65. "Dead & Bloated" by Stone Temple Pilots

The attitude of this song is now almost shocking. Songs with words such as "dead" and "bloated" happen almost exclusively at the hard rock festivals people still flock to in droves but are almost never acknowledged by the mainstream. The brashness of musicians like Scott Weiland has been weeded out of major radio.

In a way, can you blame the major radio barons? What were the fates of most of these '90s rock icons? Dead: Cobain, Staley, Hoon, Farrell, Darrell. The very singer who sang this song would himself quickly start down the path of being quite dead himself. Their sudden rise to fame was as profitable as their dark, drastic endings were buzzkills on the business. Their anti-stable movement predictably crashed as hard as an economy with an unregulated real estate bubble. In their wake is a much more sanitary but (they hope) more stable, "professional" music market.

What is really strange is that the independent music scene is equally aghast at heavy music like this today, when the modern success of indy music is directly indebted to the formerly indy grunge/punk bands who signed to major labels in the '90s then spotlighted where they started.

How about the song? It's another in my series of first songs on first albums, and here again, the song serves as a good mission statement. Kick-ass opening: Glowering, aggressive, posturing singing; the entrance of a huge snare drum and big, driving guitars. Principles of heaviness: Bash the root chord, Blues scale. Bonus: Time signature. The guitar part changes in creatively irregular places. I love a song that seems to change when it wants to change and not just On Fourth Beat. It doesn't need to sound like musical math; I just like changes to have individual intentionality.

The choruses echo with Weiland's grunge angst, the high strings of the guitar, and, for me, deep memory.

The bridge/development is just a great descending scale and complimentary melody. We all wander the world thinking about tomorrow.

No guitar solo in this song. Or it would've been 8 minutes long.

27. "Big Empty" by Stone Temple Pilots

Heavy, or even somewhat aggressively performed music has largely fallen out of the mainstream zeitgeist. When Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland died in 2015, the cultural arbiters of our time treated their rememberances of him with embarrassed bemusement, like priests trying to explain kickboxing to preschoolers.

But heavy music is like any music - eternally relevant if done well. It is brave, and bravery tends to unsettle. 

Most first wave grunge bands built their heaviness on a headbanging, moshing model. You could argue where STP fits in this chronology - they were contemporaries with Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, etc. but they have been accused of appropriating those bands. But I submit that their style of heaviness is unique from those groups. "Big Empty" draws on the Led Zeppelin school of heaviness: Acoustic blues verses, astute slide guitar, drumming layered with soft rolls and ghost notes; Choruses of exultant open chords, eschewing just driving the low fifths. The middle instrumental is also of the Zeppelin school, something "Whole Lotta Love" did with a more playful attitude. 

"Big Empty" is not playful. It is earnest to the point of being mockable by those who like to poke holes. It is a Great Song. Maybe fewer can feel it today.