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Soundgarden
Soundgarden, formed in Seattle in 1984, predated most of the other major grunge-era bands by several years and helped establish the genre's foundational sound, blending heavy metal's musical weight and technical guitar work with punk's rawer energy and more emotionally direct songwriting. Frontman Chris Cornell's exceptionally wide vocal range, capable of both a powerful, metal-influenced wail and more subdued, melodic passages within the same song, distinguished Soundgarden's sound from many grunge contemporaries and made Cornell one of the era's most technically respected vocalists. The band's 1994 album Superunknown became a major commercial breakthrough, and the singles "Black Hole Sun" and "Spoonman" brought Soundgarden's more explicitly metal-influenced version of grunge to a mainstream radio and MTV audience alongside the era's other major Seattle acts. Cornell's 2017 suicide, following the band's initial 1997 breakup and a subsequent 2010 reunion, ended Soundgarden's active career for a second and final time, and his death, alongside those of several other prominent grunge-era musicians, has contributed to the genre's lasting reputation for genuine personal and psychological struggle running alongside its commercial and critical success.
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Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam's 1991 debut album Ten became one of the best-selling albums of the grunge era, and the band's combination of frontman Eddie Vedder's deep, emotionally intense baritone vocals with more traditionally structured, classic-rock-influenced songwriting distinguished them somewhat from grunge's more overtly punk-influenced contemporaries. The band's prolonged legal battle with Ticketmaster in the mid-1990s, in which Pearl Jam publicly refused to book tours through the company over its service fees and effectively curtailed their own touring for several years as a result, became one of the most significant artist-versus-industry conflicts in 1990s music, though the band ultimately couldn't sustain the boycott long-term. Pearl Jam's continued active career, sustained across more than three decades with largely the same core lineup, distinguishes them from most of their grunge-era peers, several of whom either disbanded or lost key members to death relatively early in the genre's history. The band's sustained commercial and critical relevance well past grunge's mainstream commercial peak in the mid-1990s, combined with their consistent lineup stability, has made Pearl Jam one of the most enduring and longest continuously active bands to emerge from the Seattle grunge scene specifically.
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