I'm still wondering how STP sounded like Pearl Jam

[Confused Mark Wahlberg]

To me, they didn't sound anything alike, yet in the early days, that's all you heard.

Now Creed I can understand, as Scott Stapp is doing a (terrible) Eddie Vedder impression, but STP sounded nothing like them, IMO

[VenomFang]

STP still get called grunge to this day even though all their grunge elements were dropped by the 3rd album. People who write this crap arent even paying attention. BTW, 20th anniversary of Core this year, damn I feel old. Hope there's a re-release with never before heard bonus tracks. I dont care if it was "fake grunge" or what its a great album.

[Junkenstein]

A lot of the stuff on their first album is pretty derivative of the kind of thing Pearl Jam and also Alice In Chains were going for at the time. I think by Purple they'd found their own sound, they kept the grunge element but pushed the 70s glam rock influences to the forefront, and became a better band for it IMO.

No.4 is a great album too, and again a very different sound to the previous stuff.

[The OP]

I can hear the Alice in Chains influence but not Pearl Jam.

[ashcampbell]

Jan 5, 2012 20:29:05 GMT -5 The OP said:

I can hear the Alice in Chains influence but not Pearl Jam.

Yeah...and the song 'Wicked Garden' is sorta an AiC homage.

Oh and 'Interstate Love Song' is one of the best songs of all time. Gotta turn it up loud every time it comes on

[Evilution E5150]

yeah thats easy, they both sound terrible

i'll show myself out

[Blindkarevik]

To be fair, people were saying that when "Plush" was the only single they had. On first glance, Scott sounded like an Eddie Vedder clone, however if you listen to all of "Core"... it's near impossible to continue with the comparisons.

[mizerable]

Both Core and Purple are amazing albums. STP and Soundgarden were about as "grunge" as it got for me. I never liked Pearl Jam, and Nirvana was f***ing horrid. Alice in Chains getting grouped into grunge never made any sense to me either.

[fuzzywarble, squat cobbler]

Jan 5, 2012 21:43:53 GMT -5 mizerable said:

Both Core and Purple are amazing albums. STP and Soundgarden were about as "grunge" as it got for me. I never liked Pearl Jam, and Nirvana was f***ing horrid. Alice in Chains getting grouped into grunge never made any sense to me either.

That's because the idiots all figured that since they're all from Seattle, and since they dressed alike, their sounds were all the same.

The 4 big 'grunge' bands all sound different. I hate the grunge label to define a music genre. Grunge is a STYLE, not a sound.

[celticjobber]

"Plush" sounded kinda like Pearl Jam most of STP's other songs didn't as much. I like STP better, actually.




A more perplexing thing to me is the way that many people used to lump Smashing Pumpkins in with the Seattle grunge bands (hell, I just recently read a magazine review of Siamese Dream's re-issue that talked about them as a 90's "grunge" band).

[nate5054]

AIC being labeled grunge was party because of the Seattle origins, but also partly because lyrically they weren't the traditional heavy metal band, though while they're my favorite band of all time admittedly they focused on two things: death and heroin abuse.

[FUNK_US/BRODUS]

They dont. As a massive fan of both bands, STP do not sound like Pearl Jam.

[Urethra Franklin]

Jan 5, 2012 21:43:53 GMT -5 mizerable said:

Both Core and Purple are amazing albums. STP and Soundgarden were about as "grunge" as it got for me. I never liked Pearl Jam, and Nirvana was f***ing horrid. Alice in Chains getting grouped into grunge never made any sense to me either.

You don't think AiC was "grunge" per se, yet I don't think Soundgarden was. They had a much greater metal influence than any of their contemporaries.

I think it's just a regional thing. Soundgarden/Pearl Jam/AiC/Screaming Trees/Mudhoney/Nirvana all came out of Seattle and, rightly or wrongly, were instantly grouped together under the grunge genre.

[Turd Ferguson]

I wouldn't say the bands sound alike, but Weiland, Vedder, and to an extent, Layne Staley all had very similar sounding voices. Especially the former two.

My friends all joke and say, "Guess who I am," and sing random things doing a Vedder impression. Then the others all guess Weiland, Staley, Stapp, or Vedder.

[willywonka666]

Don't kid yourself, there were some similarities in a couple of songs. I remember when Riki Rachtman made the joke on Headbanger's Ball and pissed STP off, but just like the Beatles, when they were big, a bunch of other bands copied their sound. Nothing new, it still goes on today with autotune

[VenomFang]

Jan 6, 2012 10:23:38 GMT -5 willywonka666 said:

Don't kid yourself, there were some similarities in a couple of songs. I remember when Riki Rachtman made the joke on Headbanger's Ball and pissed STP off, but just like the Beatles, when they were big, a bunch of other bands copied their sound. Nothing new, it still goes on today with autotune

To be fair STP werent metal and shouldnt have been on Hairbanger's Ball to begin with. That was just MTV trying to be trendy like they always do.

[Deleted]

They didn't sound alike. They sucked in totally different ways.

[The OP]

Jan 6, 2012 10:13:54 GMT -5 Turd Ferguson said:

I wouldn't say the bands sound alike, but Weiland, Vedder, and to an extent, Layne Staley all had very similar sounding voices. Especially the former two.

See, I guess it's subjective because I think Weiland and Staley sound significantly more alike than Weiland and Vedder. Especially some of the songs on Core, for example "Sex Type Thing" almost sounds like it could be an Alice in Chains song to me. I've never liked Pearl Jam and I don't like Eddie Vedder's singing or lyrics. To me they've always come off as some jocks who were shooting hoops in the park one day and decided to turn their ballcaps around, get some flannel shirts and start a grunge band. Apparently Eddie Vedder was an intern at MTV before joining the band, so this theory might not be all that far off. If you ask me, those guys have had "corporate product" written all over them since day one.

[Juice]

This topic makes me want to bring up HYPE!

You guys ever watch that? It's on youtube in like ten parts, and like everyone addresses how Grunge wasn't their choice and hated being lumped into it.