Kip Winger feels that whoever says grunge didn’t kill glam metal in the ’90s is in complete denial

Kip Winger feels that whoever says grunge didn’t kill glam metal in the ’90s is in complete denial

Winger frontman Kip Winger was recently interviewed by Andrew Daly for Metal Edge Mag. Winger released their seventh studio album, the aptly named Seven, via Frontiers Music Srl on May 5, 2023.

Daly asked Kip Winger what was his take on grunge explicitly killing glam metal to which the singer replied: “Oh, of course, it did it. Whoever said it didn’t is in complete denial. Even big bands like Bon Jovi were struggling to sell tickets. So, whoever said that is misinformed. That grunge thing totally wiped everything out. But the funny thing is the grunge thing didn’t last very long. There weren’t that many great bands that came out of there, and not many good songs. Don’t get me wrong – some great guys came out of there, like Dave Grohl, but it was short-lived, which was nothing new.

Daly then concluded that Kip Winger was not a fan of grunge to which the singer clarified: “No, it wasn’t that. I could recognize that Kurt Cobain wrote some genius lyrics on “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” And I could see that the energy was raw and cool. It was kind of like the antidote to all the shit we were doing. It was so oversaturated that any buffoon could see that – unless you, like I say, were in total denial. So, it wasn’t that I wasn’t a fan; I really thought a lot of shit was cool, like Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Nirvana, and maybe Stone Temple Pilots. They were great. I love them. But the scene didn’t really produce that many great bands beyond that, you know?”

In terms of whether grunge killing hair metal shaped Winger in the present, Kip Winger opined: “It doesn’t. We don’t even pay attention to it. We just do what we do. And if you listen to our records throughout the years, they’re very consistent. Reb Beach and I do what we’ve always done. You won’t find any evidence in our music that we reshaped our sound in accordance with anything going on in the exterior and out in the world. We just do what we do. I mean, our newest record is like the definitive Winger album; it could have been released back then, for sure. It sounds somewhat new, but it also is very much like the first album. So, we have our thing by osmosis that Reb’s guitar sounds a certain way, and my voice matches that in a certain way.”

You can read the rest of the interview with Kip Winger via Metal Edge Mag‘s website.