Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a broad umbrella term consisting of music that differs greatly in terms of its sound, its social context, and its regional roots. By the end of the 1980s magazines and zines, college radio airplay, and word of mouth had increased the prominence and highlighted the diversity of alternative rock, helping to define a number of distinct styles such as gothic rock, jangle pop, noise pop, C86, Madchester, industrial rock, and shoegazing. Most of these subgenres had achieved minor mainstream notice and a few bands representing them, such as Hxsker Dx and R.E.M., had even signed to major labels. But most alternative bands' commercial success was limited in comparison to other genres of rock and pop music at the time, and most acts 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 commercially successful.
Before the term alternative rock came into common usage around 1990, the sort of music to which it refers was known by a variety of terms. In 1979, Terry Tolkin used the term Alternative Music to describe the groups he was writing about. In 1979 Dallas radio station KZEW had a late night new wave show entitled "Rock and Roll Alternative". "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 1st 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. 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; at the time, the common music industry terms for cutting-edge music were new music and post modern, respectively indicating freshness and a tendency to recontextualize sounds of the past. Individuals who worked as 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". At 1st the term referred to intentionally nonâ€"mainstream rock acts that were not influenced by "heavy metal ballads, rarefied new wave" and "high-energy dance anthems". 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. The use of alternative gained further exposure due to the success of Lollapalooza, for which festival founder and Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell coined the term Alternative Nation. In the late 1990s, the definition again became more specific. 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".
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", but 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." 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. Until recent years 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; whilst there are aspects which both genres have in common, indie rock was regarded as a British-based term, unlike the more American alternative rock.
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. 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 ever since some of the major alternative artists have achieved mainstream success or co-opted with the major labels from the 1990s onwards. Alternative bands during the 1980s generally played in small clubs, recorded for indie labels, and spread their popularity through word of mouth. As such, there is no set musical style for alternative rock as a whole, although The New York Times in 1989 asserted that the genre is "guitar music 1st of all, with guitars that blast out power chords, pick out chiming riffs, buzz with fuzztone and squeal in feedback." Sounds range from the gloomy soundscapes of gothic rock to the jangling guitars of indie pop to the dirty guitars of grunge to the '60s/'70s revivalism of Britpop. More often than in other rock-styles since the mainstreaming of rock music during the 1970s, alternative rock lyrics tend to address topics of social concern, such as drug use, depression, suicide, and environmentalism. 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.
By 1984, a majority of groups signed to independent record labels were mining 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"
Throughout the 1980s, alternative rock was 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 relegated to independent record labels, fanzines, and college radio stations. Alternative bands built underground followings by touring constantly and regularly releasing low-budget albums. In the case of the United States, new bands would form in the wake of previous bands, which created an extensive underground circuit in America, filled with different scenes in various parts of the country. 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. By 1989 the genre had become popular enough that a package tour featuring New Order, Public Image Limited and The Sugarcubes toured the United States arena circuit.
In contrast, British alternative rock was distinguished from that of the United States early on by a more pop-oriented focus and a lyrical emphasis on specifically British concerns. As a result, few British alternative bands have achieved commercial success in the US. 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 that had cult followings in the United States received greater exposure through British national radio and the weekly music press, and many alternative bands had chart success there.
Early American alternative bands such as 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; its debut album, Murmur, entered the Top 40 and spawned a number of jangle pop followers. 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.
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 Hxsker Dx and The Replacements were indicative of this shift. Both started out as punk rock bands, but soon diversified their sounds and became more melodic. Michael Azerrad asserted that Hxsker Dx was the key link between hardcore punk and the more melodic, diverse music of college rock that emerged. Azerrad wrote, "Hxsker Dx played a huge role in convincing the underground that melody and punk rock weren't antithetical." The band also set an example by being the 1st 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. [The Replacements] 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, to noise rock (Sonic Youth, Big Black, The Jesus Lizard) 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. Around the same time, the grunge subgenre emerged in Seattle, Washington. Grunge was based around a sludgy, murky guitar sound that synthesized heavy metal and punk rock. Largely based around the 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. Early grunge bands Soundgarden and Mudhoney found critical acclaim in the U.S. and UK, respectively.
By the end of the decade, a number of alternative bands began to sign to major labels. While early major label signings Hxsker Dx 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.
In the middle of the decade Husker Du'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 "emo" emerged and was noted for its lyrics which delved into emotional very personal subject matter and added free association poetry and a confessional tone. Rites of Spring has been described as the 1st "emo" band. Ian MacKaye a former singer with Minor Threat founded Dischord Records which became the center for the city's emo scene.
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". Reynolds noted that The Smiths' "whole stance was predicated on their British audience being a lost generation, exiles in their own land". The Smiths' embrace of the guitar in an era of synthesizer-dominated music is viewed as signaling the end of the new wave era and the advent of alternative rock in the United Kingdom. Despite the band's limited chart success and short career, 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. 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.
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, while New Order emerged from the demise of post-punk band Joy Division and experimented with techno and house music. 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 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. Shoegazing bands dominated the British music press at the end of the decade along with the Madchester scene. Based around The Haxienda, 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.
By the start of the 1990s, the music industry was enticed by alternative rock's commercial possibilities and major labels actively courted bands including Jane's Addiction, Dinosaur Jr., Firehose, and Nirvana. In particular, R.E.M.'s success had become a blueprint for many alternative bands in the late 1980s and 1990s to follow; the group had outlasted many of its contemporaries and by the 1990s had become one of the most popular bands in the world.
The breakthrough success of the band Nirvana led to the widespread popularization of alternative rock in the 1990s. The release of the band's single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from its 2nd album Nevermind "marked the instigation of the grunge music phenomenon". Due to constant airplay of the song's music video on MTV, Nevermind was selling 400,000 copies a week by Christmas 1991. The success of Nevermind surprised the music industry. Nevermind not only popularized grunge, but also established "the cultural and commercial viability of alternative rock in general." 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.
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. By the 2nd half of 1992 Ten became a breakthrough success, being certified gold and reaching number two on the Billboard 200 album chart. Soundgarden's album Badmotorfinger and Alice in Chains' Dirt, 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." Major record labels signed most of the prominent grunge bands in Seattle, while a 2nd 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." 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. Nirvana's follow-up album In Utero was an intentionally abrasive album that Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic described as a "wild aggressive sound, a true alternative record." Nevertheless, upon its release in September 1993 In Utero topped the Billboard charts. Pearl Jam also continued to perform well commercially with its 2nd album, Vs., which topped the Billboard charts by selling a record 950,378 copies in its 1st week of release.
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. 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. Dubbed "Britpop" by the media, this movement represented by Pulp, Oasis, Suede, and Blur 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. 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 Oasis soon eclipsed the other band in popularity with its 2nd album, Morning Glory? (1995), which went on to become the 3rd best-selling album in the UK's history.
Long synonymous with alternative rock as a whole, indie rock became a distinct form following the popular breakthrough of Nirvana. Indie rock was formulated as a rejection of both 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 commercialized music, 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 1st place".
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. The period also saw alternative confessional female singer-songwriters. Besides the previously mentioned Liz Phair, PJ Harvey and the massively successful Alanis Morissette fit into this sub group.
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