The Alternative Rock Genre

Alternative Rock is a music genre that emerged from the independant music underground in the 1980's which then became widely popular in the 1990's. The genre refers to the comparison from the typical and mainstream rock music genre, and features distorted guitar, transgressive lyrics and defiant attitude. It can also include some elements of punk rock, heavy metal and folk music due to the category being so broad. By the end of the 1980's, good word of mouth, magazines and radio airplay helped to highlight the diversity of the newly found genre and define a few new distinctive style of music including gothic rock, jangle pop and industrial pop. However, the Alternative Music genre was deeply compared with the other popular music genres of that time (Pop and Rock), which therefore meant that most of the alternative music artists were signed to independant labels and received little attention from mainstream radio, television and magazines.One of the main breakthrough alternative music genre artists are Nirvana, who became very popular in the 1990's and helped to evoke this genre into the mainstream, with many other artists of the same genre becoming very successful.

We have chosen to use this specific music genre as I enjoy Alternative Rock music, and I like most music artists who are of this music genre. It would also be beneficial to use this music genre, as every member of our media group are fond of Alternative Rock. Alternative Rock is also a very wide ranged genre, and can cover a wide range of music styles, which makes it very versatile to use. From some known local artists that we currently know of, their music style is similar to the Alternative Rock genre, and this would again be very beneficial to us if we did use this music genre as it would make looking for an unsigned artist of this music genre, easier than if we didn't use Alternative Rock.