Grunge music escapes confines of traditional classification

Recently I’ve been listening to a lot of grunge. There’s no reason for that — maybe the cold weather has me in a Seattle state of mind. Whatever the reason, that’s been my genre of choice.

When you think about grunge there is a sort of agreed-upon pantheon of who the top bands are. Thrash Metal fans came up with the idea of the “Big Four” of Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer —the four biggest bands in the genre. Every music genre must have its own big four.

When it comes to grunge, it seems like the consensus is this: Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. Grunge as a music genre is ill-defined. Genres are already arbitrary but especially grunge. It’s difficult to find a trait that those four bands all have in common other than superficial things. Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam were all from Seattle, but Nirvana was technically from nearby Aberdeen. So much for the “Seattle Sound.”

You could say all four bands are from the state of Washington, but so is Macklemore, and I feel like he doesn’t belong in the same genre as Soundgarden. Musically, the four bands are as far apart from each other as they are from Macklemore. Pearl Jam had more of an angsty classic rock thing going on whereas Nirvana was a lot punkier and nosier. Alice in Chains and Soundgarden are just more depressing metal bands.

There is one thing those four bands do have in common, though — something that Macklemore can’t claim. They all had fantastic lead singers. Layne Staley, Eddie Vedder, Kurt Cobain and Chris Cornell are all generational icons. They had unique voices, great songwriting and stage presence to boot. It’s difficult to choose a favorite between them, but today I’m going to try and decide which grunge frontman was the best.

I think all four bands had lead singers with great stage presence and unique voices. In terms of technical talent, it’s a different story. Kurt Cobain could do some crazy vocal stuff, but only because he really strained his voice to do it — his technique was terribly unhealthy. Chris Cornell and Layne Staley also had some bad vocal habits — not on the level of Kurt Cobain, but not great either.

But both had much larger natural singing ranges. Cornell and Staley both had about four octave vocal ranges, but Chris Cornell would tend to jump from high to low notes more while Layne stuck to a smaller range despite being able to go outside it. That gives Chris Cornell the impression of being much more technically proficient at singing than Layne Staley than he really was, although I think Chris Cornell should receive credit for a more creative use of his range. Alice in Chains’ vocals were really reliant on harmonies in a way that the other big grunge bands weren’t as much.

A lot of vocal harmonies are based off of the fifth interval of the melody, but Alice in Chains would often times use the fourth which made them stand out. I also personally just think that Layne Staley had the most emotive, unique voice out of any of the big Grunge bands, but that’s subjective.

For those two reasons I give Layne Staley the nod for being my favorite singer personally. But the award for best singer, objectively? Probably Eddie Vedder for one reason — he’s the only one who didn’t destroy his voice. Chris Cornell held up OK, but some later live shows had rough moments, and Layne Staley was in such rough shape that even after just a few years you can tell he had damaged his voice just by listening to old concert footage.

Nirvana especially would have struggled. But Eddie Vedder can still sing well. Lifestyle is probably part of that — being in poor health makes singing harder for anyone, and Eddie Vedder was the only big grunge singer who didn’t develop a crippling drug problem. I imagine that’s helped him preserve his voice. But his singing technique is another reason.

Eddie Vedder doesn’t force his voice to do as much unnatural stuff as the other three singers did because he’s taken care of it, he still sounds great today. Since he was the only one of those four who could sing without killing his voice, I think Eddie Vedder deserves the title for being the best singer out of the bunch. The factors one uses to decide who they think the best singers are arbitrary and subjective. You can use a bit of music knowledge to maybe make a more informed argument. But there’s always going to be a personal preference.

Hopefully, if nothing else, you can take what you’ve learned in this article and relisten to music in a different light. Maybe you’ve learned that healthy habits can lead to a lifetime of success. If nothing else, I’m hoping you learned that Macklemore is from Seattle and Nirvana isn’t.I’m still stuck on that-Seattle picked the wrong blond, blue-eyed white guy to dedicate a museum to.