Garbage drummer and Nirvana Nevermind producer Butch Vig revealed why Grunge and other musical eras come and go in a new Free Press Houston interview.
“Well, EDM has been hot for a number of years now — that’s just an extension of club music, which has been around since the 70’s, especially when disco became really huge. I mean, people have always liked to go out on the weekend and get crazy and listen to music. It’s also part of the culture — people want to have fun. It can be very communal going to a club. I feel like it will burn out a little bit, like any type of music. It just goes in cycles.
Every sort of genre that has become huge, even going back to disco or new wave, or punk rock, or alternative grunge music, or when pop music became huge. People’s taste change, they want something new and fresh, they’ll get burnt out on a certain sound and search for something new. It’s always been that way. If I knew what the next big thing would be, I would put all of my money on it, right now! But no one knows what that is, ya know? Music is such a hybrid of styles right now. You can hear a hip-hop track on the radio that samples sounds from all types of music. Country music is starting to do hip-hop beats. There’s electronic influence everywhere.
With the technology now, you can just mix all of the influences together, like Garbage did on our first record! When our first record came it, it really turned heads because, through all of the elements of pop-melody, fuzzy guitars, and hip-hop beats with weird sound effects. At the time, nobody ever thought that we would make a grunge record, because of my history with Nirvana and the Smashing Pumpkins. I think a lot of people were surprised with the sound of that first Garbage record.”
