Top 10 Best Modern Alternative Rock Singers Of All Time – Male

Back by popular demand, this time I’m bringing you the Top 10 choices for Modern Alternative Rock Singers that are male.

Again this list is compiled by your feedback and requests and I’ve been getting a LOT of comments of who you think should make the cut.

I think you’ll appreciate those artists that have been included and as before we’ve added the special mentions at the end.

As always I want to know who you think belongs on the list, so please be sure to put your feedback in the comments.

Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy – Where The PROOF Is In The Singing!

I’ve also included here some interesting facts about some of the artists from the top 10:

Maynard James Keenan Tool

The name ‘Maynard’ came from his poetry At high school, James Herbert Keenan wrote poems and illustrated them with a “small, wiry character” named Maynard. He adopted the name while he was in the army. In the military, Maynard was as an artillery surveyor, plotting diagrams and escape routes for his battery during warfare. The first thing he did when he left was get a mohawk.

Maynard had always idolized KISS and even made a ceramic Gene Simmons face at school, but his dad and stepmom worried KISS was an acronym for ‘Knights in Satan’s Service’ and that Maynard was a degenerate.

Maynard was also the one who taught Tom Morello Drop D tuning. When Tom’s band Lock Up dissolved, he planned to form Rage Against The Machine. Maynard showed him the technique, and was briefly in the running to be the frontman.

Rob Thomas Matchbox Twenty

From “Smooth “ with Carlos Santana:

“Carlos definitely had a tepid reaction to the song, and then he wasn’t sure about the singer,” says Serletic, who had worked with Matchbox Twenty on Yourself or Someone Like You. “He didn’t know who Rob was and what Matchbox had done so it probably didn’t penetrate his radar — Rob was just a demo singer to him. I vividly recall mine and Clive (Davis’) first phone conversation with Carlos, saying, ‘Rob can do this. Rob can make a record with you that will be exciting and the two of you will be good together. I know he can bring it!'”

Rolling Stone asked him how he gauges a performance and his reply was things happen in slow motion: “There’s a moment happening between you and the crowd, and you judge it by that energy being reciprocated,” he replied. “Not just (because) their hands are up in the air, which is great, if that’s all it is. But if the energy is building and you hit it — and they hit it — then you feel that link where everything just starts happening in ‘The Matrix’ time.”

At the height of their success in a Union-Tribune interview, Thomas described Matchbox Twenty without a hint of pretense, saying: “We’re just a bunch of idiots. We’re the same jerks we were when we started.” Recalling his early days as a budding singer, he said: “When I sang, I wanted to be a hybrid between Elton John and Tracy Chapman. In the end, I ended up (sounding) like Cher.”

Scott Stapp Creed

At the age of 15, Scott met Mark Tremonti while attending Lake Highland Prep School, in Orlando, Florida. Soon after, Scott’s father decided to move his family to Tennessee. Because of the strict situations at home, at the age of 17 Scott decided to run away. He headed to Tallahassee, Florida because he was a big fan of The Doors and had heard that Jim Morrison had once lived there. Coincidentally, Mark Tremonti had moved to Tallahassee to attend Florida State University, and the two were reunited.

At one point Stapp as a janitor for his High-School to earn money to pay for high-school tuition because his parents decided not to pay for his last year.

When asked if he had ever been arrested or in trouble with the law before, he responded: “I’ve been real fortunate that I am a very fast runner. And I’ve gotten away every time. One time I jumped off a 2nd story balcony and ran two miles. They busted the party. But I’ve never seriously busted the law.”

Of his song “My Own Prison”, Stapp stated it “should have been dead on a Sunday morning banging my head” because Scott had 4 cups of shroom-juice & passed out and woke up on a Sunday morning, literally banging his head, cause he thought he was going to die.

Chad Kroeger Nickleback

He was a wild child: He regularly skipped school, trespassed on private property and even stole a truck once. “I honestly think if Nickelback hadn’t worked out, I’d be in jail, on a charge of grand theft auto or trafficking,” he said.

He likes to go incognito: Chad checks into hotels using the name Harry Houdini, a famous escape artist and illusionist from the early 1900s.

He believes in love at first sight: Avril and Chad dated for just six months before getting engaged, but the couple have never questioned their precipitated love for one another. Avril reveals: “We started dating and the next day he was like, ‘You know I’m gonna marry you.’ And I said, ‘I know.’ It was one of those things that we just knew.”

Serj Tankian System of a Down

Their album Toxicity went platinum in only six weeks. In an interview with his old high-school newspaper, guitarist Daron Malakian said of the Toxicity sales, “If people say System is a sell-out because we’ve sold millions of albums, they’re wrong. I can’t control how many CDs we sell or how popular we become.”

While Toxicity came out Sept. 4, its first-week sales of 220,000 units led the disc to top the Billboard 200 chart the same week as the tragic events of 9/11. The timing added more controversy to the band’s rallying cry against various government policies on songs throughout Toxicity. In face SOAD originally had “Suicide” as the title of “Chop Suey!,” the first single from Toxicity. The words “We’re rolling suicide” can be heard in the song’s opening seconds on select pressings of the album. Despite the name change, the song was still taken off of radio by many stations because of sensitivity surrounding the 9/11 attacks at the time.

While “Chop Suey!” was nominated for Best Metal Performance for the 2002 Grammy Awards, “Aerials” earned a nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance the following year. Malakian says the band turned down the chance to perform “Aerials” at the 2003 Grammys, insisting at the time, “That’s something N*SYNC and Britney Spears do, not System of a Down.”

Chester Bennington Linkin Park

Chester Bennington had a very tough childhood. At the age of seven, one of his older male friends started molesting and sexually abusing him until he was 13. He was beaten up and was forced to do things. Chester wanted to seek help but his confidence was completely shattered and he hid this fact for the fear of being considered as a liar or gay. Chester revealed the abuser’s identity to his father eventually but decided to let things be when he came to know that the abuser was a victim himself. He quietly weathered the abuse till the age of thirteen. The abuse, along with his parents’ disturbed marriage, led to emotional turmoil and he felt like killing people and running away. Chester turned to drawing pictures and writing songs to find some solace.

In 1996, Chester Bennington married Samantha Olit and the two stayed in Phoenix. Chester worked as an assistant at a digital-services firm and also pursued music through his band “Grey Daze.” However, things did not work out and he left the band in 1998. Frustration built up as he struggled to find another band, and he was on the verge of quitting music altogether. His wife supported him and stopped him from quitting. A year after this incident, Chester Bennington received a call from Jeff Blue, the Vice President of A&R at Zomba Music in Los Angeles, offering him to audition with “Xero.” After his successful entry in the band, Chester still struggled to make ends meet. When he came to L.A., he was homeless, slept on couches, borrowed from friends or relatives, and even secretly slept in his car

The start to his career with Linkin Park came in a rather traditional way: an audition. According to The New York Times, 23-year-old Bennington got a demo tape of his band Xero. Though Bennington had his gig with the local grunge band, he liked Mike Shinoda’s songs. So he decided to go audition for Shinoda.

“I had these great melodies in my head and I couldn’t get them across,” Shinoda told Kerrang! I wanted to find someone who could do them justice.”

They found their man in Bennington.

Brent Smith Shinedown

The band released Threat to Survival in 2015, and Smith attributes his self-destructive behaviors as the inspiration for the name of the album. He has been clean since March of 2016. “I was always afraid that I couldn’t write a record clean, you gotta be messed up to write messed up stuff. But I didn’t need it,” he says of his sobriety.

But the first step to his sobriety started with his weight. We were on “Today” and Kathie Lee Gifford said, “At first I thought he was Meat Loaf,” which caused her co-host Hoda Kotb to laugh. Here I am barely 30 years old and that’s the one thing that she says. It was like the performance didn’t even matter. I was 5 foot 8 and weighed 222. I felt like I’d been in a death spiral, and I realized I needed to be healthy and strong for my family. I have a 4-year-old boy, and he was a huge motivation.

After losing 70 pounds it changed his perspective and his performances, “The stamina I have in my lungs is so much better. Now I don’t have to wear a big jacket to cover the fat and get overheated. I’m way more conditioned for the stage and I have a lot more power behind my voice. Things that used to be really hard on stage aren’t as difficult now because I’m now in the best shape of my life. It’s amazing how much clarity I have and how my body feels so much better”

Regarding touring, Smith believes the only way musicians can see a career with longevity is to have a structured schedule. “You have to be regimented,” the singer begins. “The way that we are as a band, one of the things we do that’s very specific is we ride the same bus still. We don’t necessarily have to do that, but we want to because we appreciate each other, and we love and respect each other.”

Fitness is also a big part of what we do, taking care of ourselves is essential. Having the road schedule that we take on each year, you gotta be in shape mentally and physically for it. I think people would be surprised how regimented it is on the road, it’s almost military-esque, in a way,” he continues.

Ian Thornley Big Wreck

Thornley studied jazz music at Boston’s Berklee College of Music in the 1990s and played as a session musician on albums by Nickelback, Sarah Harmer, and Stephen Fearing during Big Wreck’s hiatus.

Thornley also auditioned with Velvet Revolver for the position of their lead singer. However, this did not materialize as he did not feel comfortable being a lead singer without playing guitar. The band eventually chose Scott Weiland as their lead singer

M. Shadows Avenged Sevenfold

Originally he was a guitar player in a punk band but had to move to singing because he was the only person in the band that could sing on key.

The band met in Jr High and came up with stage names because their early fans said they hated bands with stage numbers and they wanted to “Piss people off.” “I figured if Slash was part of a ‘Big Boy’ band with a stage name, then so can we. Now we were 36 year old men with fake names.”

He decided to stop screaming after touring Europe and being impressed with metals bands with strong vocals with well thought out lyrics. He said, “At the time, If I couldn’t think of lyrics, I would just scream, and I wanted to challenge myself to become a better songwriter.”