Alternative music forms

Alternative Music Forms

Popular music can generally be defined as "commercially mass produced music for a mass market". Popular music is also about popular culture - it shapes the way people dress, talk, wear their hair, and, some say, other behaviour such as violence and drug use. ‘According to usual representations, pop music is all about youth, sexuality, rebellion, outrageous haircuts, drugs, staying out all night dancing and offending old people’

When we refer to "alternative" music, we are referring to music that alternates from the mainstream in any way, such as;

•          Representation

•          Style/Genre

•          Lyrical Content/Ideology

•          Production Distribution

•          Consumption

•          Fans

•          Form 

 Alternative music is a genre of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s. Most commonly associated in its heyday with a distorted guitar sound, transgressed lyrics and a nonchalant attitude

Most bands that are not recognised in the media as famous are labelled usually as an alternate band, even Macklemore on the Radio 1 website is labelled as ‘indie’ in the music charts as the top 10 is dominated by auto tuned, hard bodied artist, who attract all the younger generations of female fans, such as the Beliebers, or Directioners in society.

There are lots of different genres that make up alternative music;

·         Anti-Folk

·         Baggy

·         Punk Rock

·         Garage Rock

·         Grunge

·         Noise Rock

·         No-wave

·         Post Punk

·         Alternative hip-hop

·         Alternative country

·         Alternative dance

·         Alternative hip hop

·         Alternative metal