10 Perfect Hard Rock Albums Everyone Tried To Copy

Every single great grunge band normally goes back to Nirvana. Whenever you ask people to describe what a grunge band should sound like, it normally comes down to a few unassuming guys who always play from the heart and a moody frontman that's looking to unleash his demons when he takes to the stage. That sounds a lot like what Kurt Cobain did back in the day, but that description fits in much closer to what Pearl Jam were doing on Ten.

Although Nirvana's Nevermind serves as a great start for what grunge would sound like, Pearl Jam's debut is the rockers' version of alternative music stood for, taking the same tropes of classic rock bands like Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith and channeling them into songs that were a lot moodier than before, like the heartbroken ballad Black or talking about a kid who ends up killing himself in front of his classmates in the song Jeremy. Out of all the bands to come out of the first wave of grunge, Ten is also the introduction of what would become the yarl, with Eddie Vedder's signature baritone delivery being copied by everyone from Creed to Puddle of Mudd once grunge fell apart.

And while Kurt Cobain could get all of his emotion out when he took a solo, the chops behind Mike McCready was a lot easier to grab onto back in the day, taking the angst of punk and throwing in the technicality of someone like Stevie Ray Vaughan. Rock and roll may have been turning inward a lot of the time, but they didn't forget the importance of going balls to the wall either.