The 10 Greatest (and 10 Worst) Post-Grunge Songs of All Time
Best of the worst, worst of the worst.
Post-grunge is bad. It was a genre predicated entirely on doing what bands like Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam has already done but with absolutely no qualms at all about selling out to Ticketmaster. Now I know what you’re thinking, I am the CEO of nu-metal, the worst genre of all time, but hear me out. Nu-metal, the spiritual cousin to post-grunge, is not bad, despite claims to the contrary, because it was founded on an idea; finding common ground between metal, industrial, rap, and funk and while nu-metal would certainly end up with some bad music the genre by-and-large produced some incredible, game-changing bands. Post-grunge has none of that. Its biggest bands have no legacy, its smallest bands may as well not exist. That being said, the genre did manage to produce some catchy-ass tunes, a few of which I’d even say go beyond just fun and into something great. Quick note before we get into it, I don’t consider post-grunge to truly start until Creed happened. So Bush, Collective Soul and Candlebox are all safe. Now let’s take a look; grow out your goatee, chug that monster, punch some drywall- it’s the 10 Greatest Post-Grunge Songs of All Time.
Touch harmonics were everywhere during the post-grunge/nu-metal era; A resonant, crystalline sound that would cut through the mix, clear and distorted alike. On Puddle of Mudd’s custody court anthem “Blurry,” those harmonics are the song’s consummate hook, followed by the melodic swoop of “my whole world surrounds you I stumble and I crawl.” Of all the genre’s Carnival cruise ship Kurt Cobain imitators, Wes Scantlin was particularly shameless, ripping the late singer's diction, drawl, phrasings everything off and selling it for cheap. So total was this impression that I often speculate that the one time he really needed to nail it, it failed so hard thanks to the divine intervention of Cobain’s ghost, stopping by for some quick revenge. Fortunately his momentary ability to craft a decent hook succeeds him here and the product was effective enough to score the band their only Top 10 Hot 100 hit. But really, Scanlin’s major contribution to “Blurry” is just staying out of that acoustic guitars way for a couple bars.
To understand the significance of “Second Chance” just consider it the final post-grunge song. Released in 2008, “Second Chance” peaked at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100, the last post-grunge song to make it that high, becoming something like a spiritual finale for the sub-genre as post-grunge without big pop hits is hardly post grunge at all. And fucking sheesh the size of this damn thing. “Second Chance” is an unwieldy monster of a pop production, absolutely stuffed with strings that wouldn’t have been out of place on a Taylor Swift album, hooks, lyrics that make little to no sense (“even the man in the moon disappears somewhere in the stratosphere”??) and a climactic drum fill that’s mixed totally different from the rest of the song amounting to a production that in sum-total would have even Max Martin wondering if it was all a bit much. The effect is kinda like one of those combination Baskin Robbins/Dunkin Donuts; just in case post-grunge wasn’t already bad enough for you, well there’s also a Dunkin Donuts helpfully located inside the same store. But all that aggressive hit-breeding worked, it was a smash with a chorus so epic it sounds like one too. Yeah, it’s more minivan than mosh-pit but that’s post-grunge for you.
Upon release in 2002, “Faithless” committed the ultimate post-grunge sin: It flopped, peaking at a pitiful 22 on the US Alt charts. Unfortunately, nothing else really matters in this genre. There was no development deal to catch Injected, Burn it Black would be their first and last album. “Faithless” didn’t catch on, not because it isn’t good - these are some of the best guitar tones you’ll find on this list, it’s because of how casual it comes about its hooks. “Faithless” is confident in itself, not forceful. Consider how aggressive a song like “Second Chance” is to get stuck in your head. It’s like being battered about the face by socks filled with ProTools plugins. “Faithless” on the other hand has an easy going shimmy to it that even feels a touch glammy– peep the way singer Danny Grady slides into that chorus “But it’s my kiiiiiiiind.” If you give just a minute “Faithless” proves as irresistible as any other song being slid across radio disc jockey desks back then, but as Injected (and Edgewater and Revis and 8stops7) had to learn the hard way even a minute was a minute too many.
It is with heavy heart I must report to you that Creed is bad. Bad bad. Bad bad bad bad bad not good bad. If you enjoy them - and I have many friends that do - I tip my cap because they are not good. While this was a somewhat hot take 22 years ago when their albums were going diamond it isn’t anymore. If anything it’s actually pretty mean. My favorite column on the internet, Tom Brienhen’s Number Ones, recently wrestled with this when writing about “With Arms Wide Open”; “The success of Creed just puts me in a bad position. I don’t like the person that I have to become when I write about Creed.”
So here’s what I will give Creed. Weathered, despite that awful album cover, is a solid record and “One Last Breath” is their best song. A lot of this has to do with the fact that it just turns all their worst impulses down a notch. Mark Tremonti - he of the infuriating wiii-dee-dee-diddle-eee chorus riff from “Higher” - opens the song with a beautiful gentle clean guitar. Scott Stapp reigns in his yarl for actual singing sounding an honest bit sensitive even– “Please come now I think I'm falling, I'm holding on to all I think is safe” it begins, a tender lyric delivered free of the chest beating this band took to so naturally. And then once the song does ramp up into its signature CG-bluster it feels deserved. So, Creed? Bad band... “One Last Breath” though? Good song!
“Every time we lie awake / After eh-vrey- hit- we take.” How many radio DJs knew this was going to be a smash hit soon as they heard that? It’s a fantastic hook to open a song with, I’m a huge sucker for upward stair-step melodies like that, but then you get to the chorus? Oh man. A pummeling drum fill and then- “I! HATE! EVEH-REE-THING ABOUT YOU!” It’s another one of this sub-genres’ many many “Heart Shaped Box” rip-offs but really juiced up with the kind of undeniable appeal that forces you to scream every single word right into your windshield, no matter who else in this McDonalds parking lot is watching.
Sean Danielsen wanted to be Kurt Cobain. There’s nothing remarkable about that, every post-grunge singer wanted to be Kurt Cobain, but Danielsen really wanted it and what separated him from the others was the strength of his intent; he was never going to reach Cobain’s genius but watching Danielsen pull on his restraints as hard as possible could be just as moving. Rather than smoothing out Cobain’s edges Danielsen was as comfortable blowing his voice out In Utero style (“Radio in a Hole”) as he was sounding delicate as new ice on a frozen pond (“I Want My Life”). “Bottom of a Bottle,” Smile Empty Soul’s forever definitive track, resonates because of how it mends the two styles; pitched between the grasping heartache of “Been scared and lonely” with the triumphant claiming of mistakes chorus “I do it just to feel alive!” Every lyric on “Bottom of a Bottle” is sad - evoking the emotional gulf of young adulthood, watching your innocence being swallowed, replaced with a pile of responsibilities - but the overall effect is triumphant. The chorus is massive, the riffs are catchy as all post-grunge needs to be, but it’s sincere and that’s what really counts.
When “You Know You’re Right,” the final Nirvana single, was released officially on October 8th, 2002 it wasn’t the product of love and care that got it there, instead it had to be lawsuited out of a proposed Nevermind 10th anniversary box set by Courtney Love, who claimed it would be wasted on such a thing. Jim DeRogatis reported on the battalions of lawyers and contracts that were getting drafted to wage war over a song of this potential. It’s truly the most post-grunge way a grunge song could be produced, all emphasis on rights and royalties and record sales with little consideration for much else. And if “You Know You’re Right” resembles Nirvana’s classic songs in sound it does not resemble them in spirit. Love lawyered up when she heard the track because it sounds like a smash, not a cult classic, with its eager chorus that dives for a hook as greedily as anything they’d ever put out. Had Cobain survived, it’s not hard to imagine him penning something like this to put the Seethers and the Puddles of Mudd out of their misery. As is, it’s Cobain crawling back from heaven to show the world how it’s done one more time.
“Hanging By A Moment” arrived as grunge was transforming into post-grunge through massive glucose injections; if Cobain was uncomfortable with how pop friendly Butch Vig made Nevermind the post-grunge generation of heavy guitar bands would have fired the guy for not making it pop enough. It was an era in which mixing board mavens like Bob Clearmountain and Brendan O'Brien held the keys to the kingdom, squashing each instrument until they worked as well on grocery store PAs as they did in arenas. “Hanging By A Moment” was a massive hit with an equally massive chorus to prove it yet defies its era by feeling so delicate little song. Singer Jason Wade’s mini-Weiland impression is a puffed chest to quiet a hammering heart. Tweak the song’s drop-d tuning to standard and “Hanging by a Moment” could be a Built to Spill song. A lot of that has to do with the bowed upright bass that opens the song with a gently diving note and finishes it running the bow over the strings for a tactile sound that you could almost reach out and touch or the way the song dodges post-grunge sludge to dive into an exciting first verse jog that perks the tempo up and continues propulsively through the chorus. But for all that careful craft “Hanging by a Moment” still sings from the heart, the impossibly short seconds between direct eye contact and a first kiss in slow motion.
“I Wanna Hold Your Hand” by The Beatles gets a lot of ink spilled upon it for being just an irresistibly good pop song so why not Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me”? Well the most glaringly obvious reason is that The Beatles went on to be The Beatles while Nickelback would proceed to write some of the most nonsensical, gross rock songs to crowbar their way onto a pop chart, a band bad enough that even I - the CEO of nu-metal - cannot redeem them. I will, however, gladly go to bat for the utter pop brilliance that is “How You Remind Me.”
I draw the line connecting The Beatles and Nickelback not just for the amusing justification (though it is amusing) but because the two songs are sides of the same coin. “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” is a giddy rush of pre-pubescent affection where lyrics about getting “high” can’t take away its ineffable innocence. “How You Remind Me” is caustic and bitter. A narrator so bad that living with him “must have damn near killed you.” “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” is a young couple on a ferris wheel feeling for each other’s fingertips under a blanket, “How You Remind Me” is that couple 20 years later having a screaming match in their living room. But if those are the faces, the coin is in how resplendent each song is with the hooks. I mean, wow, the sheer amount of top-shelf grade-a triple-platinum hooks inside “How You Remind Me.” There is a reason it was the last hard-rock song to hit number one on the Hot 100. Its opening quatrain (“Never made it as a wise man / couldn’t cut it as a poor man stealin’”) feels like its always been around, natural enough that the song rushes into a first chorus so quick you didn’t even notice a verse hasn’t actually happened. That chorus builds and releases tension– “It’s not like you / to say sorry / I was waiting / on a different story” - so each lyric rises and falls right up to a small leap (“for handing you a heart worth breaking and I’ve”) that explodes into the next big hook (“been wrong / I’ve been down”) with still two more to come (“these five words in my head…”, “Yeah, yeah; no, no.”) before the chorus is even over. It’s one of those pop songs you could strip for parts and build a seemingly infinite amount of other hits from. I know this is true because the song itself does this by layering the relatively insignificant “five words in my head” bit over the outro to create yet another hook. Hell, there’s a snare roll in here so distinct you could probably guess what song it's from in isolation. Even though “How You Remind Me” may not change your life on an emotional level, it can still force its way into your brain whenever it wants and, unlike some other Nickelback songs we’ll get to soon enough, you might not even mind while it’s in there.
“I don’t know if I can do this tonight…” trails Carl Bell during Fuel’s 2001 VH1 Storytellers appearance. He’s trying to introduce the band’s smash hit “Hemorrhage (In My Hands)” and words are failing. “When I was younger my grandmother got cancer, by the time they had found it [...] it was much too late” he continues. “One particular day was a very bad day for her and my mother was sitting with her that evening, she turned to my mom and said ‘How do you die?’” The space between “die” and Bell’s next word is endless. It sounds like someone in the mixing booth cranked a dial labeled “silence.” It’s heavy. Too heavy for pop radio, in fact, as Bell recounts the original version of the song is not what topped the alternative airplay chart for 12 weeks, instead the version of “Hemorrhage (In My Hands)” we know has been edited for public consumption but that same weight is in there.
Formed in 1989, Fuel broke out of Pennsylvania with “Shimmer” in 1997. “Shimmer” is pop-rock in a Matchbox 20 manner suffused with a grandiose melancholy that could have been borrowed from Sunny Day Real Estate’s then recent How It Feels to Be Something On. It’s glorious, handley giving anything on KROQ a run for its money and most of what was on critic lists of the era too. Singer Brett Scallions’ voice provides the most immediate element getting Fuel out of the faceless post-Matchbox clog; a ragged howl that bears resemblance to Rob Thomas’ trembling yelp but dreams of Jim Morrison auditioning for Soundgarden. His performance on “Hemorrhage” is a clenched first and steely eyes, trying to find a way to lower his guard without exposing himself to attack.
What elevates “Hemorrhage (In My Hands)” well above the post-grunge of its day is this song could have come out in any era and been a hit. It is, at is core, a remarkably good piece of songwriting- stashing its biggest hook (“Don’t fall away”) in the pre-chorus so that even after the chorus proper has exploded again and again it still takes you by surprise. The song’s bridge builds and builds carefully to Scallion’s cry of “You never even” but then something surprising happens. Instead of exploding into a triumphant guitar solo or (shudder) a key change, the song deflates, Bell issuing a guitar solo that sounds like a telephone line going dead resetting the song’s momentum and letting that final chorus truly smash. “Hemorrhage” is fantastic songcraft, catchy in every way you’d hope for but surprising in its construction.
If any single thing makes “Hemorrhage” truly post-grunge it’s that Carl Bell re-wrote the song to be less thematically weighty and more appropriate for radio play, a truism to the era’s “success at all costs” ambition. Yet Bell is a talented enough songwriter that it doesn’t drain the song of emotion, if anything his need to hide the song’s painful core behind an easy to swallow boy-girl story only makes it more potent. Once you find out what it really means, those lyrics about “dead actors faking lines” or the song’s central plea “don’t fall away and leave me to myself” suddenly hit much different. “Hemorrhage (In My Hands)” is a beautiful, moving song and a vision of what post-grunge could have been; a meeting ground between modern pop power and grunge’s raw energy; classic songwriting chops and real emotion. We didn’t get much of that out of post-grunge but thank god we got this.
Remember when I said post-grunge is bad? Well when it’s bad it’s really fucking bad, bad in ways no founding grunge band could have ever dreamed of. Now, I’d like to preface this section by saying I’m not judging anyone for liking these songs. I know it can be annoying, infuriating even, to watch some jerk with a gimmick account and a substack shittalk songs that might mean a lot to you so, hey, if you dig em I’m happy for you and don’t mind me. I’ll even append footnotes to some of these recommending songs I like more by the same artist as a mea-culpa. I still gotta paywall this next section though, out of respect for an already demeaned enough genre. Do consider a subscription though because, in addition to this, you’ll get access to my past and future exclusives as well for only $5 a month! Great way to support a guy whose entire existence is predicated on not getting copyright striked into oblivion for posting music. So without further ado; grab those wraparound sunglasses, strap on that Tapout shirt, flex your tribal tattoo- it’s The 10 Worst Post-Grunge Songs of All Time:
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