Last week, Mudhoney released their 11th studio album Plastic Eternity. Fans of the legendary Seattle rock band get what they've come to expect: messy and melodic guitars, booming drums, and Mark Arm's passionate vocals. As the title suggests, the album is a warning about the climate crisis and the impact of ignoring it. It's been a few years since their last release, and the band sounds fresh.
Although not as well known as other Seattle groups like Soundgarden and Nirvana, Mudhoney's place in rock history is cemented. Kurt Cobain cited them as an influence, and their snarling punk/grunge sound has echoed through generations of alternative bands.
Jordan Edwards and Demi Ramos spoke to Arm about the band's influence on rock music, his interactions with Nirvana and Sonic Youth, and the recording of Plastic Eternity. Watch the interview below.
On May 18, 2017, Chris Cornell suddenly passed away after a Soundgarden show at the Fox Theater in Detroit.
One of grunge's forefathers, the rocker was blessed with a towering four-octave range that perfectly encapsulated the dueling sounds of the 1980s grunge movement: screeching veracity mixed with moments of tenderness.
Cornell led a successful career outside of his time with Soundgarden, as well. He established multiple side projects and released four solo records and numerous other compilations that continued to demonstrate his beefy vocal talents as a one-of-a-kind musician. While Cornell had plenty of memorable moments, there are a few vocal performances that stand above the rest.
As we remember Chris on the anniversary of his death, here are some of his greatest vocal performances.
Soundgarden – "Slaves & Bulldozers (1991)"
The last song Chris would ever sing, the rocker performed 1991's "Slaves & Bulldozers" as the final encore at Detroit's Fox Theater. An hour later, the rocker would be dead.
"Slaves & Bulldozers" is undeniably raw and a strangely fitting final performance, with Chris tearing apart the seedy inner workings of the music industry. The track also encapsulated what was so gorgeous about his voice, as he launches into a screeching F5 – or sometimes G5 in live performances – by the track's chorus, calling out in a harrowing plea, "What's in it for me? What's in it for me?"
Soundgarden – "Fell on Black Days (1994)"
Off Soundgarden's Grammy-nominated fourth record Superunkown, "Fell on Black Days" revisits the crippling depression that consumed Chris as a kid and is raw with sinister emotion as a result.
"Fell on Black Days was like this ongoing fear I've had for years," Chris told Melody Maker at the time of the single's release. "It took me a long time to write that song...It's a feeling that everyone gets. You're happy with your life, everything's going well, things are exciting – when all of a sudden you realize you're unhappy in the extreme, to the point of being really, really scared." "Fell on Black Days" is one of those haunting songs that sticks with you like a sickness.
Chris Cornell – "Flutter Girl (1994)"
When Chris Cornell abandoned the heavier roots of Soundgarden in favor of an optimistic journey into psychedelic pop, longtime fans were initially skeptical of the transition. But both his debut Euphoria Mourning and its lead single "Flutter Girl" were so much fun. The song radiates with a welcomed opulence.
Chris Cornell's voice is more soothing than gravelly and was picked to help soundtrack the movie Singles. "Flutter Girl" was unlike any Chris Cornell song that came before.
Audioslave – "Like a Stone (2002)"
Off of Audioslave's self-titled debut, "Like a Stone" quickly became one of those songs you heard everywhere on rock radio after it's released in 2002. The track's ruminations on death hit home thanks to the passionate yearning heard in Cornell's voice.
His voice slinks along with the lumbering despair of someone who knows he's in his final moments and who tries to remain optimistic in the face of death. "In your house I long to be," he calls out desperately to his friends and family who have passed on, "room by room patiently, I'll wait for your there." "Like a Stone" was a dark and bruising song that connected with millions and eventually became one of the highest performing rock songs of the decade.
Chris Cornell – "You Know My Name (2007"
Let's get one thing clear: Every 007 theme that has come after the release of 2007's "You Know My Name" just hasn't quite cut it – though Adele's "Skyfall" comes close. But it's because a voice as harsh as Cornell's was perfect to soundtrack a gritty reboot of the 007 franchise. It was also the first 007 theme to be sung by a male.
"Lyrically, it was really easy," Cornell said in 2009. "It was the only book where Ian Fleming wrote this vulnerability into the character." The song basks in that vulnerability and at times is quite introspective. "You can't deny the prize, it may never fulfill you," Chris sings as if to himself. "It longs to kill you, are you willing to die?"
Chris Cornell – "Nothing Compares 2 U"
As Chris got more confident as a solo performer, he began creating amazing covers by iconic mainstream acts like Michael Jackson and U2, but his cover of the Prince/Sinead O' Connor hit "Nothing Compares 2 U" was truly something special. It was one of the last songs Chris would record before his death and as a result is just haunting.
Legendary rocker Dave Grohl celebrates his 52nd birthday today.
The former-Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters frontman has certainly established quite the legacy in the mere 52 years he's been on this earth. While touring might be paused at the moment, the rocker still kept busy while in quarantine, partaking in viral drum challenges against talented young children, and endlessly teasing the Foo Fighters 10th effort Medicine at Midnight.
As we blast "The Pretender" today in Dave's honor, here are 10 other weird anecdotes you probably didn't know about the gruff grunge icon.
His first hero was Jim Craig
Dave Grohl's first hero was no musician, but rather the legendary hockey player Jim Craig from Worcester, Massachusetts. After the team's victory against Russia in 1980, Grohl found the phone numbers of every "Jim Craig" in the Worcester area. He called each one of them and congratulated them, hoping one of them would be the legendary goalie. Dave did go on to meet the real Jim Craig many years later at a Winter Olympics.
Dave Grohl was on X-Files
Well he wasn't really a part of the show so much as he was loitering in the background during a scene. Dave Grohl can be seen walking in a puffy green jacket, his hair pulled back, carrying what looks like a manilla envelope. It turns out David was a big fan of the show during its initial run, so he showed up on set one day asking if he could be an extra.
The first instrument he learned to play was the Trombone
Dave is a self-taught musician, but his first instrument he learned wasn't the drums or guitar, it was actually the trombone. He took lessons for all of his instruments, but grew tired and bored by the lessons, so he soon transitioned to just teaching himself.
He wanted to be a Helicopter Pilot when he was young
In a now archived interview with Time Out, Grohl admitted that he long dreamed of being a helicopter pilot when he was a young boy. "I'd take the storm windows off our house," he said, "and set them up in this little cage thing around me. I'd sit and pretend I was in a helicopter."
He's creeped out by Japanese Porn
Dave Grohl in 2007 needed to make it clear that he hated Japanese porn. "Japanese hotel porn is creepy because it doesn't look like anyone is enjoying what they're doing," he told The Observer. They make it seem like crime, and I'm not into that." Nor are we David, nor are we.
He stole something once
When he was around 10 years old, he briefly engaged in a dangerous lifestyle choice: stealing. "I stole some chewing tobacco, it was green apple-flavour Redman chew," he said to the Melody Maker. "I went into our laundry room and start chewing it and got so violently ill that I never chewed tobacco again." It seems like he quickly learned his lesson, as that was the only thing he ever stole. "I'm not much of a thief really."
He's banned from driving in Australia
In 2000, the rocker was both fined and banned from driving in Australia after he was caught drunk-driving a scooter. "I guess if there's anything to learn here, it's don't drive after a few beers," the foo frontman later said, "even if you feel entirely capable like I did."
He was good friends with David Bowie
On the 1997 festival circuit, Dave fostered a warm relationship with the late David Bowie. The rocker later played Bowie's 50th birthday party. Grohl continued to have a relationship with him throughout his life until his death, and even went on to contribute the drums heard on Bowie's recorded covers of Neil Young's "I've Been Waiting For You" on 2002's Heathen.
He saw tiny dinosaurs while on a bad Acid trip
While on a boat from Belgium to England, Dave Grohl decided to pass the time by taking some acid. It turned out to be a bad idea, as Grohl had a terrible time. He spent three hours running in circles and said that "tiny dinosaurs" were trying to nibble on his ankles. "That was f*cked up," Grohl said plainly of the experience.
He's a great tipper
When the rocker was in Philadelphia over Memorial Day weekend for a wedding back in 2012, he attended two parties at the Smith & Wollensky bar in the city's Rittenhouse Hotel. He left not one, but two $1000 tips for the staff, establishing him as one of the nicest guys in rock.
He hates singing competitions
Turns out, Dave is surprisingly not a fan of tv singing competitions. "Who's to say what's a good voice, and what's not a good voice?," he said in a keynote speech at Austin's SXSW festival one year. "Imagine Bob Dylan sitting there singing Blowin' In The Wind in front of Christina Aguilera." We hear you, Dave.
He broke his leg while in Sweden
In a legendary moment, David Grohl broke his leg while performing in Sweden back in 2015. Famously, he continued and finished the show, although it was obviously shorter than they would have liked it to be. Still, his enduring spirit is exactly why he remains one of the most hardcore rockers ever.
We all remember what emotional state we were in when we heard Hayley Williams belt her heart out on "All I Wanted."
The track's grinding guitars embellish an already forceful plea for companionship, but when the band cuts out, all that can be heard is Williams's crackling pipes: "I'll beg you nice from my knees / I could follow you to the beginning and just to relive the start."
Asking for someone's companionship is already a futile act; as intoxicating as young love is, it feels pathetic to have to ask for such a basic human necessity, to be stuck in codependency. As Williams's soaring vocals seep into a scream at the track's bridge, that layered frustration is palpable just from the sound of her voice.
Such sentiment has given life to lamenting emo teens on more than one occasion, as Williams seemingly captured teenhood's ethos. She isn't the first artist to revive our inner juvenile, and there were plenty of hard-hitting vocals from the rockin' 2000s that still resuscitate us to this day. Here are a few times that artists took a song and absolutely ate it alive.
"Breath" by Breaking Benjamin
Ben Burnley and the boys had already established their unique brand of soaring choruses and cutthroat metal guitars on 2004's We Are Not Alone. The grinding crunch on songs like "Break My Fall" and "Firefly" contrasted with sweeping and uplifting melodies fit for pop radio.
But on 2006's Phobia, the post-grunge icons had mastered their craft. Each song on the project sounded crisp and radio-ready thanks to the work of producer David Bendeth, who previously worked with commercial rock acts like Paramore and A Day to Remember, but Phobia's deep cuts like "Topless" and "You Fight Me" were still greased up enough to maintain its classification as a grunge record.
Regardless, "Breath" was a perfect balancing act. It centered entirely around Burnley's malleable voice but still had enough grime to cater to metal-heads. The track's slow-burn build-ups are held together by sprinkles of electric guitar and a steady baseline, but Burnley's voice always remains in the driver's seat.
The song ominously builds in the first verse, and it's unclear what to expect, but when Burnley quickly explodes the band's rigid guitars elevate his anguish: "I'm going all the way, get away, please." As he takes a breath, the instruments cease, and Burnley momentarily slinks back to a mere whisper. An acoustic guitar is all we can hear as Burnely lightly coos along for a few moments of reprieve.
The song then detonates like a bomb. "Breath's" brief moment of quiet is what gives the track such a cathartic release and shows the emotional power of Burnley's shape-shifting melodies.
"Fly from the Inside" by Shinedown
Shinedown's Brent Smith remains one of rock's most gifted vocalists, and he's made countless songs with his band that have sucked the life out of us ("Beyond The Sun," "I Own You," "45," "Breaking Inside," to name a few), but "Fly From the Inside," off the band's 2003 debut Leave a Whisper, introduced listeners to Smith's power.
The verses sound like they could be plucked from any of the early-aughts post-grunge catalog, but Smith belts the song's chorus with a sense of urgency, as if he really had "found a way to steal the sun from the sky." By the time Smith hits the track's high-pitched peak, it's clear that Shinedown isn't any other post-grunge band and that they have a gift for translating powerful emotions of self-actualization into song. Their knack for power ballads would go on to define their still thriving career two decades later.
"Through the Iris" by 10 Years
10 Years often gets a bad rep among post-grunge affiliates as being that one early-aughts grunge act that never quite reached the heights of their contemporaries. Still, it's worth noting that they've remained a steady rock group and have continued to churn out compelling grunge records in recent years, despite waning in public favor.
Either way, on "Wasteland," the world was introduced to the charismatic Jesse Hasek, whose ear for melody was driven by his moving and angelic voice. When placed alongside the band's thick metal backdrop, Hasek conveyed a vast range of emotions amongst a relatively one-sided genre.
He yearns for environmental accountability on "Wasteland" in a way that shows both desperation and frustration. "I will not hide you through this, I want you to help," he cries out, pleading for compassion as he simultaneously grabs our throats.
On "Through the Iris," he sounds just as distraught, but then snaps into a soaring chorus,and sounds almost as if he's about to cry: "False perceptions that brought forth these questions of truth, love, and hope." The sentiment of questioning religion is powerful enough, but Hasek's haunting vocal performance adds another layer to a complex question he doesn't have an answer to. "Just please hold on," he cries out.
"This Is How I Disappear" by My Chemical Romance
While The Black Parade would go on to define a generation, "This Is How I Disappear" remains a deep cut from the project that Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge-affiliates gravitated to almost immediately. For the most part, the band had embellished their Goth sound with pop melodies and grandiose theatrics, but "This Is How I Disappear" seemed like an ode to the garage-like metal they left behind. The song offered a reckless and chaotic lead-in, with Gerard Way's voice sounding particularly seething and the manic, unforgiving guitars choking the near life out of listeners.
It can sometimes be hard to hear when the verse ends, and the chorus begins because of how corrosive it all sounds; but, when the song dissolves into madness at the bridge, Gerard Way's vocals break down into agonized screams as his band thrashes around him. As absolute chaos ensues, the band reels it all in, and fantastic drum work by Bob Bryar welcomes the final chorus. "This Is How I Disappear" is an all-consuming experience.
Love/Hate Heartbreak by Halestorm
Halestorm's Lizzy Hale breathes fire. As one of Metal's greatest singers, her versatility as a vocalist was shown in full form on 2009's "Love/Hate Heartbreak." Her scratchy grumbles in the song's verse give way to an anthemic and sweeping chorus. Hale can change her register on a dime and goes to extraordinary heights on "Love/Hate Heartbreak" to convey the angst of love in a way a guy never could. While a rock vocalist at heart, her ear for pop melodies was uncanny, and her fusion of the two has forever defined her career.
"I've Got All This Ringing In My Ears And None On My Fingers" by Fall Out Boy
While Infinity on High churned out multiple life-altering emo hits, the album's closer is theatrical and vibrant, with organs, horns, and a whole orchestra elevating Patrick Stump's soulful vocal delivery. As his nasal crooning gives way to a soothing falsetto, Stump uses the song to turn emo themes into theatrical opera.
As the song climaxes with a rush of instruments, Stump starts unexpectedly scat singing before it all dissolves into a quiet piano. The track's quirky jaunt, which ends with an audience cheering and a Midnight Marauders-esque robot voiceover, is almost too much to handle, but Fall Out Boy somehow streamlines the experience and makes it all mesmerizing.
Beabadoobee's latest video for "If You Want To" perfectly compliments the grunge-tinged pop song.
Her voice is infectiously smooth and her melodies roll in with comely delight, but Beabadoobee's new single is no bubblegum pop affair. There's an edginess to it that asserts itself in distorted, palm-muted power chords and a music video that could be straight out of the early '90s.
As the video opens, Beabadoobee sits in bed. A hand-wringing mother leads a no-nonsense doctor into Beabadoobee's overwhelmingly pink bedroom. "She hasn't slept in weeks," the mother figure informs the doctor. The song starts just as the doctor begins his examination. Beabadoobee sings with a face of pure apathy as the doctor performs his equally detached checkup. The absurdity and alienation of this exchange – alongside dramatic cuts to the first-person point of view, sudden jolts of animation, and surrealistically cartoonish sets – make the video feel almost like an obscure 20th-century French film at times. At others, like when we see Beabadoobee performing alongside a band of grungy guys whose hair perpetually obscures their faces, the video pokes fun at the disposition of ironic indifference characteristic of the 1990's (and often associated with hipsters today). The overall result is a fun and layered music video for a shy but confident love song.
If you like what you hear, you can look forward to Beabadoobee's upcoming EP, Loveworm, out on April 26th.
Dustin DiPaulo is a writer and musician from Rochester, New York. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Florida Atlantic University and can most likely be found at a local concert, dive bar, or comedy club (if he's not getting lost somewhere in the woods).
If you put early 2000's Britney Spears in heavy eye makeup, sent her to a grungy underground Brooklyn venue, and handed her a pack of American Spirits, you'd get an artist pretty close to Nola Wren. The New York based singer-songwriter and producer just released a new five song album called Scream into the Void Pt. 1. The record is pure synth-pop, featuring Wren's edgy lyrics and distinctive voice. The production, which Wren does herself, is tight and dark, perfectly contrasting Wren's pure, ethereal voice, creating attention grabbing songs that wouldn't sound out of place among the likes of Billie Eilish or Lorde.
The cover art perfectly captures the artist's vibe: frantically creative and charged with energy. The album itself seems to tell the story of a broken heart in the process of healing, taking the listener on a glittering journey from anguish, to rebound, and finally to acceptance.
Brooke Ivey Johnson is a Brooklyn based writer, playwright, and human woman. To read more of her work visit her blog or follow her twitter @BrookeIJohnson.
