10 Most Iconic British Frontmen Of 1990s Rock Music

To take on the role of a frontman is a big job for anyone to be asked. Aside from just being able to sing in the correct key of the song, you have to make sure you are electric every time you take the stage and are able to keep the audiences glued to you no matter what the cost. So imagine doing that...in the era when rock stars were a bad word.

In the age or irony, the grunge fad was not really all that friendly to its big rock star presences, with most of the '80s heavyweights becoming staler and staler by the minute. For those who managed to weather the storm though, it was about to be an amazing decade, from the strong frontmen of old coming back to the Britpop movement that was slowly gaining traction in the heart of England.

Once the second wave of rock and roll kicked into high gear at the tail end of the decade, it felt like the entire state of rock music had woken up and were just as willing to see where the next era of rock music was going to take us. As long as we had these people as the spokesmen for our generation, everything felt like it was going to be okay.

The alternative revolution wasn't all that kind to the concept of the frontman. Unless you were willing to lay your life on the line like Eddie Vedder, the kind of macho posturing going on back in the '80s was long gone. Once the Britpop movement got back into full swing, we got a man straight out of the post punk world with Brett Anderson.

Then again, it feels wrong classifying Suede's sound as completely Britpop at the end of the day. When listening to tracks off of Dog Man Star, you can hear Brett channeling some of the more epic sounds of someone like U2, albeit if Bono was more keen to talk about his addictions to drugs. Considering this was the time when the hardest thing on the scene was probably Green Day, this was the return to roots that no one really saw coming.

And Brett hasn't let that kind of spark dull with age either. As Suede has continued on, you can hear him settling into his natural baritone, making his sound much more seductive. When he flips to falsetto though, you can almost feel like you're floating on air for a few seconds before his words bring you back down to Earth. It might be a little rough around the edges, but Suede's journey over multiple decades comes from just how much Brett has worked on his instrument.