14 Facts About Alternative rock

Alternative rock, or alt-rock, is a category of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1970s and became widely popular in the 1990s.

Use of the term alternative to describe rock music originated around the mid-1980s; at the time, the common music industry terms for cutting-edge music were new music and post modern, respectively indicating freshness and a tendency to recontextualize sounds of the past.

Journalist Jim Gerr wrote that Alternative rock encompassed variants such as "rap, trash, metal and industrial".

The bill of the first Lollapalooza, an itinerant festival in North America conceived by Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell, reunited "disparate elements of the alternative rock community" including Henry Rollins, Butthole Surfers, Ice-T, Nine Inch Nails, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Jane's Addiction.

Alternative rock music is any kind of music that has the potential to reach a wider audience.

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Alternative rock bands built underground followings by touring constantly and by regularly releasing low-budget albums.

In contrast, British alternative rock was distinguished from that of the United States early on by a more pop-oriented focus and a lyrical emphasis on specifically British concerns.

Since the 1980s alternative rock has been played extensively on the radio in the UK, particularly by disc jockeys such as John Peel, Richard Skinner, and Annie Nightingale.

Indie rock was formulated as a rejection of alternative rock's absorption into the mainstream by artists who could not or refused to cross over, and a wariness of its "macho" aesthetic.

Post-Alternative rock was established by Talk Talk's Laughing Stock and Slint's Spiderland albums, both released in 1991.

Post-Alternative rock became the dominant form of experimental Alternative rock music in the 1990s and bands from the genre signed to such labels as Thrill Jockey, Kranky, Drag City, and Too Pure.

Contemporary mainstream alternative rock bands tend to fuse musical elements of hard rock, electronica, hip-hop, indie, and punk while placing emphasis on keyboards and guitar.

Twenty One Pilots became the first Alternative rock act to have a song reach a billion streams on Spotify.

Alternative rock pop is a term that originated in the mid-1980s to describe underground pop music that experimented with an eclectic range of influences and musically challenging arrangements.