10 Rock and Metal Artists Who Survived the Grunge Explosion

The conventional wisdom of the grunge revolution goes like this: Spandex-clad hair bands lived high on the hog until 11:59 p.m. on Sept. 23, 1991. When the clock struck midnight and Nirvana‘s Nevermind hit shelves, they all turned to dust and ceased to exist.

That’s not exactly how it went, as demonstrated by our list of 10 Rock and Metal Artists Who Survived the Grunge Explosion — although it probably felt that way for many bands.

Indeed, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and several other bands under the “grunge” umbrella hastened a quick and drastic overhaul of the musical landscape. Most of the glam metal bands that had ruled the roost throughout the previous decade were considered passe; in reality, that scene had already become stale and oversaturated by late 1991. If Nirvana killed hair metal, then hair metal inflicted several of its stab wounds.

The other truth is that several rock and metal bands from the ’80s and earlier did survive the grunge explosion. Some of them, like Aerosmith and AC/DC, stuck to their guns and kept playing the same sleazy, hedonistic hard rock for which they had become known. Others, like U2 and Bon Jovi, observed the changing musical tides and tweaked their sound accordingly, allowing them to flourish in a new decade. Some of rock’s elder statesmen were so firmly entrenched in the public consciousness that they couldn’t be vanquished; they enjoyed additional visibility as grunge’s principals cited them as influences.

See these examples and others in UCR’s list of 10 Rock and Metal Artists Who Survived the Grunge Explosion.