10 Rock Bands That Made Metal Songs
6. Dream Brother - Jeff Buckley
When talking about the heavier styles of rock and roll, Jeff Buckley feels like he belongs on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Compared to the kind of angry songs that were coming out of the nu metal scene around the time he was blowing up, hearing his ethereal rock and roll sounds and acoustic songs were much more mellow than any rock band would want to jump on. Metal did find life in the blues though, and Jeff was ready to shred his soul on the last few moments of his album Grace.
After already going through some of the more heartbreaking songs like Hallelujah or So Real, Dream Brother is the moment where everything starts breaking down, playing a bluesy guitar figure while Jeff wails above everything. Compared to the likes of Britpop that would have been rocking the charts around the same time, this is the kind of vocal that Led Zeppelin would have been proud to make, sounding somewhere between Jeff channeling Robert Plant and achieving some sort of musical nirvana as he reaches higher up in his register.
As much as a song like this might be tame by metal standards, it also seemed to set a benchmark for rock vocals going forward, with Matthew Bellamy from Muse actually sounding pretty similar to the runs that Jeff is doing on this song. The coffeehouse circuit may have been fun while it lasted, but it's not everyday that a man that sang a song like Lover You Should've Come Over could give Rob Halford a run for his money if he wanted to.