Genre of rock music
For the radio format associated with this genre, see Modern rock
Alternative rock (also known as alternative music, 🌧️ alt-rock or simply alternative) is a category of rock music that evolved from the independent music underground of the 1970s. 🌧️ Alternative rock acts achieved mainstream success in the 1990s with the likes of the grunge, shoegaze, and Britpop subgenres in 🌧️ the United States and United Kingdom, respectively. During this period, many record labels were looking for "alternatives", as many corporate 🌧️ rock, hard rock, and glam metal acts from the 1980s were beginning to grow stale throughout the music industry. The 🌧️ emergence of Generation X as a cultural force in the 1990s also contributed greatly to the rise of alternative rock.
"Alternative" 🌧️ refers to the genre's distinction from mainstream or commercial rock or pop. The term's original meaning was broader, referring to 🌧️ musicians influenced by the musical style or independent, DIY ethos of late-1970s punk rock.[4] Traditionally, alternative rock varied in terms 🌧️ of its sound, social context, and regional roots. Throughout the 1980s, magazines and zines, college radio airplay, and word of 🌧️ mouth had increased the prominence and highlighted the diversity of alternative rock's distinct styles (and music scenes), such as noise 🌧️ pop, indie rock, grunge, and shoegaze. In September 1988, Billboard introduced "alternative" into their charting system to reflect the rise 🌧️ of the format across radio stations in the United States by stations like KROQ-FM in Los Angeles and WDRE-FM in 🌧️ New York, which were playing music from more underground, independent, and non-commercial rock artists.[5][6]
Initially, several alternative styles achieved minor mainstream 🌧️ notice and a few bands, such as R.E.M. and Jane's Addiction, were signed to major labels. Most alternative bands at 🌧️ the time, like The Smiths, one of the key British alternative rock bands during the 1980s, however, remained signed to 🌧️ independent labels and received relatively little attention from mainstream radio, television, or newspapers. With the breakthrough of Nirvana and the 🌧️ popularity of the grunge and Britpop movements in the 1990s, alternative rock entered the musical mainstream, and many alternative bands 🌧️ became successful.
Emo found mainstream success in the 2000s with multi-platinum acts such as Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Paramore 🌧️ and Panic! at the Disco. Bands such as the White Stripes and the Strokes found commercial success in the early 🌧️ 2000s, influencing an influx of new alternative rock bands that drew inspiration from garage rock, post-punk and new wave, establishing 🌧️ a revival of the genres.
Origin of term [ edit ]
In the past, popular music tastes were dictated by music executives 🌧️ within large entertainment corporations. Record companies signed contracts with those entertainers who were thought to become the most popular, and 🌧️ therefore who could generate the most sales. These bands were able to record their songs in expensive studios, and their 🌧️ works were then offered for sale through record store chains that were owned by the entertainment corporations, along with eventually 🌧️ selling the merchandise into big box retailers. Record companies worked with radio and television companies to get the most exposure 🌧️ for their artists. The people making the decisions were business people dealing with music as a product, and those bands 🌧️ who were not making the expected sales figures were then excluded from this system.[7]
Before the term alternative rock came into 🌧️ common usage around 1990, the sorts of music to which it refers were known by a variety of terms. In 🌧️ 1979, Terry Tolkin used the term Alternative Music to describe the groups he was writing about.[page needed] In 1979 Dallas 🌧️ radio station KZEW had a late night new wave show entitled "Rock and Roll Alternative".[10] "College rock" was used in 🌧️ the United States to describe the music during the 1980s due to its links to the college radio circuit and 🌧️ the tastes of college students. In the United Kingdom, dozens of small do it yourself record labels emerged as a 🌧️ result of the punk subculture. According to the founder of one of these labels, Cherry Red, NME and Sounds magazines 🌧️ published charts based on small record stores called "Alternative Charts". The first national chart based on distribution called the Indie 🌧️ Chart was published in January 1980; it immediately succeeded in its aim to help these labels. At the time, the 🌧️ term indie was used literally to describe independently distributed records.[12] By 1985, indie had come to mean a particular genre, 🌧️ or group of subgenres, rather than simply distribution status.
The use of the term alternative to describe rock music originated around 🌧️ the mid-1980s;[13] at the time, the common music industry terms for cutting-edge music were new music and postmodern, respectively indicating 🌧️ freshness and a tendency to recontextualize sounds of the past.[4] A similar term, alternative pop, emerged around 1985.[15]
In 1987, Spin 🌧️ magazine categorized college rock band Camper Van Beethoven as "alternative/indie", saying that their 1985 song "Where the Hell Is Bill" 🌧️ (from Telephone Free Landslide Victory) "called out the alternative/independent scene and dryly tore it apart."[16] David Lowery, then frontman of 🌧️ Camper Van Beethoven, later recalled: "I remember first seeing that word applied to us... The nearest I could figure is 🌧️ that we seemed like a punk band, but we were playing pop music, so they made up this word alternative 🌧️ for those of us who do that."[17] DJs and promoters during the 1980s claim the term originates from American FM 🌧️ radio of the 1970s, which served as a progressive alternative to top 40 radio formats by featuring longer songs and 🌧️ giving DJs more freedom in song selection. According to one former DJ and promoter, "Somehow this term 'alternative' got rediscovered 🌧️ and heisted by college radio people during the 80s who applied it to new post-punk, indie, or underground-whatever music."[18]
At first 🌧️ the term referred to intentionally non-mainstream rock acts that were not influenced by "heavy metal ballads, rarefied new wave" and 🌧️ "high-energy dance anthems".[19] Usage of the term would broaden to include new wave, pop, punk rock, post-punk, and occasionally "college"/"indie" 🌧️ rock, all found on the American "commercial alternative" radio stations of the time such as Los Angeles' KROQ-FM. Journalist Jim 🌧️ Gerr wrote that Alternative also encompassed variants such as "rap, trash, metal and industrial".[20] The bill of the first Lollapalooza, 🌧️ an itinerant festival in North America conceived by Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell, reunited "disparate elements of the alternative rock 🌧️ community" including Henry Rollins, Butthole Surfers, Ice-T, Nine Inch Nails, Siouxsie and the Banshees (as second headliners) and Jane's Addiction 🌧️ (as the headlining act).[20] Covering for MTV the opening date of Lollapalooza in Phoenix in July 1991, Dave Kendall introduced 🌧️ the report saying the festival presented the "most diverse lineups of alternative rock".[21] That summer, Farrell had coined the term 🌧️ Alternative Nation.[22]
In December 1991, Spin magazine noted: "this year, for the first time, it became resoundingly clear that what has 🌧️ formerly been considered alternative rock—a college-centered marketing group with fairly lucrative, if limited, potential—has in fact moved into the mainstream."[20]
In 🌧️ the late 1990s, the definition again became more specific.[4] In 1997, Neil Strauss of The New York Times defined alternative 🌧️ rock as "hard-edged rock distinguished by brittle, '70s-inspired guitar riffing and singers agonizing over their problems until they take on 🌧️ epic proportions."[19]
Defining music as alternative is often difficult because of two conflicting applications of the word. Alternative can describe music 🌧️ that challenges the status quo and that is "fiercely iconoclastic, anticommercial, and antimainstream", and the term is also used in 🌧️ the music industry to denote "the choices available to consumers via record stores, radio, cable television, and the Internet."[23] However 🌧️ alternative music has paradoxically become just as commercial and marketable as the mainstream rock, with record companies using the term 🌧️ "alternative" to market music to an audience that mainstream rock does not reach.[24] Using a broad definition of the genre, 🌧️ Dave Thompson in his book Alternative Rock cites the formation of the Sex Pistols as well as the release of 🌧️ the albums Horses by Patti Smith and Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed as three key events that gave birth 🌧️ to alternative rock.[25] Until the early 2000s, when indie rock became the most common term in the US to describe 🌧️ modern pop and rock, the terms "indie rock" and "alternative rock" were often used interchangeably;[26] while there are aspects which 🌧️ both genres have in common, "indie rock" was regarded as a British-based term, unlike the more American "alternative rock".[27]
Characteristics [ 🌧️ edit ]
The name "alternative rock" essentially serves as an umbrella term for underground music that has emerged in the wake 🌧️ of punk rock since the mid-1980s.[28] Throughout much of its history, alternative rock has been largely defined by its rejection 🌧️ of the commercialism of mainstream culture, although this could be contested since some of the major alternative artists have eventually 🌧️ achieved mainstream success or co-opted with the major labels from the 1990s onward (especially into the 2000s, and beyond). In 🌧️ the 1980s, alternative bands generally played in small clubs, recorded for indie labels, and spread their popularity through word of 🌧️ mouth.[29] As such, there is no set musical style for alternative rock as a whole, although in 1989 The New 🌧️ York Times asserted that the genre is "guitar music first of all, with guitars that blast out power chords, pick 🌧️ out chiming riffs, buzz with fuzztone and squeal in feedback."[30] More often than in other rock styles since the mainstreaming 🌧️ of rock music, alternative rock lyrics tend to address topics of social concern, such as drug use, depression, suicide, and 🌧️ environmentalism.[29] This approach to lyrics developed as a reflection of the social and economic strains in the United States and 🌧️ United Kingdom of the 1980s and early 1990s.[31]
1960s and 1970s: Precursors [ edit ]
Precursors to alternative rock existed in the 🌧️ 1960s with proto-punk.[32] The origins of alternative rock can be traced back to The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967) by 🌧️ the Velvet Underground,[33] which influenced many alternative rock bands that would come after it.[34] Eccentric and quirky figures of the 🌧️ 1960s, such as Syd Barrett have influence on alternative rock in general.[35]
1980s: Early history [ edit ]
One of the first 🌧️ popular alternative rock bands, R.E.M. relied on college-radio airplay, constant touring and a grassroots fanbase to break into the mainstream.
The 🌧️ Dead Kennedys formed the independent record label Alternative Tentacles in 1979, releasing influential underground music such as the 1983 self-titled 🌧️ EP from the Butthole Surfers. By 1984, a majority of groups that were signed to indie labels drew from a 🌧️ variety of rock and particularly 1960s rock influences. This represented a sharp break from the futuristic, hyper-rational post-punk years.
"Alternative music 🌧️ is music that hasn't yet achieved a mainstream audience, Alternative isn't new wave any more, it's a disposition of mind. 🌧️ Alternative music is any kind of music that has the potential to reach a wider audience. It also has real 🌧️ strength, real quality, real excitement, and it has to be socially significant, as opposed to Whitney Houston, which is pablum." 🌧️ —Mark Josephson, Executive Director of the New Music Seminar speaking in 1988[37]
Throughout the 1980s, alternative rock remained mainly an underground 🌧️ phenomenon. While on occasion a song would become a commercial hit, or albums would receive critical praise in mainstream publications 🌧️ like Rolling Stone, alternative rock in the 1980s was primarily featured on independent record labels, fanzines and college radio stations. 🌧️ Alternative bands built underground followings by touring constantly and by regularly releasing low-budget albums. In the United States, new bands 🌧️ would form in the wake of previous bands, which created an extensive underground circuit filled with different scenes in various 🌧️ parts of the country.[28] College radio formed an essential part of breaking new alternative music. In the mid-1980s, college station 🌧️ KCPR in San Luis Obispo, California, described in a DJ handbook the tension between popular and "cutting edge" songs as 🌧️ played on "alternative radio".[38]
Although American alternative artists of the 1980s never generated spectacular album sales, they exerted a considerable influence 🌧️ on later alternative musicians and laid the groundwork for their success. On September 10, 1988, an Alternative Songs chart was 🌧️ created by Billboard, listing the 40 most-played songs on alternative and modern rock radio stations in the US: the first 🌧️ number one was "Peek-a-Boo" by Siouxsie and the Banshees.[40] By 1989, the genre had become popular enough that a package 🌧️ tour featuring New Order, Public Image Limited and the Sugarcubes toured the US arena circuit.[41]
Early on, British alternative rock was 🌧️ distinguished from that of the US by a more pop-oriented focus (marked by an equal emphasis on albums and singles, 🌧️ as well as greater openness to incorporating elements of dance and club culture) and a lyrical emphasis on specifically British 🌧️ concerns. As a result, few British alternative bands have achieved commercial success in the US.[42] Since the 1980s, alternative rock 🌧️ has been played extensively on the radio in the UK, particularly by disc jockeys such as John Peel (who championed 🌧️ alternative music on BBC Radio 1), Richard Skinner, and Annie Nightingale. Artists with cult followings in the US received greater 🌧️ exposure through British national radio and the weekly music press, and many alternative bands had chart success there.[43]
American underground in 🌧️ the 1980s [ edit ]
Early American alternative bands such as the Dream Syndicate, the Bongos, 10,000 Maniacs, R.E.M., the Feelies 🌧️ and Violent Femmes combined punk influences with folk music and mainstream music influences. R.E.M. was the most immediately successful; their 🌧️ debut album, Murmur (1983), entered the Top 40 and spawned a number of jangle pop followers.[44] One of the many 🌧️ jangle pop scenes of the early 1980s, Los Angeles' Paisley Underground revived the sounds of the 1960s, incorporating psychedelia, rich 🌧️ vocal harmonies and the guitar interplay of folk rock as well as punk and underground influences such as the Velvet 🌧️ Underground.[28]
American indie record labels SST Records, Twin/Tone Records, Touch and Go Records, and Dischord Records presided over the shift from 🌧️ the hardcore punk that then dominated the American underground scene to the more diverse styles of alternative rock that were 🌧️ emerging. Minneapolis bands Hüsker Dü and the Replacements were indicative of this shift. Both started out as punk rock bands, 🌧️ but soon diversified their sounds and became more melodic.[28] Michael Azerrad asserted that Hüsker Dü was the key link between 🌧️ hardcore punk and the more melodic, diverse music of college rock that emerged. Azerrad wrote, "Hüsker Dü played a huge 🌧️ role in convincing the underground that melody and punk rock weren't antithetical."[46] The band also set an example by being 🌧️ the first group from the American indie scene to sign to a major record label, which helped establish college rock 🌧️ as "a viable commercial enterprise". By focusing on heartfelt songwriting and wordplay instead of political concerns, the Replacements upended a 🌧️ number of underground scene conventions; Azerrad noted that "along with R.E.M., they were one of the few underground bands that 🌧️ mainstream people liked."
By the late 1980s, the American alternative scene was dominated by styles ranging from quirky alternative pop (They 🌧️ Might Be Giants and Camper Van Beethoven), to noise rock (Sonic Youth, Big Black, the Jesus Lizard[49]) and industrial rock 🌧️ (Ministry, Nine Inch Nails). These sounds were in turn followed by the advent of Boston's Pixies and Los Angeles' Jane's 🌧️ Addiction.[28] Around the same time, the grunge subgenre emerged in Seattle, Washington, initially referred to as "The Seattle Sound" until 🌧️ its rise to popularity in the early 1990s.[50] Grunge featured a sludgy, murky guitar sound that syncretized heavy metal and 🌧️ punk rock.[51] Promoted largely by Seattle indie label Sub Pop, grunge bands were noted for their thrift store fashion which 🌧️ favored flannel shirts and combat boots suited to the local weather.[52] Early grunge bands Soundgarden and Mudhoney found critical acclaim 🌧️ in the U.S. and UK, respectively.[28]
By the end of the decade, a number of alternative bands began to sign to 🌧️ major labels. While early major label signings Hüsker Dü and the Replacements had little success, acts who signed with majors 🌧️ in their wake such as R.E.M. and Jane's Addiction achieved gold and platinum records, setting the stage for alternative's later 🌧️ breakthrough. Some bands such as Pixies had massive success overseas while they were ignored domestically.[28]
In the middle of the decade, 🌧️ Hüsker Dü's album Zen Arcade influenced other hardcore acts by tackling personal issues. Out of Washington, D.C.'s hardcore scene what 🌧️ was called "emocore" or, later, "emo" emerged and was noted for its lyrics which delved into emotional, very personal subject 🌧️ matter (vocalists sometimes cried) and added free association poetry and a confessional tone. Rites of Spring has been described as 🌧️ the first "emo" band. Former Minor Threat singer Ian MacKaye founded Dischord Records which became the center for the city's 🌧️ emo scene.[55]
British subgenres and trends of the 1980s [ edit ]
Gothic rock developed out of late-1970s British post-punk. With a 🌧️ reputation as the "darkest and gloomiest form of underground rock", gothic rock uses a synthesizer-and-guitar based sound drawn from post-punk 🌧️ to construct "foreboding, sorrowful, often epic soundscapes", and the subgenre's lyrics often address literary romanticism, morbidity, religious symbolism, and supernatural 🌧️ mysticism.[56] Bands of this subgenre took inspiration from two British post-punk groups, Siouxsie and the Banshees,[57] and Joy Division. Bauhaus' 🌧️ debut single "Bela Lugosi's Dead", released in 1979, is considered to be the proper beginning of the gothic rock subgenre. 🌧️ The Cure's "oppressively dispirited" albums including Pornography (1982) cemented that group's stature in that style and laid the foundation for 🌧️ its large cult following.
The key British alternative rock band to emerge during the 1980s was Manchester's the Smiths. Music journalist 🌧️ Simon Reynolds singled out the Smiths and their American contemporaries R.E.M. as "the two most important alt-rock bands of the 🌧️ day", commenting that they "were eighties bands only in the sense of being against the eighties". The Smiths exerted an 🌧️ influence over the British indie scene through the end of the decade, as various bands drew from singer Morrissey's English-centered 🌧️ lyrical topics and guitarist Johnny Marr's jangly guitar-playing style.[42] The C86 cassette, a 1986 NME premium featuring Primal Scream, the 🌧️ Wedding Present and others, was a major influence on the development of indie pop and the British indie scene as 🌧️ a whole.[62][63]
Other forms of alternative rock developed in the UK during the 1980s. the Jesus and Mary Chain's sound combined 🌧️ the Velvet Underground's "melancholy noise" with Beach Boys pop melodies and Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" production,[64][65] while New Order 🌧️ emerged from the demise of post-punk band Joy Division and experimented with disco and dance music.[42] The Mary Chain, along 🌧️ with Dinosaur Jr., C86 and the dream pop of Cocteau Twins, were the formative influences for the shoegazing movement of 🌧️ the late 1980s. Named for the band members' tendency to stare at their feet and guitar effects pedals[66] onstage rather 🌧️ than interact with the audience, shoegazing acts like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive created an overwhelmingly loud "wash of sound" 🌧️ that obscured vocals and melodies with long, droning riffs, distortion, and feedback.[67] Shoegazing bands dominated the British music press at 🌧️ the end of the decade along with the Madchester scene. Performing for the most part in the Haçienda, a nightclub 🌧️ in Manchester owned by New Order and Factory Records, Madchester bands such as Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses mixed 🌧️ acid house dance rhythms with melodic guitar pop.[68]
1991–1997: Peak popularity [ edit ]
The Amerindie of the early '80s became known 🌧️ as alternative or alt-rock, ascendant from Nirvana until 1996 or so but currently very unfashionable, never mind that the music 🌧️ is still there. — Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s (2000)[69]
By the start of the 1990s, the music industry 🌧️ was enticed by alternative rock's commercial possibilities and major labels had already signed Jane's Addiction, Red Hot Chili Peppers and 🌧️ Dinosaur Jr. In early 1991, R.E.M. went mainstream worldwide with Out of Time while becoming a blueprint for many alternative 🌧️ bands.[28]
The first edition of the Lollapalooza festival became the most successful tour in North America in July and August 1991. 🌧️ For Dave Grohl of Nirvana who caught it near Los Angeles in an open-air amphitheater, "it felt like something was 🌧️ happening, that was the beginning of it all". The tour helped change the mentalities in the music industry: "by that 🌧️ fall, radio and MTV and music had changed. I really think that if it weren't for Perry [Farrell], if it 🌧️ weren't for Lollapalooza, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation right now".[70]
Kurt Cobain (foreground) and Krist Novoselic with Nirvana 🌧️ live at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards
The release of the Nirvana's single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in September 1991 🌧️ "marked the instigation of the grunge music phenomenon". Helped by constant airplay of the song's music video on MTV, their 🌧️ album Nevermind was selling 400,000 copies a week by Christmas 1991. Its success surprised the music industry. Nevermind not only 🌧️ popularized grunge, but also established "the cultural and commercial viability of alternative rock in general."[72] Michael Azerrad asserted that Nevermind 🌧️ symbolized "a sea-change in rock music" in which the hair metal that had dominated rock music at that time fell 🌧️ out of favor in the face of music that was authentic and culturally relevant. The breakthrough success of Nirvana led 🌧️ to the widespread popularization of alternative rock in the 1990s. It heralded a "new openness to alternative rock" among commercial 🌧️ radio stations, opening doors for heavier alternative bands in particular.[74] In the wake of Nevermind, alternative rock "found itself dragged-kicking 🌧️ and screaming ... into the mainstream" and record companies, confused by the genre's success yet eager to capitalize on it, 🌧️ scrambled to sign bands.[75] The New York Times declared in 1993, "Alternative rock doesn't seem so alternative anymore. Every major 🌧️ label has a handful of guitar-driven bands in shapeless shirts and threadbare jeans, bands with bad posture and good riffs 🌧️ who cultivate the oblique and the evasive, who conceal catchy tunes with noise and hide craftsmanship behind nonchalance."[76] However, many 🌧️ alternative rock artists rejected success, for it conflicted with the rebellious, DIY ethic the genre had espoused before mainstream exposure 🌧️ and their ideas of artistic authenticity.[77]
Grunge [ edit ]
Other grunge bands subsequently replicated Nirvana's success. Pearl Jam had released its 🌧️ debut album Ten a month before Nevermind in 1991, but album sales only picked up a year later.[78] By the 🌧️ second half of 1992 Ten became a breakthrough success, being certified gold and reaching number two on the Billboard 200 🌧️ album chart.[79] Soundgarden's album Badmotorfinger, Alice in Chains' Dirt and Stone Temple Pilots' Core along with the Temple of the 🌧️ Dog album collaboration featuring members of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, were also among the 100 top-selling albums of 1992. The 🌧️ popular breakthrough of these grunge bands prompted Rolling Stone to nickname Seattle "the new Liverpool".[52] Major record labels signed most 🌧️ of the prominent grunge bands in Seattle, while a second influx of bands moved to the city in hopes of 🌧️ success. At the same time, critics asserted that advertising was co-opting elements of grunge and turning it into a fad. 🌧️ Entertainment Weekly commented in a 1993 article, "There hasn't been this kind of exploitation of a subculture since the media 🌧️ discovered hippies in the '60s."[82] The New York Times compared the "grunging of America" to the mass-marketing of punk rock, 🌧️ disco, and hip hop in previous years. As a result of the genre's popularity, a backlash against grunge developed in 🌧️ Seattle.[52]
Nirvana's follow-up album In Utero (1993) was an intentionally abrasive album that Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic described as a "wild 🌧️ aggressive sound, a true alternative record."[83] Nevertheless, upon its release in September 1993 In Utero topped the Billboard charts.[84] Pearl 🌧️ Jam also continued to perform well commercially with its second album, Vs. (1993), which topped the Billboard charts by selling 🌧️ a record 950,378 copies in its first week of release.[85] In 1993, the Smashing Pumpkins released their major breakthrough album, 🌧️ Siamese Dream—which debuted at number 10 on the Billboard 200 and sold over 4 million copies by 1996, receiving multi-platinum 🌧️ certification by the RIAA. In 1995, the band released their double album, Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness—which went on 🌧️ to sell 10 million copies in the US alone, certifying it as a Diamond record.[86]
Britpop [ edit ]
With the decline 🌧️ of the Madchester scene and the unglamorousness of shoegazing, the tide of grunge from America dominated the British alternative scene 🌧️ and music press in the early 1990s.[42] As a reaction, a flurry of British bands emerged that wished to "get 🌧️ rid of grunge" and "declare war on America", taking the public and native music press by storm.[87] Dubbed "Britpop" by 🌧️ the media, and represented by Pulp, Blur, Suede, and Oasis, this movement was the British equivalent of the grunge explosion, 🌧️ in that the artists propelled alternative rock to the top of the charts in their home country.[42]
Britpop bands were influenced 🌧️ by and displayed reverence for British guitar music of the past, particularly movements and genres such as the British Invasion, 🌧️ glam rock, and punk rock. In 1995, the Britpop phenomenon culminated in a rivalry between its two chief groups, Oasis 🌧️ and Blur, symbolized by their release of competing singles on the same day. Blur won "The Battle of Britpop", but 🌧️ they were soon eclipsed in popularity by Oasis whose second album, (What's the Story) Morning Glory? (1995), went on to 🌧️ become the third best-selling album in the UK's history.[90]
Indie rock [ edit ]
The indie rock band Pavement in 1993
Long synonymous 🌧️ with alternative rock as a whole in the US, indie rock became a distinct form following the popular breakthrough of 🌧️ Nirvana.[91] Indie rock was formulated as a rejection of alternative rock's absorption into the mainstream by artists who could not 🌧️ or refused to cross over, and a wariness of its "macho" aesthetic. While indie rock artists share the punk rock 🌧️ distrust of commercialism, the genre does not entirely define itself against that, as "the general assumption is that it's virtually 🌧️ impossible to make indie rock's varying musical approaches compatible with mainstream tastes in the first place".[91]
Labels such as Matador Records, 🌧️ Merge Records, and Dischord, and indie rockers like Pavement, Superchunk, Fugazi, and Sleater-Kinney dominated the American indie scene for most 🌧️ of the 1990s. One of the main indie rock movements of the 1990s was lo-fi. The movement, which focused on 🌧️ the recording and distribution of music on low-quality cassette tapes, initially emerged in the 1980s. By 1992, Pavement, Guided by 🌧️ Voices and Sebadoh became popular lo-fi cult acts in the United States, while subsequently artists like Beck and Liz Phair 🌧️ brought the aesthetic to mainstream audiences.[93] The period also saw alternative confessional female singer-songwriters. Besides the aforementioned Liz Phair, PJ 🌧️ Harvey fit into this sub group.[94]
In the mid-1990s, Sunny Day Real Estate defined the emo genre. Weezer's album Pinkerton (1996) 🌧️ was also influential.[55]
Post-rock was established by Talk Talk's Laughing Stock and Slint's Spiderland albums, both released in 1991.[95] Post-rock draws 🌧️ influence from a number of genres, including Krautrock, progressive rock, and jazz. The genre subverts or rejects rock conventions, and 🌧️ often incorporates electronic music.[95] While the name of the genre was coined by music journalist Simon Reynolds in 1994 referring 🌧️ to Hex by the London group Bark Psychosis,[96] the style of the genre was solidified by the release of Millions 🌧️ Now Living Will Never Die (1996) by the Chicago group Tortoise.[95] Post-rock became the dominant form of experimental rock music 🌧️ in the 1990s and bands from the genre signed to such labels as Thrill Jockey, Kranky, Drag City, and Too 🌧️ Pure.[95]
A related genre, math rock, peaked in the mid-1990s. In comparison to post-rock, math rock relies on more complex time 🌧️ signatures and intertwining phrases.[97] By the end of the decade a backlash had emerged against post-rock due to its "dispassionate 🌧️ intellectuality" and its perceived increasing predictability, but a new wave of post-rock bands such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor and 🌧️ Sigur Rós emerged who further expanded the genre.[95]
Other trends [ edit ]
In 1993, the Smashing Pumpkins' album Siamese Dream was 🌧️ a major commercial success. The strong influence of heavy metal and progressive rock on the album helped to legitimize alternative 🌧️ rock to mainstream radio programmers and close the gap between alternative rock and the type of rock played on American 🌧️ 1970s Album Oriented Rock radio.[86]
1997–2010: Moving on [ edit ]
Foo Fighters (pictured in 2024) helped to fill a power vacuum 🌧️ in the late 1990s, and are considered to have established post-grunge.
Post-grunge band Creed in 2002
Going into the 21st century, most 🌧️ of the alternative rock bands that had achieved mainstream success in the 1990s had fractured due to a number of 🌧️ events, including the suicide of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain in April 1994, Pearl Jam's failed lawsuit against concert venue promoter Ticketmaster, 🌧️ Soundgarden's break-up in 1997, the original members of the Smashing Pumpkins breaking up in 2000, the announcement of L7's hiatus 🌧️ in 2001, the death of Layne Staley and the subsequent disbanding of Alice in Chains in 2002, and the disbanding 🌧️ of both the Cranberries and Stone Temple Pilots in 2003.[77] In addition to the fracturing of grunge bands, Britpop faded 🌧️ as Oasis's third album, Be Here Now (1997), received lackluster reviews and Blur began to incorporate influences from American alternative 🌧️ rock.
A signifier of alternative rock's changes was the hiatus of the Lollapalooza festival after an unsuccessful attempt to find a 🌧️ headliner in 1998. In light of the festival's troubles that year, Spin said, "Lollapalooza is as comatose as alternative rock 🌧️ right now".[99] Despite these changes in style however, alternative rock remained commercially viable into the start of the 21st century.
During 🌧️ the latter half of the 1990s, grunge was supplanted by post-grunge. Many post-grunge bands lacked the underground roots of grunge 🌧️ and were largely influenced by what grunge had become, namely "a wildly popular form of inward-looking, serious-minded hard rock."; many 🌧️ post-grunge bands emulated the sound and style of grunge, "but not necessarily the individual idiosyncracies of its original artists."[100] Post-grunge 🌧️ was a more commercially viable genre that tempered the distorted guitars of grunge with polished, radio-ready production.[100]
Originally, post-grunge was a 🌧️ label used almost pejoratively on bands that emerged when grunge was mainstream and emulated the grunge sound. The label suggested 🌧️ that bands labelled as post-grunge were simply musically derivative, or a cynical response to an "authentic" rock movement.[101] Bush, Candlebox 🌧️ and Collective Soul were labelled almost pejoratively as post-grunge which, according to Tim Grierson of About, is "suggesting that rather 🌧️ than being a musical movement in their own right, they were just a calculated, cynical response to a legitimate stylistic 🌧️ shift in rock music."[101] Post-grunge morphed during the late 1990s and 2000s as newer bands such as Foo Fighters, Matchbox 🌧️ Twenty, Creed and Nickelback emerged, becoming among the most popular rock bands in the United States.[101]
At the same time Britpop 🌧️ began to decline, Radiohead achieved critical acclaim with its third album OK Computer (1997), and its follow-ups Kid A (2000) 🌧️ and Amnesiac (2001), which were in marked contrast with the traditionalism of Britpop. Radiohead, along with post-Britpop groups like Travis, 🌧️ Stereophonics and Coldplay, were major forces in British rock in subsequent years.
Third-wave ska [ edit ]
After almost a decade in 🌧️ the underground, ska punk, a mixture of earlier British ska and punk acts, became popular in the United States. Rancid 🌧️ was the first of the "third-wave ska revival" acts to break. From the mid-1990s to early 2000s, the Mighty Mighty 🌧️ Bosstones, No Doubt, Sublime, Goldfinger, Reel Big Fish, Less Than Jake and Save Ferris charted or received radio exposure.[103][104]
Post-punk revival 🌧️ and garage rock revival [ edit ]
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, several alternative rock bands emerged, including the 🌧️ Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, and the Rapture that drew primary inspiration from post-punk and new wave, establishing the post-punk revival 🌧️ movement.[105] Preceded by the success of bands such as the Strokes and the White Stripes earlier in the decade, an 🌧️ influx of new alternative rock bands, including several post-punk revival artists and others such as the Killers, and Yeah Yeah 🌧️ Yeahs, found commercial success in the early and mid 2000s. Owing to the success of these bands, Entertainment Weekly declared 🌧️ in 2004, "After almost a decade of domination by rap-rock and nu-metal bands, mainstream alt-rock is finally good again."[106] Arctic 🌧️ Monkeys were a prominent act to owe their initial commercial success to the use of Internet social networking,[107] with two 🌧️ UK No. 1 singles and Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (2006), which became the fastest-selling debut 🌧️ album in British chart history.[108]
Emo [ edit ]
Emo band Jimmy Eat World performing in 2007
By 2000 and on into the 🌧️ new decade, emo was one of the most popular rock music genres.[55] Popular acts included the sales success of Bleed 🌧️ American by Jimmy Eat World (2001) and Dashboard Confessional's The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most (2003).[109] The 🌧️ new emo had a much more mainstream sound than in the 1990s and a far greater appeal among adolescents than 🌧️ its earlier incarnations.[109] At the same time, the use of the term "emo" expanded beyond the musical genre, becoming associated 🌧️ with fashion, a hairstyle and any music that expressed emotion.[110] Emo's mainstream success continued with bands emerging in the 2000s, 🌧️ including multi-platinum acts such as Fall Out Boy[111] and My Chemical Romance[112] and mainstream groups such as Paramore[111] and Panic! 🌧️ at the Disco.[113]
Other trends [ edit ]
Muse performing in Melbourne, January 2010
American rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers entered a 🌧️ new-found popularity in 1999 after the release of their album Californication (1999), with continued success throughout the 2000s. Thirty Seconds 🌧️ to Mars experienced a notable rise in popularity during the latter half of the 2000s.[114]
2010–present: The future [ edit ]
Most 🌧️ references to alternative rock music in the United States past 2010 are to the indie rock genre, a term that 🌧️ previously had limited usage on alternative rock channels and media.[26] Radio stations in the 2010s have been changing formats away 🌧️ from alternative rock, but this is mostly motivated by conglomeration efforts coupled with advertisers seeking more Top 40/Top 100 stations 🌧️ for sales.[115] While there have been conflicting opinions on the relevance of alternative rock to mainstream audiences beyond 2010,[116][117] Dave 🌧️ Grohl commented on an article from the December 29, 2013, issue of the New York Daily News stating that rock 🌧️ is dead:[118] "speak for yourself... rock seems pretty alive to me."[119]
Trends of the 2010s [ edit ]
Contemporary mainstream alternative rock 🌧️ bands tend to fuse musical elements of hard rock, electronica, hip-hop, indie, and punk while placing emphasis on keyboards and 🌧️ guitar. In 2010s, British rock band Muse gained a worldwide recognition with their album The Resistance and Drones which won 🌧️ Grammy Awards.[120][121]
American alternative duo Twenty One Pilots blurs the lines between genres including hip hop, emo, rock, indie pop and 🌧️ reggae and has managed to break numerous records.[122] They became the first alternative act to have two concurrent top five 🌧️ singles in the United States while their fourth studio album Blurryface (2024) was the first album in history to have 🌧️ every song receive at least a Gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America.[123][124][125] Twenty One Pilots also became 🌧️ the first rock act to have a song reach a billion streams on Spotify.[126] Their breakout hit single "Stressed Out" 🌧️ was the twenty-fifth song to achieve the rare feat of at least one billion plays on the streaming platform. The 🌧️ milestone comes at a time when music genres represented on streaming platforms like Spotify are fairly homogeneous, being dominated by 🌧️ genres such as hip hop, EDM, and adult contemporary-styled pop.[126]
Alternative pop [ edit ]
Lana Del Rey performing at Irving Plaza, 🌧️ June 2012
Alternative pop (also known as alt-pop), is a term used to describe pop music with broad commercial appeal that 🌧️ is made by figures outside the mainstream, or which is considered more original, challenging, or eclectic than traditional pop music.[127] 🌧️ The Independent described alt-pop as "a home-made, personalised imitation of the mainstream that speaks far closer to actual teenage experience", 🌧️ and which is commonly characterized by a dark or downbeat emotional tone with lyrics about insecurity, regret, drugs, and anxiety.[128]
According 🌧️ to AllMusic, the alternative scene's "left-of-center pop" failed to experience mainstream success during the 1980s,[129] although the UK alternative pop 🌧️ band Siouxsie and the Banshees saw success in that decade.[130] Canadian singer Avril Lavigne's success in the early 2000s, including 🌧️ her hit single "Sk8er Boi", helped set the stage for a subsequent generation of female alt-pop singers.[131] In the late 🌧️ 2000s, American singer Santigold established herself as an "alternative pop hero" due to her apparent artistic conviction.[132]
In the early 2010s, 🌧️ American singer Lana Del Rey developed a "cult-like following" with her cinematic, beat-heavy alt-pop," which was characterized by an "alluring 🌧️ sadness and melodrama."[133] New Zealand alt-pop singer Lorde achieved global success in 2013 and 2014, topping charts and winning awards.[134] 🌧️ In 2024, American singer Billie Eilish was credited with marking the "ascendence" of alternative pop in the mainstream with her 🌧️ dark, downbeat pop.[128]
See also [ edit ]
Radio formats
References [ edit ]
