10 Perfect Hard Rock Albums Everyone Tried To Copy

A certain innocence seemed to be lost the day that Kurt Cobain was found dead in his Seattle home. The grunge scene may have had some dark edges to it, but no one imagined that it would end like this, with fans grieving the loss of their generational icon. We all had to find a way to move on though, and who better to pick us up off our feet than the guy who hung out in the back of Nirvana for all those years?

Looking to get out of the funk left over by Kurt's passing, Dave Grohl decided to start over from scratch, cutting a few cassettes at a studio near his house just to hear what his own songs sounded like. Although you can definitely trace the lineage from Nirvana, the debut of the Foo Fighters brought a little bit of optimism back into rock and roll, with Dave playing everything by himself and blending every genre that he loved, from the hardcore thrash behind a song like Weenie Beenie or a chorus so good it could have been written by one of the Beatles on Big Me.

Though the rest of the grunge movement pushed on and got a lot more dark, this record was the first glimmer of hope that we could all move out of grunge's morose shadow and still have some fun playing music. It was never going to be easy getting over Kurt's death, but if Dave Grohl found a way to pick up the pieces and move on, we could too.