say hate but definitely prefer Thrash and death
Pantera was the only band around that time that came out and kept still the metal flag up selling million of records with Cowboys From Hell and following albums.
Glam, thrash or heavy metal just went more in the underground back in 93-94-95-96 in US and UK. But in Europe and Japan, or South America traditional heavy metal or thrash was still big. You could still watch it on tv, in the magazines, and you could buy many great albums by bands like RUNNING WILD, SAXON, MOTORHEAD, KROKUS, that kept the 80s spriit alive during the 90s.
Grunge forced Metal to evolve.Although the 90's Britpop craze sucked,at least we had Carcass,Cannibal Corpse,Death,the groove metal era of Pantera,Sepultura and Right Said Fred,the heaviest band of all. *cough*
Its funny they had Kane from Alice Cooper. If anyones proof that you can transcend decades, if you keep an eye on current trends, but try to create new ones, you can outlast the cleansings. Alice Cooper kinda went hair metal in the 80s, then by 2000, he went for more of a Korn sound. My favorite 2 Cooper albums have a mix of all those styles - 1994s Last Temptation and 2005s Dirty Diamonds. Basic good diverse rock albums
Soft rock ballad glam hair bands in girly make up and blouses dressing like chicks faded themselves. The 1990’s Alternative rock-grunge bands Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam getting MTV & radio play, didn’t seem to effect the underground progressive thrash pioneering guitar bands like Megadeth, Pantera, Sepultura, from evolving heavy metal into the current power/nu-metal movement we still can experience today. Whomever is the Miles Davis of the electric guitar, to me it’s all a evolving mashup re-fusion of music style tastes, from the horn sections of Cab Calloway & Duke Ellington, to Benny Goodman, bubbling up from the delta up from Jack Johnson Charlie Christian, to the electrified guitars of Wes Montgomery, Bo Diddly & Chuck Berry to the out of this worldly pioneering genius of Jimi Hendrix & Tony Iommi, SRV, and say Les Claypool. Personally to me it seems guitar based heavy rock music has more or less stagnated since Randy Rhoads had set the bar so very high at the pinnacle peak of guitar driven music, to the point that an entirely new sonic ear pleasing instrument would have to be adapted and created to set off the next fresh musical radical genre existing entirely outside of the classical, jazz, bluegrass, gospel, country, blues, funk, Rn’B, rock, metal & hip hop musical genres.
Seems like it did for me, but maybe Metal just ran its course, all I know is the 80s were my late teens and 20s, I saw ALL ALL ALL the great bands on ALL ALL ALL those great theatrical spectacular mega-metal tours. How miss those life changing, life defining, hallowed years. God's favorite decade without question 🙏 🍻🤘🏻
Bon Jovi , Metallica, Ozzy, Ac/Dc, Def Leppard all survived, Aerosmith had their biggest album with Get A Grip, even Kiss survived, albeit they needed to bring back the makeup and the the original line up. But the point is, the top dogs werent effected by grunge, everyone else who were, to be honest, musically limited their the ones who got wiped out
I feel that most music fans listen to what the radio stations cram down their throats. I think that generally it is clear that radio doesn't play songs that are good - they play songs that the record companies pay them to play - and then music fans - after having a song crammed down their throats - decide they like it. What I don't understand is how fans of 70's and 80's metal bands abandoned their favorite artists. When you attend a show today with a band that was popular back in the day - its the same people that attended the shows back in the day for the most part. I would further submit that hard rock/metal is still alive and well today - pretty much every band from the 70's and 80's that is still alive is still out there touring and in some cases recording new music. Again not absolute - but in general. To me the rise in popularity in grunge is attributed to: Radio Stations/Record company's promoting this new style of music Older fans of hard rock/heavy metal deciding they like the new shit music being crammed down their throats Some 70's/80's bands trying to change their songs/image to be more "in" Younger fans deciding they'd rather listen to grungy dudes with little or no talent that play crappy music and attract less than acceptable women to their shows. my 2 cents worth.
great answer bro. Radio used to play what the record companies wanted back then - now so many traditional radio stations are owned by bigger conglomerates that one play list is being played all over the country. We talked to a lot of fans from the 80s and the reason they abandoned or walked away for a bit was... they were having babies, starting careers, getting older... 10yrs later it was time to rock again. Take the kids to the shows and re live those amazing 80s - thanks again 80sMRB
Let's take a look at the 90s metal scene as someone who lived through it. Grunge exploded and wiped out an entire subgenre, in the span of a year, with virtually no survivors. Mötley Crüe, Ratt, Poison, Cinderella, L.A. Guns, Faster Pussycat, Skid Row, Warrant, Extreme etc..... They all either split up or changed their sound due to dwindling sales. Some of them made comebacks during the late 90s and early 2000s, but mainly as nostalgia acts, playing setlists consisting of virtually nothing after 1991 and releasing albums that no one bought apart from the die-hards. Now let's look at some of the big names. AC/DC were still going strong. Ozzy was still successful. Aerosmith were touring relentlessly. Bon Jovi re-invented themselves. Metallica broke into the mainstream in a big way (even if it was the lame Bob Rock version of the band), and Guns N' Roses were almost unstoppable (if it wasn't for Axl's ego they would've been). Pantera had two no.1 albums and death metal flirted with the mainstream (Napalm Death had a top 10 album, Morbid Angel signed to a major label and Cannibal Corpse were in the first Ace Ventura movie). Meanwhile we witnessed the rise of Rage Against The Machine, Tool, Machine Head and Fear Factory. Norwegian black metal established itself as a legitimate movement, as did Swedish melodic death metal, and the UK was represented by Cradle Of Filth and the Peaceville Three (Paradise Lost, Anathema and My Dying Bride). We had Korn and the nu-metal era, and love it or hate it (I certainly hated it), you have to acknowledge because, if nothing else, at least it served as a gateway for younger metal fans (younger than me anyway). Finally, towards the end of the decade, Slipknot happened. And to anyone who says that the 90s didn't produce any larger-than-life rock stars, I'll always say Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie. So no. Grunge didn't kill metal. It just stripped away all the dead wood and re-energised the whole genre.
I love grunge and Kurt was a great musician but to say that he single handedly killed metal is frankly giving him too much credit. The market was over saturated with cookie-cutter bands that brought nothing new to the table and that’s what “killed” it. People wanted something new, not just another copy. That said, I don’t think it’s fair to say that the genre died anyway. Sure, it lost popularity, but there are still plenty of bands who survived the “grunge-apocalypse” and went on to continue doing their thing even today decades later. The interest for it is still there for the bands who are actually able to deliver.
I found it quite hilarious that the plaid lumber jacket I had been wearing for years was being worn on fashion show runways, And grunge saved the ozone layer from all that hair spray.
People tend to forget,but between 1988-91 ,a new throwback to classic rock occurred. Black Crowes and Lenny Kravitz were pretty huge. And all the old classic rock acts like The Who,The Stones and McCartney were back touring and selling stadiums. The only metal band that could do that was Metallica at that point. Grunge just happened to be this new microcosm that caught someone in the record industry's ear. So they just went in and immediately co-opted it. Basically,the industry dumped a bunch of coke addicts for herion junkies. I could do without either scene.
I don't hate grunge at all but I was really f****** disappointed with people the way they hated on 80s rock that was very artistically credible not because of a love for music but for a trend in thinking.
yeah a better case could be made that thrash , rap ,and boy bands killed hair metal. I didn't know anyone who said "Im gonna quit listening to this band for Grunge" Grunge was for kids tbh
@@thedude4672 Debatable. Now there are five billion little subgenres with five billion bands in each that sound exactly the same. From a “populist” perspective, it’s great that so many barriers to entry have disappeared, but there are negatives, too.
what killed metal for me was mark slaughter, firehouse, etc. all those shrieky high pitched singers of terrible cliche songs. other bands were just starting to kill it just slightly ahead of that garbage, but those style voices ENDED it.
Of course it did just ask Winger they found out the hard way. There came a point in the late 80s where there were too many imitators too many people with a homogenized version of 80s metal they over flooded the market and the young people feel that it sounds like their dads music so it was a combination of the music industry pushing grunge and too many bands that sounded like a wimpy version of 80s metal. It was a murder suicide
Grunge never killes metal. Some grunge is considered metal AIC and Soundgarden fall in that category. Hair metal ran its course. Then we had the rise of Nu-Metal then hardcore in the 90s. Metal never dies, it actually continues to grow. Now you've got gen Z enjoying Motley Crue and GnR on Spotify.
I've never thought grunge killed metal. Some grunge is metal.
The hair bands killed themselves. It was over. Everything has its time.
the grunge bands killed themselves too....literally
Combat boot wearing tattoo moms never replaced metal. Grunge was the beginning of D.E.I. And Whinny little kids.
Definitely. Soundgarden and Alice In Chains were way heavier, darker and more metal than all of those weak glam metal bands.
@@thedude4672 exactly.
Exactly. People forget that hair metal literally had a ten plus year run. It was inevitable that it was going to be dethroned. By the end of the 80's the party fatigue had set in and a lot of hair bands were fixated on writing power ballads at the behest of the record labels. Even if the Seattle scene didn't blow up, something else would have.
By the late 80's hair metal had reached its expiration date anyways. If grunge didn't 'kill' it, it would have been something else. I remember before Nirvana and Alice In Chains blew up on MTV, most hair bands were putting out sappy power ballads meant to appeal to female audiences at the behest of record labels.
People forget, some of the "real" metal bands like Megadeth, Anthrax, Ozzy, Metallica etc. had some of their greatest success during the early 90s when grunge was taking over. Fans just got sick of the hair bands, that at that point, had gotten cheesy, over the top, and hard for angst ridden teens to connect with.
The Black album is the best selling metal album ever and it exploded exactly at the same period as the grunge scene. If anything Mettalica killed hair metal.
The pop metal glam bands sucked. That's why.
When I was in high school in the mid to late 80’s, myself or any other guy wouldn’t be caught dead listening to Bon Jovi, Poison, Motley Crue, or any of those pop metal poser bands.
It was about Slayer, Metallica, Ozzy, Iron Maiden. The real metal bands.
@@HitsTownUSA Same here. I loved Maiden, Megadeth, Priest, Dio, Metallica and Ozzy growing up. Couldn't stand all of those "pop metal" bands you listed. I did like some of the heavier hair bands like Ratt and Dokken, just because both bands had such great guitarists.
When the market gets over saturated change is necessary and needed. Its always been like that.
Grunge didnt Kill Hair Metal. If anything Hair Metal Killed itself. The oversaturation of all those sub par bands was beyond obnoxious. Alternative rock was already on the rise by the late 80s. Not to mention mainstream music media helping make grunge popular as the culture shifted into more creative yet simplistic music & style..
These interviews always talk about Nirvana, who never sold out Arenas, they were just in magazines all the time. Bands like Pearl Jam, Hootie & The Blowfish and Spin Doctors were constantly on the radio. The 90s were the beginning of everything sucking hard.
Nirvana never played arenas cause they refused to
Well said. The 90s sucked!
@@srh361 that’s bullsh!t, In Utero was originally booked as an Arena tour and they could only half fill 5k and 8k places.
@@Billy-jd7ll I call bullshit on that! There's plenty of interviews where the band blatantly says they didn't want to play arenas!
The 90's was definitely the beginning of fun going out of music. Not saying that there any wasn't fun music in the 90's but Grunge or whatever was the beginning of the downer vibe that so music and culture is today. Gangsta rap contributed too.
80's, hair, glam metal bands killed themselves. The one hit single, and one power ballad formula to be a hit band got old. Also, many of these bands were more focused on image than in good quality music. People got tired of the same thing and wanted something new. That's when grunge took over.
@Wizzard777 yes but Grunge had its own image
There was a three year transition period as 80s metal declined and grunge kicked in. 1990- 1992. It wasn't overnight at all.
Don't forget funk metal.
What's funny is how Disco bands said the same thing of Pop and Metal. Each new decade (until the 21st Century) always, and we all know it, ushered in a new sound. The 50s sound very different than the 40s, the 60s sound very different than 50s, and up the years to 2000. That's when the rise of the computers finally took over, and now we are stuck with an enormous amount of meh everywhere. Thus the reason for resurgent nostalgia tours of any decade from the 20th century to escape the meh.
the thing that hurt disco was the right wing at the time successfully tied it to homosexuality.
And I can find the kind of music I want to listen to on YT, even new stuff. If you like 80s pop stuff try synthwave , and NWOTHM if you want some heavier stuff.
I agree because everything I hear on the radio that is metal sounds exactly the same and what I mean by that is it sounds like they were all recorded by the same person engineered by the same person the drum sound the same the guitar sound the same like they all got recorded on the same day
@TheRadioAteMyTV that's why i work backwards when it comes to music. I find buried treasure
30+ years later and we're still beating this dead horse, huh? 😄 I'm so glad I stopped identifying as a "metalhead," stopped fussing over genre boundaries, and learned to just be a music fan. Highly recommended.
I just identify someone who likes rock music….
Wait, is your premise that THIS is "Metal"? It's not, actual Metal is MUCH heavier. It's just 80s Hair Metal/Glam. Being a Metalhead isn't seen as "dated" or even exclusive. It just means you like it the most, which I do.
Also Metal has expanded to a massive amount of subgenres that often sound nothing alike, they're just heavy af.
I love MANY genres of music, including many which other Metalheads find "lame". Doesn't stop me from "identifying" as such. Metal musicians often have extremely diverse "nerdy" tastes, btw. 🤘 ✌
@@Bernz66 But Rock is dying while Metal is thriving. So much modern "Rock" doesn't ROCK at all, bro. And I like some very soft Alt. Rock bands.
@@QuinStifler Metal never dies!!,
how many more groups of man-poodles singing about partying all night could they continue to sell? Everything comes to an end
Have you heard poison something to believe in or life goes on? Grunge lasted 4 yrs hair metal 10 yrs.
@@quit293 That doesn't change the fact that hair metal went stale.
@@rogerdodger6025 yup I agree.
Poodle Metal
There were plenty of bands that kept going. These hair bands just became cliches of each other. Listen to the songs, read the titles, they are pure silliness. How many “baby baby tonight tonight, yeah yeah” songs can a person hear before it just gets stupid
In the 90s very few hairbands were singing about stuff like that other than the ocassional ballad which all rock albums have
@@Kyush4 well maybe by the 90s when the record companies all wanted nirvana, the bands had to change, but up to that point, the closer we go to 1990, the worst the hair bands become
As a metal-head who lived through the 80s, particularly tn the clubs on Sunset Strip, what killed metal was that their fans grew up, got careers, married and had kids. While we still listened to music of that time, but we really weren't interested in following new music from these bands.
I think we got watered down music from 86 til the early 90s… only a couple of bands were good during that time.
Grunge never killed 80's metal, it was the final nail in its coffin as all the labels/MTV jumped ship to Grunge after they had oversaturated the market, but in reality Guns n Roses was the start of the slow death of 80's glam/hair rock & metal. Irony being that Grunge and Nu Metal 90's music were 5 min wonders compared to the almost decade of dominance of the 80's bands
What’s sad is the collateral damage that happened. Iron Maideb playing clubs in the nineties for example
Virtually every classic metal band was struggling. Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Dio, Saxon... they were all fumbling their way through the decade. Even the big thrash bands ended up selling fewer and fewer copies of each album (with Metallica's cover album being the sole exception).
This documentary is priceless! Concise and to the point. Every second of it is worth watching. What better way to document the 90s musical shift than describing it from the perspective of iconic musicians who experienced it first hand.
Metal is alive and well, nothing killed it. The hair/ glam bands had run their course and it was time for them to go. Most the guys in this video are from the Hair/ Glam genre. Dream Theater, Pantera, Faith no more, Korn became popular in the early 90's and once we got into the late 90's you had Slipknot, SOAD, Static-X and a multitude of other metal bands, so where was metal "Killed". Men dressing up as girls got killed, nothing more.
Euro metal is huge, and for good reason. American metal, not so much.
Ronnie James Dio said the same thing in the mid 2000s and he was correct. Your typical vapid American only cares about iPhones, Starbucks and who used to be/ who going to be president.
@@TheRadioAteMyTV Keep punching up
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Black Veil Brides. But really bigots like yourself would be happier listening to country
If we're talking about mainstream pop/rock/metal bands, yeah they were killed off by an industry that saw them as disposable -to get rich off of and then be pushed to the trash heap of history. Metal was ALWAYS underground, so metal didn't need to survive grunge because there was a metal underground around the world that was thriving. Maybe not making the kinds of money the mainstream pop/rock/metal bands were but it didn't need to. Extreme metal in all its various subgenres became, well, more extreme, more brutal, and more harsh. There was never going to be anything that killed it off except itself. This did happen to a degree in the late 80s when thrash, or the more mainstream bands started to die off or change their sound. The mid-90s saw death metal start to stagnate. Black metal, once the most anti-everything of the extreme subgenres started to soften and stagnate by the end of the 90s. But extreme metal never died. It stayed underground. The mainstream pop/rock/metal variety died due to what many here are saying: oversaturation. With the formulaic approach many bands seemed to be taking and the general yawn of the audience as the 90s came, bands just weren't as exciting as they once were in the early or mid-80s. That doesn't mean some bands didn't do well, or others didn't reinvent themselves to become a better, heavier, or darker version of what they once were. The 80s era mainstream pop rock/metal bands were done in by their labels and themselves. Grunge was merely the replacement. Grunge was brought in as a new taste formed in audiences wanting something different. Grunge didn't have to kill anything. And as another commenter mentioned there were grunge bands that were/are still metal. Mainstream pop/rock/metal died but years later resurrected with new variants of bands, or some bands reforming intact with former members. The underground scene always remained, surviving stagnation because it doesn't give a rip about mainstream appeal. Metal never died, it was and still is festering and stewing in the underground. Whatever your taste is in metal, the underground scene has it.
Grunge didnt kill metal...it killed the glam hair metal!
MY BROTHER! Thank you.
Gojira just played the Olympics opening ceremony, FFS! If Metal is dead, it's a RABID ZOMBIE hungry for brains!
I hate how Hair Metal is conflated with all Metal by normies still.
🤘 ✌
Grunge didn’t kill metal, it was just another metal genre. What killed metal was the record companies saying that there were too many metal bands saturating the sound, yet there are a crap ton more rappers out there and no one says anything about that.
GRUNGE??..WHERE IS THE GRUNGE TODAY?????
METAL STILL IN POWER TODAY....SO.......
Eh not really. Zoomers don't give a fuck about metal. They're all about rap.
The same thing happened at the end of the 70s. After years of bands like Zeppelin, Clapton and YES, Punk was the next logical step.
Zeppelin, Clapton, and YES. Floyd and Aerosmith were huge, multi-platinum selling, arena and stadium bands in the 80s, Punk bands never sold records and played dive bars.
@@ernesteison7979Rush got bigger than Aerosmith or KISS and did on their own terms.
Styx were a juggernaut until Tommy Shaw quit the band in a drug induced haze and Dennis DeYoung refused to replace him.
Genesis were selling out arenas as of 1980
But even a lot of the 70's punk bands had relatively short careers and got sidelined by New Wave and post punk.
@@ernesteison7979selling arenas doesn't make you a good band. I'm a huge yes fan but the fact that they were huge at one time isn't the reason they're good.
Exactly!
Sex Pistols and Ramones are to The Eagles and Foghat what
Nirvana and Soundgarden were to Poison and Warrant!
It's generational AND cultural. You can thank Capitalism for this phenomenon, btw.
Grunge was a fad that lasted barely 3 years
Not really. It inspired a whole new era of hard rock music that brought songwriting back to the forefront... Not my favorite era of music but it has it's place in music history.
@@DMDvideo10 name a single metal or even hard rock band that started after the grunge era that is filling arenas right now
@@ZXSPEXThe goal wasn’t to fill arenas. We never asked for that. We just wanted authenticity again instead of hairspray.
The beginning of the end was when the Grunge poster boy checked himself out early.
@@ZXSPEXBritney Spears is done now and Katy Perry is washed up.
Taylor Swift has taken a stranglehold on music
The opening statement says it all. People in the business killed this music. Grunge and 80's hard rock could co-exist with their own separate fanbase. Bands like Guns n Roses, Aerosmith, Def Leppard were extremely popular during 1991-1993 at the same time when the grunge bands were going multiplatinum. Some people liked both, some people wanted the new stuff, some people wanted the old stuff. Record companies pretty much decided to go one sided
The album buying generation that was into hair metal was getting old. The target market for the music biz at least since the 50s has always been teens to mid 20s. It was more of a generational shift that always happens then anything else.
Now grunge is dead 💀, and classic 80s rock is making a comeback on the road, but not on regular radio, that's why I only listen to satellite 80s stations.
That has a lot to do with the artists actually being dead too.
Me when i'm delusional
No I just got heavier black and death metal you can't consider 80s hair rock metal I like that shit too but when you listen to it now it's like just rock
Only as nostalgia. Pearl Jam's last album, Dark Matter, reached no.5 on the Billboard chart. Poison, on the other hand, could release a new album next week and hardly anyone would bat an eyelid.
@@A-Man79 what's even worse someone like kiss so overrated !!!!!
My musical education started with Slade and the Sweet but Sabbath was my first love. I was listening to Van Halen and the Scorpions when punk was the flavour of the month. Many great bands fell by the wayside once grunge took off.
My opinion was punk was played by people who couldn't play and grunge was played by people who were too miserable to be bothered to play. Sabbath, Van Halen and the Scorps still grab my attention to this day.
Ha : I just saw SWEET a month ago ….. granted not the SWEET lineup of the 70’s
Phenomenal live though !!
It is nonsense to say that punk was played by people who couldn't play. they might have dressed it up to seem like that, superficially at least, but all of the major bands featured competent musicians. At the time, I was bigoted against punk and wouldn't have admitted this, but it is true. It all depends on how you define punk asw well.
Thrash is hardcore with solos and a cleaned up sound. The difference between punk and metal is like the difference between Mariachi and Flamenco. One of them knows how to get in tune.
@craiggerrard5117 as I said, just my opinion not necessarily fact. I preferred virtuoso but I guess strumming is kind of playing.
@Dragonette666 good comparison
it's just a change of trends. it happened before and it will happen again. as simple as that
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No such thing as Grunge. No such thing as Hair Metal. No such thing as Nu Metal. Just different types of Rock n Roll based Music. Don't let the journalists and industry people dictate what you listen to. Zeppelin, Floyd, Van Halen , Ratt, Slayer , Overkill , The Cure, Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam. Deftones. Faith no More . Fugazi ,Failure I love them all
Thanks not a fan of labels : however it is somewhat necessary- there are WAY TOO MANY variations of rock / metal soooo it does need some separation
My son plays & loves death core - which is vastly different from Saxon / Raven & Motörhead……..
Grunge was definitely a style - you can like it or not - the funny part it was a short lived hiccup on the radar
There def is such thing as grunge. Hair metal. Nu metal. Etc. They're labels made up to help categorize styles of music made by journalists & record label suits.
Btw, GREAT List of bands. I love all them too
There is a difference in structure . Maybe for some it doesn’t but the distinctions are there and easy to tell apart though I do get what you are saying it all has its roots
There's no such thing as rock n roll.
People make it way more complicated than it needs to be. The younger generation killed hair metal because they don't want to do what the previous generation did. It happens with all music trends.
All music magazines, TV stations and record companies not only killed Glam, but literally buried it deep. Today no glam bands are formed. If you show a person today what the glam image looked like, they'll laugh and say WTF man?! Listen to the great 80's rock music first and then you can judge. There are plenty of heavy, speed, power, thrash, groove, progressive, "alternative" metal (what a similarity to grunge), blues, punk, rock bands, but no glam.
Steel panther
I was a kid with one of those little fake Boombox radios in the 90s I saw it firsthand and I'm getting kind of tired of when people try to cover it up and say it didn't happen that way. What's left of glam metal is basically a o r and it's not quite underground in America I would recommend a station called Rock melodic radio
I was 18 when Teen Spirit hit. And yes it was like someone flipped a switch and everything was different..
another thing people miss is they don't understand the capitalism element and many of the people commenting were not even born in the 80s.
If you notice , they softened the look and sound of bands so they could market it to kids. You bring home Venom or even Iron Maiden you parents might throw it away and ground you , but you could get away with Poison or Ratt. Same thing with rap. Run DMC didn't come out talking about shooting cops and dropping N bombs. They did an Aerosmith song. The early rap stuff was really friendly and there were movies made that were more like musicals in the 50s than the gangster stuff. Then around 86-87 everything gets harder , then you have gangster rap. Just enough time for those new customers to age a bit and get some independence from their parents.
then some went backwards , like Motley Crue went from "Shout at the Devil" to "Smokin in the Boys Room" they even got praise from Tipper Gore for softening their tone. This is where the hair bands start coming in. Night Ranger takes off with "Sister Christian" and suddenly every album needs a ballad. Even Metallica did it. We used to call them Balladtallica.
But when you have teen girls buying "metal" even if it's watered down pop metal, the rising tide lifts everyone's boat. And that is why metal ruled the 80s and on, and still lives to this day.
The industry bigwigs and A&R guys consciously and deliberately decided bands like Nirvana were the next wave and stopped promoting the "hair bands." I was working in radio at the time and saw the change.
Record companies when they see a new thing that becomes big...they want 100 of the same again and the previous big thing gets dropped, problem is for me anyway while I liked the new thing.....I also liked the old thing. I have noticed after a period of time people would go back to say glam metal and say....actually there was a lot of good stuff their, like for example while Warrant-Cherry pie was massive when you look at other songs like Uncle toms cabin there is more to it.
We got this radio crap pushed on us but I don't think us real fans really cared, I was still listening to Maiden and Priest all throughout the 90's
Same here. 🤘
We need a video on what killed grunge.
Fans just moved onto Kyuss and The Hellacopters, FFS. We were tired of the aqua net crowd?
What Killed Grunge? Two things, record labels/media & sadly Kurt killing himself.
@@blachubear And because people got bored with it.
@@craiggerrard5117 I should also add drugs especially heroin killed grunge big time. Soundgarden broke up, Pearl Jam retreated then pop punk like Green Day/Offspring & later on Nu Metal. And when I partially blamed record labels because they looked for copy cats which is why people got bored with it. Pearl Jam & you can say Dave Grohl survived from the grunge hype.
Grunge turned into post grunge which turned into butt rock.
It was a combo : many of the guys that listened to hair metal moved to Metallica and thrash. Then you had rap , many of the girls started listening to it , and then boy bands. Grunge was pointless. A flash in the pan. There's still tons of metal bands now and I can even find new bands that are the old school sound thanks to YT.
Depends on your definition of pointless. I hate post grunge but it did inspire post grunge and to a certain extent butt rock.
Music goes through cycles and hair/glam ran its course.
Metal carried on in different forms.
Nu-metal rose along with hardcore and a small band named Pantera.
What’s old becomes new today u have gen z discovering the classics. Tik Tok, pop culture like Cobra Kai brings the good stuff to a new generation.
Metal never dies 🤘🏽
Give me a list of the new Grunge bands.
Turn on yout local FM rock station and you'll hear the fifth generation Nirvana/Alice in Chains wannabes.
WTF are you talking about? Are you implying that Metal survived but Grunge didn't? I agree, no doubt! But that doesn't means Grunge DIDN'T kill the HAIR Metal scene, which is what this video's about.
I wish they'd made that distinction clearer. Maybe they don't like being a forgotten "Dad Rock" subgenre for us Gen Xers...
@@QuinStifler Record companies were complicit in letting metal not record or tour, replaced with green day style, grunge and rap and sell more records, look at Taylor Swift.
@@jamieburgess1460 I agree, but isn’t that just “the free market at work”? Sure, they were complicit because it wasn’t selling anymore. Look at how (assuming you were around then too) these bands' stupid POWER BALLADS were mass-produced and manufactured. What’s that?
There’s your “Taylor Swift” factor right there? (She abandoned Country for Pop, btw. Interesting example!)
Metal isn’t meant for the mainstream generally, it’s outsider music like Goth/Industrial or Punk. The only reason HAIR Metal was a thing back then was because Quiet Riot had a massive hit in the early 80s (with a COVER the band hated, no less!) and after that blew up (US festival in ’83 and Mtv helped), record execs smelled BLOOD IN THE WATER.
That’s how it went down. Sure, Rap (early 80s, really) blew up bigger than ever as this stuff died out with white, suburban kids (like us?) just as “Pop Punk” like Greenday or Offspring did. But not because “record companies pushed it” so much as they jumped on the bandwagon.
This is why I’m SO GLAD record companies aren’t the “king makers” they once were now! They CREATED these fickle trends just as much as they exploited them.
I think you’re putting the cart before the horse….and yet, the cart DOES do some work, ironically. Blame Capitalism for this "Selling out" stuff.
Even Metallica succumbed....
@@QuinStifler Dude you said what I said with alot more words.
metal is not dead in my world. 54 and i still keep metal CD's in my car, bluetooth youtube metal in my shop out back, and finally 100% vinyl on my house stereo...all 100%HEAVY METAL! LONG LIVE METAL!!!😎😎❤️❤️☠️☠️🎶🎶
This so true! I was in a prominent metal band coming out of high school when I heard the rumor that the record companies were no longer signing metal bands. I didn’t believe it at first but less than a year later, it was all over.
Hell, I remember going to go see The Clash of the Titans Tour(Slayer, Megadeth & Anthrax) where Alice in Chains took the place of Death Angel. They got booed! I thought unjustly because they were really good, just not thrash at the time. That tour ended & thrash was killed off by the business & and AIC were super stars.
But the metal still lives on & the greats of the grunge era are all dead.
AIC opened for Van Halen and got a good response
Actually grunge did peak out in like 95/96 then nu metal had its run ,then metal core had a moment
Nice compilation/editing
Once the bands started looking more like groupies with the looks becoming more important than the music it was inevitable that it would die off . Best metal/hard rock came out prior to 85/86 then the power ballads became more important
Funny thing is Metallica which hit the scene in 1984 survived throughout everything & kept going. The same thing with Van Halen when Sammy was in the band & Bon Jovi. Megadeth put out an album in 1992 that hit Top 10 & sold 2 million copies. KISS released a album called "Revenge" debut in the Top 10 and this was during the height of the Grunge era. Guns & Roses could had survived but they couldn't get their shit together. I think George Lynch was correct when he said every generation has a speaker and the har metal generation couldn't speak to the kids in the 90's. But the record companies & MTV has some responsiblity on the down fall too.
Grunge didn't kill anything except itself eventually. Danzig, Metallica, pantera etc. all thrived during that period. They are still here and grunge only exists on the radio playlists.
I was and still am a die hard metal head. I loved the 80s hair, sleaze and thrash. Even death metal. When I saw the premier of Nirvana Smells like teen Spirit on Mtv, i was an instant fan. I wore the Nevermind tape out. 3 copies. I bought the CD after that. I studied Kirk. I emulated his guitar playing and stopped playing metal guitar altogether. I played guitar in grunge and alternative bands throughout the 90s. Great genre
Rikki Ratchmen is a doink. PERIOD.
I think at end of 80s it was totally
overload, grunge give the last kick ✌️
No Grunge didnt kill metal. Theres was tons of great metal that emerged in the 90s. The 90s saw the rise of Death metal, Groove metal, Black Metal, industrial metal, alternative metal, and funk metal. The metal genres that suuffer❤ed were Glam and Thrash. I was super int 0:00 0:00 o Fear Factory, Machinehead, Cathedral, White zombie, and a shit load of metal in the 90s. ,
Do you think hair metal boomers give a fuck about death metal? To them it's just yelling noise.
@@123612100 Tough shit for them. I hated glam metal in the 80s and was happy to see it die.
The grunge/alternative takeover was orchestrated to promote drugs and mental illness. Metal was primarily good time music, escapist music that made people feel good and that had to be changed. Cobain openly promoted the use of pharmaceuticals in his music, Lithium for example, and putting on this persona of being inwardly conflicted and depressed and in need of drugs to make it all go away. Heroin was massive in this new wave of rock, and this was also reflected in the lyrics of many bands, but never telling anyone not to do heroin but rejoicing in it. The resulting fallout of the grunge takeover made billions for big pharma, mental health professionals and the illicit drug cartels that continues to this day. As always, follow the money and keep in mind that everything is advertising.
yeah Grunge turned people on themselves , I was hoping the 90s would have made the 60s look like the 50s but it didn't happen.
But in fairness to the music companies, we were not the crowd they wanted. They wanted the preppies. Even at some hair metal shows you'd have fights and that's not good for business , even tho it might be fun
I work in mental health, you’re delusional.
Hair metal = party music.
Grunge = lyrics about depression and suicide.
Hair metal was done, it was over anyway, but I'm no fan of grunge.
AIC started as a "Hair Band" well documented
Yep they were one of the ones that changed their sound when the labels said so just like Pantera
U2, Peppers, Metallica, Ozzy GNR all had Monster records in 91.
Megadeth, Pantera, VH, Aerosmith, STP all had huge success 92 and beyond. It wasn’t just Nirvana, or the Seattle sound, it was fans sick of the hair band formula. Music took center stage and the looks became irrelevant. 91-92 has all time great rock/ metal records. By the way, Metallica’s Black album out sold them all - Metal not Grunge
Rush released their best album in years Counterparts in 1993 and sold out arenas. Only Pearl Jam kept them from Number One on Billboard.
Pink Floyd released their best album since Wish You Were Here out of The Division Bell in 1994 and it debuted at Number One on Billboard and stayed put for FOUR STRAIGHT WEEKS and they played to sold out football and baseball stadiums across North America and outgrossed them all except The Rolling Stones who made more money with charging $100 plus a ticket out of jealousy to Pink Floyd.
Great video. Need MORE from you though!
More to come! Stay Tuned...we're going on tour!!
Hair 'metal' is kind of just hard rock, not Metal. I got into grunge in a big way at the time, but I was also still listening to Metal. Bands like Death, Testament, Overkill, Iron Maiden, Accept, Paradise Lost, Sepultura, Amorphis, and loads more. Yes, some might say grunge also 'killed' thrash metal, but I don't see it that way. A lot of those bands started around the same time, and so around album 5 or 6, they naturally were wanting to shift gears and try different things. But they were still Metal. Grunge was great, Metal is great.
I saw another interview with Riki Rachtman and he said there was a big G that killed 80's metal, but it wasn't grunge it was Garth. Really with a lot of my friends that was true. We were hitting our early 20's when grunge hit and they stopped playing "hair bands" on the radio and MTV, and my friends didn't feel the angst and whatever Nirvana was about but here's this guy in a cowboy hat basically making the same type of songs but with a twang and putting on huge production, energetic concerts,and selling a crap ton of albums so they drifted that way, along with other guys like Tim McGraw,Travis Tritt,etc.
To sum up what Brad Gillis (Night Ranger) said about the simple chords & Lead Guitar bring it all back to basics, that's true if (like me) you were there far enough back to even before official "Metal" bands, to the simple, raw sounds of late-60's-70's Hard Rock bands. So for me, again, to sum it up, Grunge was like hitting the "Reset" button. 🙂
I found grunge depressing. So many of them died too. Really sad stuff
Same. I bought Nirvana's Nevermind and first I thought it was good, but more I listened to it, less I liked it.
PanterA, Type O Negative, Fear Factory... Metal got better in the 90s!
"Cringe" had about a three year shelf life.
If you count post grunge then technically it had a longer life. Also, it inspired butt rock but then again you could say butt rock is a mix of hair metal and post grunge.
when MTV started getting weird , the hair bands should have pooled some money together and started their own video channel - the arenas would have stayed full - all those metalheads did not evaporate !
They all got old, jobs and a family to take care of.
For me, record company execs killed metal. Record companies started putting out anything that resembled Cinderella or Ratt. By 88, i rolled my eyes every time i saw one of these copies. When Slaughter came out in late 90, they were the 1st hair metal band in a long time, i really liked, but i knew this kinda music was already on the way out. MTV Unplugged was good, in that new grunge artists AND hair metal bands were both appearing. Headbangers Ball was already bringing in Alice In Chains and Nirvana, and less Ratt and Crue. I was on board with BOTH hair and grunge. I thought Great White put out their best album in 91 - Hooked, while i loved Pearl Jam Ten. I think the hairbands SHOULD have went early 70s retro glam - like Sweet or T Rex. Slaughter did their best album in 1997, but nobodys ever heard it, cause it was 97 and they were Slaughter lol. Revolution starts with " american pie", which is EXACTLY the direction hair metal bands should have went in 91, to save their career
I grew up in Seattle. turned 18 in 84. we didn't call it grunge. we called it melodic. it was what we needed at the time. it was either hair glam or hard core bandsthe time so when lovebone and skin yard and tad started playing around town it was great. it had a familiar sound to it, like your collection. the girls listened to motley and that stuff. nobody killed hairmetal. everybody just outgrew it.
Looking at 2024 . No . Nothing is bigger than a metal festival
it killed Hair metal, which was a damn good thing. Traditional metal killed itself as it failed to evolve.
Grunge was heavily inspired by metal, especially classic Black Sabbath
Grunge didn't kill metal, it killed HAIR metal.
The hair bands killed new wave in the early 80's. Everyone has their time.
Funny hownmany folks here forget that hair metal is not typical metal. Many metal bands and fans hated hair metal. I wouldn't say hate but definitely prefer Thrash and death
Pantera was the only band around that time that came out and kept still the metal flag up selling million of records with Cowboys From Hell and following albums.
The vast amount of all the "W" bands are what killed it!
Glam, thrash or heavy metal just went more in the underground back in 93-94-95-96 in US and UK. But in Europe and Japan, or South America traditional heavy metal or thrash was still big. You could still watch it on tv, in the magazines, and you could buy many great albums by bands like RUNNING WILD, SAXON, MOTORHEAD, KROKUS, that kept the 80s spriit alive during the 90s.
Grunge forced Metal to evolve.Although the 90's Britpop craze sucked,at least we had Carcass,Cannibal Corpse,Death,the groove metal era of Pantera,Sepultura and Right Said Fred,the heaviest band of all. *cough*
The song topics of hair metal (“Girl Money”)became irrelevant in the 90’s, meanwhile Nirvana & Pearl Jam lyrics are relevant to this day.
truth
Almost nobody was talking about that by the 90s
@@Kyush4 Warrent was. Their label abandoned them for Alice Chains, a group who still tours today despite losing their lead singer.
Jack and Brad had some great comments on it all, Night Ranger still puts on a great show.
Its funny they had Kane from Alice Cooper. If anyones proof that you can transcend decades, if you keep an eye on current trends, but try to create new ones, you can outlast the cleansings. Alice Cooper kinda went hair metal in the 80s, then by 2000, he went for more of a Korn sound. My favorite 2 Cooper albums have a mix of all those styles - 1994s Last Temptation and 2005s Dirty Diamonds. Basic good diverse rock albums
Soft rock ballad glam hair bands in girly make up and blouses dressing like chicks faded themselves. The 1990’s Alternative rock-grunge bands Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam getting MTV & radio play, didn’t seem to effect the underground progressive thrash pioneering guitar bands like Megadeth, Pantera, Sepultura, from evolving heavy metal into the current power/nu-metal movement we still can experience today. Whomever is the Miles Davis of the electric guitar, to me it’s all a evolving mashup re-fusion of music style tastes, from the horn sections of Cab Calloway & Duke Ellington, to Benny Goodman, bubbling up from the delta up from Jack Johnson Charlie Christian, to the electrified guitars of Wes Montgomery, Bo Diddly & Chuck Berry to the out of this worldly pioneering genius of Jimi Hendrix & Tony Iommi, SRV, and say Les Claypool. Personally to me it seems guitar based heavy rock music has more or less stagnated since Randy Rhoads had set the bar so very high at the pinnacle peak of guitar driven music, to the point that an entirely new sonic ear pleasing instrument would have to be adapted and created to set off the next fresh musical radical genre existing entirely outside of the classical, jazz, bluegrass, gospel, country, blues, funk, Rn’B, rock, metal & hip hop musical genres.
Seems like it did for me, but maybe Metal just ran its course, all I know is the 80s were my late teens and 20s, I saw ALL ALL ALL the great bands on ALL ALL ALL those great theatrical spectacular mega-metal tours. How miss those life changing, life defining, hallowed years. God's favorite decade without question 🙏 🍻🤘🏻
Bon Jovi , Metallica, Ozzy, Ac/Dc, Def Leppard all survived, Aerosmith had their biggest album with Get A Grip, even Kiss survived, albeit they needed to bring back the makeup and the the original line up. But the point is, the top dogs werent effected by grunge, everyone else who were, to be honest, musically limited their the ones who got wiped out
Hair metal was on its way out. Same for the shredders. Everything runs its course. You would have to be stupid to think things would last forever.
Bring any ex W.A.S.P. Members dude like Tony richards or something
I feel that most music fans listen to what the radio stations cram down their throats. I think that generally it is clear that radio doesn't play songs that are good - they play songs that the record companies pay them to play - and then music fans - after having a song crammed down their throats - decide they like it. What I don't understand is how fans of 70's and 80's metal bands abandoned their favorite artists. When you attend a show today with a band that was popular back in the day - its the same people that attended the shows back in the day for the most part.
I would further submit that hard rock/metal is still alive and well today - pretty much every band from the 70's and 80's that is still alive is still out there touring and in some cases recording new music. Again not absolute - but in general.
To me the rise in popularity in grunge is attributed to:
Radio Stations/Record company's promoting this new style of music
Older fans of hard rock/heavy metal deciding they like the new shit music being crammed down their throats
Some 70's/80's bands trying to change their songs/image to be more "in"
Younger fans deciding they'd rather listen to grungy dudes with little or no talent that play crappy music and attract less than acceptable women to their shows.
my 2 cents worth.
great answer bro. Radio used to play what the record companies wanted back then - now so many traditional radio stations are owned by bigger conglomerates that one play list is being played all over the country. We talked to a lot of fans from the 80s and the reason they abandoned or walked away for a bit was... they were having babies, starting careers, getting older... 10yrs later it was time to rock again. Take the kids to the shows and re live those amazing 80s - thanks again 80sMRB
Its pretty simple. Change is inevitable.
Let's take a look at the 90s metal scene as someone who lived through it. Grunge exploded and wiped out an entire subgenre, in the span of a year, with virtually no survivors. Mötley Crüe, Ratt, Poison, Cinderella, L.A. Guns, Faster Pussycat, Skid Row, Warrant, Extreme etc..... They all either split up or changed their sound due to dwindling sales. Some of them made comebacks during the late 90s and early 2000s, but mainly as nostalgia acts, playing setlists consisting of virtually nothing after 1991 and releasing albums that no one bought apart from the die-hards.
Now let's look at some of the big names. AC/DC were still going strong. Ozzy was still successful. Aerosmith were touring relentlessly. Bon Jovi re-invented themselves. Metallica broke into the mainstream in a big way (even if it was the lame Bob Rock version of the band), and Guns N' Roses were almost unstoppable (if it wasn't for Axl's ego they would've been).
Pantera had two no.1 albums and death metal flirted with the mainstream (Napalm Death had a top 10 album, Morbid Angel signed to a major label and Cannibal Corpse were in the first Ace Ventura movie). Meanwhile we witnessed the rise of Rage Against The Machine, Tool, Machine Head and Fear Factory.
Norwegian black metal established itself as a legitimate movement, as did Swedish melodic death metal, and the UK was represented by Cradle Of Filth and the Peaceville Three (Paradise Lost, Anathema and My Dying Bride). We had Korn and the nu-metal era, and love it or hate it (I certainly hated it), you have to acknowledge because, if nothing else, at least it served as a gateway for younger metal fans (younger than me anyway).
Finally, towards the end of the decade, Slipknot happened. And to anyone who says that the 90s didn't produce any larger-than-life rock stars, I'll always say Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie.
So no. Grunge didn't kill metal. It just stripped away all the dead wood and re-energised the whole genre.
The industry killed 80s metal cause all the labels were trying to find the next Nirvana so they only signed that style.
Hair metal had just kind of run it's course. Metal as a whole was, and still is going strong.
Exactly. 💯 🤘
I love grunge and Kurt was a great musician but to say that he single handedly killed metal is frankly giving him too much credit.
The market was over saturated with cookie-cutter bands that brought nothing new to the table and that’s what “killed” it. People wanted something new, not just another copy.
That said, I don’t think it’s fair to say that the genre died anyway. Sure, it lost popularity, but there are still plenty of bands who survived the “grunge-apocalypse” and went on to continue doing their thing even today decades later. The interest for it is still there for the bands who are actually able to deliver.
I found it quite hilarious that the plaid lumber jacket I had been wearing for years was being worn on fashion show runways, And grunge saved the ozone layer from all that hair spray.
People tend to forget,but between 1988-91 ,a new throwback to classic rock occurred. Black Crowes and Lenny Kravitz were pretty huge. And all the old classic rock acts like The Who,The Stones and McCartney were back touring and selling stadiums. The only metal band that could do that was Metallica at that point. Grunge just happened to be this new microcosm that caught someone in the record industry's ear. So they just went in and immediately co-opted it.
Basically,the industry dumped a bunch of coke addicts for herion junkies. I could do without either scene.
I don't hate grunge at all but I was really f****** disappointed with people the way they hated on 80s rock that was very artistically credible not because of a love for music but for a trend in thinking.
It almost killed metal until Panteras- Vulgar Display of Power hit the scene 🤘
Hair metal ran its course. Thrash thrived in the 90’s.
yeah a better case could be made that thrash , rap ,and boy bands killed hair metal. I didn't know anyone who said "Im gonna quit listening to this band for Grunge" Grunge was for kids tbh
@@Dragonette666 all the grunge fans have kids in their late 20s and early 30s.
The genre had about a 10 year run. Grunge maybe 5 years. Metal had a great run.
Metal is still running. Hard
@@thedude4672 Debatable. Now there are five billion little subgenres with five billion bands in each that sound exactly the same. From a “populist” perspective, it’s great that so many barriers to entry have disappeared, but there are negatives, too.
Music 🎶 Sweet music 🎶
i see these changes as the phoenix rising from the ashes of it's former self. It's still metal, it's just different now.
copy and paste, copy and paste, until you kill it. happened to many times of music
I loved it, but it WAS a dead end.
what killed metal for me was mark slaughter, firehouse, etc. all those shrieky high pitched singers of terrible cliche songs. other bands were just starting to kill it just slightly ahead of that garbage, but those style voices ENDED it.
Grunge filled the gap where punk rock and metal collided.
Of course it did just ask Winger they found out the hard way. There came a point in the late 80s where there were too many imitators too many people with a homogenized version of 80s metal they over flooded the market and the young people feel that it sounds like their dads music so it was a combination of the music industry pushing grunge and too many bands that sounded like a wimpy version of 80s metal. It was a murder suicide
Grunge never killes metal. Some grunge is considered metal AIC and Soundgarden fall in that category. Hair metal ran its course. Then we had the rise of Nu-Metal then hardcore in the 90s. Metal never dies, it actually continues to grow. Now you've got gen Z enjoying Motley Crue and GnR on Spotify.