Grunge fans can continue to use their illusion...

My esteemed blogging colleague (blolleague?) brings up an excellent point about everyone's favorite greasy haired messiah. Pearl Jam was way better than Nirvana. Apologies to Peter Cooper. (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=73765385)

More significantly, though, there is one significant myth about Nirvana that need to be debunked.

That myth being: Nirvana killed hair metal.
I used to spout this child of the 90's party line myself, but it just is not true. Look at the facts.

Bon Jovi released Keep the Faith the year after Nevermind. That was a successful album, with 2 pretty big singles on it. Bon Jovi followed that up with a platinum greatest hits album. So they survived the supposed culturally shattering moment of Nevermind okay.

Aerosmith sold 7 million freaking copies of Get a Grip, released in 1993. For what seemed like the next 3 years, they were all over MTV with those Alicia Silverstone videos.

Guns N Roses (pause, everyone, for a moment of silence in honor of crazy-ass Axl) dominated MTV in the year following the release of Nevermind.

Metallica did not even bother to become popular until the years following Nevermind. They probably remain (for some reason) America's most popular heavy metal act.

So there were bands, contrary to the gospel of the 90s, that survived those opening chords of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (which, I might add, sound suspiciously like the chorus of Boston's "More than a Feeling").

So what if Poison never released a successful album after Nirvana hit the scene. Same for Ratt, or LA Guns, or any number of other hair metal bands. Those bands had limited life spans to begin with. They stopped being popular, not because Kurt Cobain sang unintelligible lyrics while wearing a cardigan. They stopped being popular because they happened to hit their expiration date as a cultural phenomenon at the same exact time as Nirvana crept out of obscurity and into every unbearable teenager's record collection.

There have been plenty of musical trends that died sudden deaths prior to hair metal. And nobody asserts that they have a single, tangible killer. For example, Psychedelic Rock had a very similar shelf life to hair metal. But the Eagles don't get credit for making it irrelevant. Nor do Black Sabbath (as much as they rocked they were never really popular, you can look it up). So why do Nirvana get credit for "killing" a musical trend (that, as the continued popularity of bands like Aerosmith and Bon Jovi demonstrates) was never actually killed?

Nirvana did not kill hair metal. Anyone who tells you that Nirvana did kill hair metal is delusional. And they probably smell bad, too.