Alternative 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.
For the radio format associated with this genre, see Modern rock.Alternative rock
- Alternative music
- alt-rock
- alternative
Late 1970s to early 1980s, United States and United Kingdom
"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, 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.[8] In 1979, Terry Tolkin used the term Alternative Music to describe the groups he was writing about.[9] 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.[11] 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.[11]
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][14] 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]
Radio formats