Alternative rock music in the 1990s

A musical genre that professed dissatisfaction with the commercialism that pervades the music industry

From the earliest days of popular rock music, some artists and bands have become dismayed by the shallowness of the mainstream music industry and taken it upon themselves to produce a more gritty and purposeful form of music. By the 1990s, this movement had become known as alternative rock and gained considerable prominence, especially among teenagers and college students. While the heyday of alternative rock lasted for merely a few years, its impact was felt into the twenty-first century.

The label "alternative rock" had its beginnings in the 1980s with such bands as R.E.M., Sonic Youth, the Smiths, the Cure, Jane’s Addiction, Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Replacements, and others. These groups started on the underground or independent music scene, recording for small labels and initially largely ignored by the established industry. While the various loosely grouped bands came from several musical roots, they all had a rebellious fervor that bonded them together. Whether their influences were in country, punk, heavy metal, Britpop, or garage rock music, they presented themselves as more independent and adventurous instruments of change, in opposition to the prevailing trends in classic rock, pop rock, and metal. The one unifying factor that linked them all was their disdain for and mistrust of the commercialism that permeated the music industry.

While each of these musical acts attempted to remain true to their ideals, it became difficult for several of them as one alternative band after another became immensely popular. Success for bands such as Nirvana became a double-edged sword and, unfortunately, even led to tragic endings in some cases. Ironically, the term "alternative rock" only became widely used after several representative bands broke through into the mainstream and signed to major labels. Though some groups maintained their outsider status, others essentially became pop-rock groups themselves, though they often continued to be promoted as "alternative," and this contributed to the decline of alternative rock as a distinct phenomenon by the late 1990s. The continued fragmentation of rock into myriad genres, and especially the rise of so-called indie rock, further blurred the meaning of "alternative rock" to the point that it generally became a catch-all genre with different definitions in different contexts.

Laying the Groundwork

The rebellious spirit that pushed most of the alternative acts can be traced back to the punk era of the 1970s, which had embraced an independent, do-it-yourself (DIY) attitude—including toward musicianship and recording. Alternative bands took inspiration from such authentic and forceful musicians as the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, Joe Jackson, and others. The musicians who took their lead from the in-your-face approach of the punk movement, as well as offshoots such as new wave and post-punk, focused on remaining as honest as possible in their music. Shallow and commercial-minded approaches to music did not interest the true alternative band. The roots of rock music were certainly antiestablishment, and these new bands believed wholeheartedly in not compromising their principles merely to please the industry.

Similarly, other alternative acts looked to earlier forms of rock and roll for inspiration, rejecting the perceived excess of huge arena-rock groups and glam-metal bands that had dominated the 1970s and 1980s. Artists reinterpreted 1950s rock and roll, rockabilly, 1960s garage rock, and the experimental sounds of the Velvet Underground. The latter group, in particular, inspired alternative acts like Sonic Youth and others to explore noise rock and otherwise break new musical ground. Many musicians also sought to recreate the lighter side of 1960s pop and rock, such as the sounds of the Beatles and the Byrds, which had fallen out of favor in the mainstream. This led to the rise of subgenres like Britpop and jangle pop, which helped power the eventual breakthrough success of alternative groups like R.E.M. and the Smiths.

Another important aspect in the rise of alternative rock was the greater availability of recording technology. Time in a professional recording studio was expensive and largely controlled by the mainstream industry. As technology improved and grew more portable and less expensive, more musicians could afford to record themselves or use an independent studio. Portable multitrack tape recorders became essential to alternative bands looking to wield full control over their sound without interference from mainstream producers, and it became viable to produce and distribute copies of a demo tape or even a full album independently. While the sound quality was not always as good as that achieved in a professional studio, this "low-fidelity" sound quickly became a hallmark of some alternative groups, giving rise to an entire subgenre known as lo-fi rock.

Grunge Rises to the Surface

In the early 1990s, one of the most important subgenres of alternative rock emerged in Seattle, Washington. Such bands as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden burst onto the musical landscape with gritty hard-edged music that became known as grunge. Through the success of these and other "angst-driven" bands, a whole "Seattle sound" became a national musical force. Kurt Cobain of Nirvana became the poster boy of the troubled musician who was never comfortable with success. With the release of Nevermind in 1991, Nirvana was catapulted into the limelight. The single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" took on an anthemlike status for what has come to be known as Generation X. For Cobain, this rise to almost godlike status became extremely difficult to cope with. He was addicted to heroin and susceptible to periods of deep depression. Tragically, he committed suicide on April 5, 1994.

While this tragedy cut short the life of a very talented musical voice and the band he helped to form, Nirvana’s influence did not diminish, and neither did the alternative rock movement in general. Several other alternative bands found a large audience during the 1990s, including the Smashing Pumpkins, the Dave Matthews Band, Counting Crows, and Alice in Chains. After initially receiving exposure on smaller radio stations or college radio stations, many of these groups eventually were given exposure on more traditional rock radio stations. The Lollapalooza tour was initiated in 1991 in order to introduce the listening public to several previously unknown alternative acts. A strong feminist rock subgenre also emerged, and artists such as Tori Amos, Alanis Morissette, Courtney Love, P. J. Harvey, and Liz Phair, all made their mark.

Alternative rock was on the verge of becoming the next big thing in mainstream music, and for the next few years that seemed to be the case. Soundgarden released the critically acclaimed album Badmotorfinger in 1991. Along with Nirvana’s Nevermind, Soundgarden’s album is considered one of the great grunge statements of the decade. In 1993, the Smashing Pumpkins released the hugely popular album Siamese Dream. By 1994, the album had sold three million copies. Although the band’s 1995 release Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was a double album, it also sold very well. By the end of the decade, however, grange's popularity had faded, and many of the bands that had made alternative rock a musical force had either disbanded or lost their creative intensity. With the best-known acts signed to major labels and reaching an increasingly mainstream audience, the label "alternative rock" began to lose its edgy meaning. Furthermore, the term was applied to such a wide range of music—from hugely popular to highly experimental—that it could no longer effectively describe a coherent movement.

Impact

While an alternative band’s commercial success was looked upon in some quarters as selling out, the impact of the best that alternative rock had to offer cannot be denied. Bands such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and the Smashing Pumpkins produced extraordinary music during their prime. The music from these seminal alternative bands spoke to both those that had come of age during the decade and to later generations of fans. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a new wave of rock artists emerged that drew on the pioneering work of bands across the spectrum of alternative rock. On the Britpop and mainstream rock side, groups like Coldplay, Radiohead, and Arcade Fire found huge audiences by mixing a variety of influences with relatively accessible sounds. Grunge and punk lived on in bands like Matchbox Twenty, the Foo Fighters, and others, with varying degrees of critical and commercial success. Roots rock was embraced by acts such as the White Stripes and the Black Keys, both of which found mainstream success, while postpunk and new wave influenced the Killers, Franz Ferdinand, and many others.

These and many other artists continue to be occasionally considered alternative rock, although the term no longer holds the same focus as in the early 1990s. Much of what would once have been categorized as alternative found a new label in the indie rock genre (short for "independent rock"). While the term "indie" had emerged along with "alternative" in the 1980s, it gained new life in the twenty-first century as alternative rock collapsed into various subgenres. Indie rock generally came to refer to groups with lighter sounds (compared to various punk or metal offshoots) and, at least initially, relatively small followings. Like alternative rock, however, indie would soon come to encompass a wide variety of sounds and mindsets, with some retaining a truly independent business model and others achieving mainstream success. In this way alternative rock remains relevant, both as a historic example of the evolving nature of rock music in the 1980s and 1990s and as a convenient umbrella category for countless rock subgenres in the present.

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