Decline of grunge

During the mid-1990s many grunge bands broke up or became less visible. Kurt Cobain, labeled by Time as "the John Lennon of the swinging Northwest," appeared "unusually tortured by success" and struggled with an addiction to heroin. Rumors surfaced in early 1994 that Cobain suffered a drug overdose and that Nirvana was breaking up. On April 8, 1994, Cobain was found dead in his Seattle home from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound; Nirvana summarily disbanded. That same year Pearl Jam canceled its summer tour in protest of what it charged as ticket vendor Ticketmaster's unfair business practices. Pearl Jam then began a boycott of the company; however, Pearl Jam's initiative to play only at non-Ticketmaster venues effectively, with a few exceptions, prevented the band from playing shows in the United States for the next three years. In 1996, Alice in Chains gave their final performances with their ailing estranged lead singer, Layne Staley, who subsequently died from a heroin overdose in 2002. That same year Soundgarden and Screaming Trees released their final studio albums, Down on the Upside and Dust, respectively. Soundgarden broke up the following year.
After that music began to change, but the music of grunge is now stuck in the music world forever, and will never be forgotten.