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Alternative rock (also called alternative music, alternative and sometimes independant) 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. 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.
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.
The music now known as alternative rock was known by a variety of terms before "alternative" came into common use. "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 the term "indie" was preferred; by 1985 the term "indie" had come to mean a particular genre, or group of subgenres, rather than a simple demarcation of status. "Indie rock"[5] was also largely synonymous with the genre in the United States up until the genre's commercial breakthrough in the early 1990s due to the majority of the bands belonging to independent labels.
By 1990 the music was being termed "alternative rock". The term "alternative" had originated sometime around the mid-1980s; it was an extension of the phrases "new music" and "post modern", both for the freshness of the music and its tendency to recontextualize the sounds of the past, which were commonly used by music industry of the time to denote cutting edge music. Thus the original use of the term was often broader than it has come to be understood, encompassing punk rock, New Wave, post-punk, and even pop music, along with the occasional "college"/"indie" rock, all music found on the American "commercial alternative" radio stations of the time such as Los Angeles' KROQ-FM.[3] The use of the term "alternative" gained popular exposure during 1991 with the implementation of alternative music categories in the Grammy Awards and the MTV Video Music Awards, as well as the success of Lollapalooza, where festival founder and Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell coined the term "Alternative Nation".
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 1983's Murmur entered the Top 40 and spawned a number of jangle pop followers. One of the many jangle pop scenes of the early 80s, Los Angeles' Paisley Underground was a revival of 60s sounds, 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 labels SST Records, Twin/Tone Records, Touch & Go Records, and Dischord Records presided over the shift from the hardcore punk that dominated the American underground scene at that point to the more diverse styles of alternative rock that were emerging. Minneapolis bands Hüsker Dü and The Replacements were indicative of this shift. Both started out as punk rock bands, but soon they expanded their sounds and became more melodic, culminating in Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade and The Replacements' Let It Be, both released in 1984. The albums, as well as the follow-up material, were critically acclaimed and drew attention to the burgeoning alternative genre. That year SST Records also released landmark alternative albums by the Minutemen and the Meat Puppets, who mixed punk with funk and country, respectively.

R.E.M. and Hüsker Dü set the blueprint for much of alternative rock of the 1980s, both sonically and in how they approached their careers. In the late 80s, the US underground scene and college radio were dominated by college rock bands like the Pixies, They Might Be Giants, Dinosaur Jr, and Throwing Muses as well as post-punk survivors from Britain. Another major force was the noise rock of Sonic Youth, Big Black, Butthole Surfers, and others. By the end of the decade, a number of alternative bands began to sign to major labels. While early major label signings Hüsker Dü and the Replacements had little success, late 80's major label signings R.E.M. and Jane's Addiction achieved gold and platinum records, setting the stage for alternative's later breakthrough. Some bands like the Pixies had massive success overseas while being ignored domestically. By the start of the 90s the music industry was abuzz about alternative rock's commercial possibilities and actively courted alternative bands including Dinosaur Jr, fIREHOSE, and Nirvana.

Grunge, an alternative subgenre created in Seattle, Washington in the 80s that synthesized heavy metal and hardcore punk, launched a large movement in mainstream music in the early 90s. The year 1991 was to become a significant year for alternative rock and in particular grunge, with the release of Nirvana's second and most successful album Nevermind, Pearl Jam's breakthrough debut Ten, Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger, and Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Nirvana's surprise success with Nevermind heralded a "new openess to alternative rock" among commercial radio stations and fans of more traditional rock sounds, and opened doors for more hard rock-oriented alternative bands in particular. While "alternative" was simply an umbrella term for a diverse collection of underground rock bands, Nirvana and similar groups gave it a reputation for being a distinct style of guitar based rock which combined elements of punk and metal; their creation met with considerable commercial success.

The explosion of alternative rock was aided by MTV and Lollapalooza, a touring festival of diverse bands which helped expose and popularize alternative groups such as Nine Inch Nails, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Hole. By the mid-90s, alternative was synonymous with grunge in the eyes of the mass media and the general public, and a supposed "alternative culture" was being marketed to the mainstream in much the same way as the hippie counterculture had in the 1960s (the existence of any such culture is debatable, and is often seen by some fans of the music to have been a creation of the media).

During the 1990s, many artists who did not fit the "alternative" label were nonetheless given it by mainstream record labels in the hopes of capitalizing on its popularity. Some pop musicians, such as Alanis Morissette and Hootie & the Blowfish were given the label on the basis of nuanced differences from other pop artists. Many pop punk bands such as Green Day and The Offspring were also labeled "alternative". The most drastic mislabeling was given to African-American artists. African-American artists whose music did not fall into the genres of R&B, hip-hop, or pop, such as folk musician Tracy Chapman and heavy metal band Living Colour, were labelled alternative by the music industry despite the fact that their music did not derive from punk or post-punk influences.

Additionally, post-grunge bands such as Third Eye Blind, The Goo Goo Dolls and Matchbox Twenty took the tropes of alternative rock and commercialized them. Nevertheless, alternative bands who were leery of broad commercial success and stayed underground were termed "indie rock" and developed movements such as lo-fi, a genre that espoused a return to the original ethos of alternative music. Labels such as Matador Records, Merge Records, and Dischord, and indie rockers like Pavement, Liz Phair, Superchunk, Fugazi, and Sleater-Kinney dominated the American indie scene for most of the 1990s.

Alternative's mainstream prominence declined due to a number of events, notably the death of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain in 1994 and Pearl Jam's lawsuit against concert venue promoter Ticketmaster which in effect barred them from playing many major venues around the country. A signifier of alternative rock's declining popularity was the hiatus of the Lollapalooza festival after an unsuccessful attempt to find a headliner in 1998; the hiatus would continue until 2003. By the start of the 21st century many major alternative bands, including Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Rage Against the Machine, and Hole had broken up or were on hiatus. Meanwhile indie rock diversified; along with the more conventional indie rock sounds of Modest Mouse, Bright Eyes, and Death Cab for Cutie, various strains of indie rock including the garage rock revival of The White Stripes and The Strokes as well as the neo post-punk sounds of Interpol and The Killers achieved mainstream success.
 
 
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