What is Alternative?

[Sebas]

Hello there,

The other day I was chatting with a friend of mine and she told me that she likes "Alternative music" and was saying that Greenday, Incubus and Coldplay belong to that category. What do you guys think?

For me, "Alternative" are those artist that are not supported by the main media, so when they reach certain popularity, they don't belong to "Alternative anymore". please share...

[Farin]

Hi Sebas,

music genres can be very hard to define, especially since nowadays there are hundreds of them (just think of the dozens of metal sub-genres), but here's what Wikipedia says:

Alternative rock (also called alternative music[1] or simply alternative) is a genre of rock music that emerged in the 1980s and became widely popular in the 1990s. The name "alternative" was coined in the 1980s to describe punk rock-inspired bands on independent record labels that didn't fit into the mainstream genres of the time.[2] As a specific genre of music, alternative rock consists of various subgenres that have emerged from the indie music scene since the 1980s, such as grunge, indie rock, Britpop, gothic rock, and indie pop. These genres are unified by their collective debt to the style and/or ethos of punk, which laid the groundwork for alternative music in the 1970s.[3]

Though the genre is considered to be rock, some of its subgenres are influenced by folk music, reggae, electronic music and jazz among other genres. At times alternative rock has been used as a catch-all phrase for rock music from underground artists in the 1980s, all music descended from punk rock (including punk itself, New Wave, and post-punk), and, ironically, for rock music in general in the 1990s and 2000s.

[Ombre Vivante]

Wait. Why would a mainstream band, such as clodplay, be "alternative"? Doesn't make sense! I wouldn't even consider Travis to be the alternative to clodplay =

[invisible_r]

I think it's really difficult to define stuff, and I agree, coldplay are not really alternative because they are in the charts all the time etc, but I think the idea is that if you consider pop to be "mainstream", then everything else is alternative

[daslied]

"Alternative" is just a label now for non-pop, non-hard rock stuff. The original definition doesn't really apply anymore. Kind of the same with "Oldies" - they will always be stuff from the 50's-60's.

[Otokichi]

I've noticed that tracks from Michelle Shocked's "Captain Swing" CD fall into the "Alternative" category at Last.fm and MusicStrands.

[Sebas]

That's what I think. I share some viewpoints here. I think ppl use "Alternative" just to make others think that they don't follow the "mainstream" artist, like commom pop, rock, etc. Probably ppl don't use it in the right way anymore.