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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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R.E.M.
R.E.M., formed in Athens, Georgia in 1980, is widely credited as one of the foundational bands of American alternative and college rock, building a devoted following through independent college radio airplay years before the band achieved mainstream commercial success. Guitarist Peter Buck's jangly, arpeggiated guitar style and frontman Michael Stipe's often deliberately mumbled, difficult-to-decipher vocal delivery on the band's early albums gave R.E.M. a distinctive sound that influenced a generation of subsequent alternative and indie rock guitarists and vocalists. The band's 1991 album Out of Time and its hit single "Losing My Religion" marked R.E.M.'s definitive commercial breakthrough into mainstream popularity, a shift that came after more than a decade of steadily building critical acclaim and college radio success without major commercial radio crossover. R.E.M.'s decision to formally disband in 2011, while still commercially and critically viable rather than continuing past a natural creative endpoint, was relatively unusual among major rock acts, and the band's three-decade career bridging college radio's underground scene and full mainstream commercial success established a template that numerous subsequent alternative rock bands have followed.
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