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Alternative rock (also called alternative music, alt-rock or simply alternative) is a genre of Rock Music that emerged in the 1980s and became widely popular in the 1990s. Many alternative rock artists during the 1980s were cult acts that recorded on independent labels and received their exposure through college radio airplay and word-of-mouth. Alternative rock is essentially underground music that has emerged in the wake of punk rock since the mid-1980s. Throughout much of its history, alternative rock has been largely defined by its rejection of the commercialism of mainstream culture. Using a broad definition of the genre, Dave Thompson in his book "Alternative Rock" cites the formation of the Sex Pistols, the release the albums Horses by Patti Smith and Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed three key events that gave birth to alternative rock.

The New York Times in 1989 asserted that the genre is "guitar music first of all, with guitars that blast out power chords, pick out chiming riffs, buzz with fuzztone and squeal in feedback." More often than in other rock styles, alternative rock lyrics tend to address topics of social concern, such as drug use, depression, and environmentalism. Defining music as alternative is often difficult because of two often conflicting applications of the word. Alternative can describe music that challenges the status quo and that is "fiercely iconoclastic, anticommercial, and antimainstream," but the term is also used in the music industry to denote "the choices available to consumers via record stores, radio, Cable Television, and the internet."

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15y ago

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