Research into music genre

The genre of our chosen music video is ' Alternative Rock'.

We have looked into and researched what 'Alternative Rock music' actually is, and some history behind it.

In the 1980s and 1990s, a new genre of rock music emerged and quickly gained the title college rock because of its prominence on college radio. During the '80s, alternative included everything from jangle pop, post-hardcore punk, funk metal, punk pop, and experimental rock. Eventually, the name of the genre became alternative music because of its new sound that did not draw from the more typical heavy metal and new wave genres popular at the time. The style instead built a post-punk era defined by indie sounds and rock roots. Alternative music was extremely popular through the 1980s and into the mid-1990s, when the genre experienced a decline in popularity. In the '80s, most alternative bands were on independent labels; if they were on majors, they didn't receive as much support as most of the label's mainstream acts.

Sounds range from the dirty guitars of grunge to the gloomy soundscapes of gothic rock to the guitar pop revivalism of Brit-pop to the shambolic performance style of tweepop. 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, 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.

Alternative Rock is usually characterized by bands who have a "do-it-yourself" or non-conformist attitude; hence "alternative". It is not usually designed to be a popular genre of music or well known to all cultures. The label “Alternative” often applies to new music/bands before they become more widely popular due to creative people whose music does not fit into current genres.

Popular Alternative rock bands in the 1990's are ones such as Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, etc. It started out as an underground/indie scene, but when it became popular in the 90's, Alternative became separate from a new emerging indie style.

Posted by, Bethany