silverchair’s Frogstomp

Revisits Australian rock band silverchair's globally successful debut album Frogstomp (1995) and asserts that the band is not an imitation of American grunge nor an emblem of Gen X angst. Frogstomp transformed Silverchair from an(other) unknown teen garage band to an internationally popular rock act.

Frogstomp transformed silverchair from an(other) unknown teen garage band to an internationally popular rock act. Australian rock band silverchair released Frogstomp in 1995, and it became a global sensation. Due to silverchair's grunge aesthetic, the band's success has often been attributed to its imitation of North American grunge bands of the same era and its capitalization of its generation's angst. Jay Daniel Thompson demonstrates that the album has greater musical and cultural significance than is suggested by that framing.

This book argues that Frogstomp is culturally significant not only due to its global success, but because it suggested an impact of globalization on Australian music in the late 20th century and because of its eclectic, and thus far little discussed, array of pop culture influences. Through an engagement with Arjun Appadurai's work on 'global cultural flows'; extant scholarship on Australian 1990s popular culture and grunge music; textual analysis of the album's track list; and a content analysis of media responses to silverchair's performance at the MTV and ARIA Music Awards in 1995, Frogstomp is seen in a distinctive new light.