@@funwhileitlasted7664 Many artists do that, you just don't know about them. The biggest band that comes to mind in this regard is PUP. Illuminati Hotties is an example of a smaller artist doing very original alternative music
@@hrotha I mean like aesthetically, I mean to make it not dead in the eyes of the mainstream if that makes sense. I think bands like hot Mulligan, capstan, and a few others make great original alternative/rock music proving that it’s not dead. And I also just think I read his comment wrong
I don’t think a ton of ppl in the 90s were getting mad that artists like Bjork or even Massive Attack or Portishead were being counted as “alternative”
Massive Attack and Portishead next to Morcheeba were extremely important in the 90s making Triphop a nice counterpart to the grungy/alt rock sounds. Mezzanine is one of the most important alternative albums of the 90s.
I've always looked at alternative as an umbrella term. Alternative ROCK, alternative METAL, alternative RAP. Also, I believe we (humans) put WAAAAYYY too much emphasis on labels.
exactly this. maybe I'm just too old as definitions can change over time but that was the original definition. If it didn't fit into the main commercial categories (pop, country , gospel, r&b, etc..) then it was "alternative" and from there there were sub classes. It was the same with metal, punk, rap, etc.
I think the problem with some of these choices is that alternative used to be closely associated to D.I.Y. culture, giving a more raw energy. While a lot of these artists reject mainstream norms in the way they approach music, they still sound and look glitzy and over-produced, something alternative music has been strongly against.
It was the same in the ‘90s. People just forget artists/groups like Bjork, Tori Amos or Sneaker Pimps for example. They were played on “alternative” stations and had some mainstream songs. Alternative is any genre that goes against what the mainstream is currently doing until it becomes mainstream itself. Once the formula is copied by a hundred new artists/groups, alternative kids are on to the next underground sound.
People forget about the "trip hop" alternative and euro pop adjacent trip hop alternative music. The funny thing is Aqua tried to venture in that direction after their Barbie girl and Dr Jones singles success.
"Alternative" as a category of the music business died in 1998 or so. It was a catch-all term for "the Big Industry won't touch it; so we'll make our own industry for it." It included college radio shows, small record stores, homemade "'zines", and shoestring-budget venues; which spawned small independent record labels. The Big Industry shut so much out, to concentrate on selling nostalgia to boomers, that the "Alternative" grew large to reflect and serve GenX. It got so big that the Big Industry bought or squeezed most of it out from 1993-1998. "Alternative" isn't a genre, or a culture; it's a way of doing things the Big Industry won't. You can do it today if you want. Today's "alternative" is called "DIY"; you'll find it in places like Bowling Green, OH at the Summit Shack, or Bless This Mess in Akron, OH, or "house venues" all over the Midwest. They're doing it there, you can do it where you are too.
Late 2000’s all the alternative bands were racing for the top of the mountain with monster hits. Phoenix, Muse, Empire in the Sun, MGMT, The Killers, Modest Mouse, The Strokes, Gorillaz, Carolina Liar, The Postal Service, Kings of Leon, The Bravery, Linkend Park, Death Cab for Cutie, Passion Pit, Franz Fernanidad, Group Love, Plain White T’s, Foster the people etc. Competition was rough and Alternative Bands were stacked
Dang. You've just listed out all the music stored on my phone, excepting Carolina Liar (who I've ironically never heard of) and Lincoln Park (who I've never been able to stand), with Jack White, Of Monsters & Men, Fitz & the Tantrums, Arctic Monkeys and The Fratellis falling under "...etc" I've been wondering for a couple of years I cannot find any NEW music that sounds as good as all those artists, which is why I clicked on this video. I have a theory that the rise of Alt-COUNTRY parallels the "decline" of Alt-Rock & wonder what @finnmckentyprmba thinks. Names like Tyler Childers, Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, Zach Bryan (just to name a few) are filling a yearning for authenticity that USED to be able to be found in Alt-rock, supposably...
Yeah, that was all the music at the end of highschool right around the time i got a car and started listening to the radio. It's kind of how i transitioned out of emo and power metal into more mainstream alternative. Within two months of owning a car, i practically stopped wearing skinny jeans and cut my hair short.
I find this topic really interesting as a whole. "Alternative" is such a broad term, especially when it comes to music. You could really consider anything that's not top 40 to be alternative. But like you mentioned, even artists from Nirvana to Billie Eilish who blew up and became mainstream were/are still considered alternative. It's an interesting discussion, I especially appreciate these videos on this topic
Yeah another case of semantics twisting meaning - what does the word literally mean today vs in 2010? Or calling BTS alternative bcs they're foreign - they're the most polished performance acts there are. Just bcs young girls can't find themselves in the western culture, doesn't mean these ARTISTS aren't what alternative stood AGAINST for years. Alternative is now the LA-born, homeschooled, upper class girl thrown into acting auditions since she was a kid, "Nearly every song the star has ever released was co-written with and produced by her brother Finneas O'Connell". She's the face of a project. Reminds me of the army psyops with young girls in trenches on tiktok. It used to be against playing the industry's rules, now you got this man calling BTS and Billlie alt.. This is DEFINITELYY today's nirvana bro..
Today a 28 year old colleague wore a Nirvana shirt and I was curious and asked style or fan-shirt and she said both and that she likes that kind of classic rock. I immediately felt old AF and I am 42.
I'm 26 and I felt like dust, classic rock to me is 1950s into the 60s. I look at IDs all day and my idea of the old enough age is older than 1988, I see 2000 and go "holy shit you're old enough". People born in the 60s and 70s tell me they're old and I'm like "nah I don't count you as old until I see 1945-1954"
@@notcontentwithlosing I'm 27 and actually kind of glad that bands like MCR became classics, because when I first listened to them I would get mocked. So I feel they're getting the respect they deserve 😂
I feel like the 2000s represented this euphoria over making it to the new millenia and 'the end of history'. Then, the 2010s was the beginning of the realization: "Wait, everything still sucks."
the 80s, 90s, and 00s ALL had solo artists, that were classified as alternative, some more so than others. Billy Idol, Cyndi Lauper, Bjork, Fiona Apple, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Iggy Pop, Aphex Twin, etc.
I don't know if this counts as Alternative, but Death Grips to me was one of the most important 'Alternative' acts for the 2010s. In place of a rock band you got a DJ on crack, a budget Trash Metal vocalist that likes rap, and a wacked out drummer who cut his teeth in the mathcore scene. This was a group that was not only the opposite of a rock band, but also kind of a parody of one in a way. I think that their mixtape 'Exmilitary' from 2011 marked the beginning of raps dominance over the alternative music space. They were also really influential. I can hear bits of their brand synth playing in many songs from the 2010s, including dubstep. But this is just my opinion, they might not even be considered Alternative and just be considered Experimental.
@@ghost_mall I'm from Sacramento, and so, doing my duty as a citizen, I've tried to get into them several times, but I've found nothing to connect with. However, they are still, while not mainstream, undoubtedly more popular than I ever would have imagined for their sound.
alternative is when it gives you an ego trip for being "different". I think by definition alternative is meant to mean something outside of the mainstream by intention (in the way it's made, not judged by how popular it gets or not).
It was also really cool that Tyler the Creator would talk about being sober and his straight edge lifestyle, because i don't know any other rappers that were doing that back then!! Most mainstream rap back then really glorified the clubbing and party lifestyle!
Mainstream rap was like that was because at the time pop music & mainstream music was all about club, partying though. To me Tyler the Creator was a reaction to that rap just like what Lana Del Rey was a reaction to that style style pop music at that time.
I'm glad I learned to just like what I like at a very early age. By the time Nirvana hit, I couldn't have cared less what the media labeled certain artists as. Because of that, I got into so many different types of music and met so many different people I would never have if I had just accepted labels and stayed in a particular lane.
They say people stop listening to new music by their early 30's. I try to stay open minded and but just like when I was young, there's so much bad music you have to wade through to find the good stuff, if you're looking to stay at the tip of the spear. Now days I'm a few years late to the party, but at least I get there.
I've always found myself searching under the radar to keep myself interested in the music scene tbh if I didn't keep searching for music in my teen years I would probably still only listen to good oldies, which isn't bad because my parents had great music taste but I would've never formed so many attachments to such beautiful songs. I'm glad my parents opened me up to so many genres between the 50s-80s, it helped me shape what sounds I look for!
A music history professor I used to work with always used to say, “everything is just mash-up culture now”. Basically his point was that since around the advent of rap there really hasn’t been anything new, just recombinations of stuff. Call it what you want but it all pretty much fits that mashup culture definition.
@@AmericansikkuntSad but true. You can still find unique cultures and subcultures, of course, but you have to delete social media, turn off the Internet and get out of the big cities for it. Small towns and rural areas still have uniqueness and low-key creativity, but even that is being eroded fast by social media and the “zeitgeist.”
Realistically, hasn't it always been mashup culture?? Blues and country were pretty much the same thing before records were invented and we started slapping racial tags on them. And rock n roll built upon the foundation of blues and country, then metal built on that, then punk music built off of that, then alternative music built off of that and so on and so fourth. In fact, Rap music is essentially mash-up culture in its purest and most concentrated form, in that it litterally samples from other genres to create entirely new pieces of music. As far as I'm aware, this is just the natural way art evolves and changes since the creation of music.
@@ultimadum7785 pretty much. I personally tend to think blues and black spiritual and plantation music along with post tonal theory were the last “new” inventions. So it’s arguable as to when but we’re both saying it was long before the 2010’s lol.
While I agree with the premise, Cage the Elephant deserves credit in bringing guitar alternative indie into the 2010s. Hit machines and their songs are still inserted into every alt playlist. I believe that trend continues just like it did for foo, rhcp, etc.. One of those bands where everyone knows way more songs by them than they thought they did.
I'm gonna age myself here _but,_ I remember back in the day (1987-88?) Enya was considered "Alternative" in most record/ tape stores! Alternative music just meant all of the other music that didn't fit into a predetermined genre. You know, classical, rock, country or pop. Gawd how the time flies when yer havin fun, eh?!
I remember that Sarah McLachlan was considered "alternative". But I think that may have come about due to CanCon regulations and filtered over to the US via the border cities.
I'm probably even older than you and I don't recall Enya being considered as "alternative" back in the late 80's. In fact Enya was considered more new age not alternative.
When you mention The Lumineers, it got me thinking of how Foster the People released "Pumped Up Kicks" And that song kicked the door down for indie pop/indie rock bands to get a taste of chart but more importantly, commericial usage. Which is funny because Foster frontman Marc Foster was a jingle writer before starting a band
Yeah and major labels werent signing punk bands or guitar driven bands anymore and all they signed was that stuff. That whole entire genre is jingle music. Go listen to the hit song Passion Pit "Carried Away" and tell me that song doesnt belong in a Downy commercial.
@@itz_premiumTrue. Isn’t it about a school shooting? Pretty horrible stuff. The *one* thing happy clap indie got right is that it was *wholesome* . And “Pumped Up Kicks” wasn’t even that.
@@hayvenforpeace yes you nailed it. "Better run better run, faster than my bullets" Pretty gnarly shit. But yes, it's lyrics draw quite the contrast with the soundscape which is as you said, kinda upbeat and happy. The lyrics surely are not.
As someone who was a junior in high school in 2017 when peep really blew up it was insane how he just brought every clique together. Emo kids, football players, popular kids, weird kids, everyone fucked with peep. There was a collective sadness when he passed. Obviously I wasn’t alive when Kurt Cobain passed but I’d imagine that’s what it was like.
When I was in high school and college in the late 80s - 90s, alternative just meant music that wasn't played on the mainstream top 40 radio stations, only the college radio stations. I feel like alternative music began to die in the 90s, back when MTV and the big record labels realized there was a lot of money to be squeezed out of disenfranchised youth. When "grunge rock" became mainstream, it dragged alternative music with it, kicking and screaming, into the light, where they both died out. When "alternative" becomes mainstream, it's no longer alternative.
A consistent “Alternative” band throughout the 2010s that wasn’t mentioned, Cage The Elephant. At the beginning of the decade, their debut album came out a year earlier & throughout the 2010s released 4 albums with consistent Alt Rock hits…. Shake me Down Around My Head Aberdeen Come A little Closer Cigarette Daydreams Mess Around Trouble Cold Cold Cold Ready To Go Social Cues If they came out in the past 3 decades prior with the same popularity of Alternative… they’d be a massive success
About that k-pop/emo overlap, I think I might have something to contribute. My girlfriend is an ex-emo, and a current k-pop fan (not a stan) and she told me one of the biggest reason she is into the k-pop is because of the sense of community k-pop gives her, the sense of community that she used to find in the early to late 2000 emo scene. So to her, it is the replacement (or natural progression) of that feeling of belonging.
I'm a 37 year old BTS fan and I 100% agree. What's interesting is that there's this misconception that kpop fans, and BTS fans in particular, are kids. But that's far from the truth.
I get that, sense of community is important. I was into emo music in the early 2000s and it was moreso for the relatable lyrics, but the sense of community was also really uplifting. I can’t really get into K-pop or any of the newer stuff popular with the younger generation. My sense of community is mostly tied to my faith, family, and small town-which 100% isn’t something I would have ever expected for myself at 15 or 25!
When you put it that way, it makes me think that maybe kpop united the emo band girls and the boy band girls because in the end i think both groups appreciated the sense of community, they just had different tastes
I’m a second gen K-pop fan, former emo and I feel like the K-pop community was better before BTS hit mainstream. It used to be about getting the K-pop artist views on CZcams and more popularity in the mainstream but now those K-pop fans are just obnoxious koreaboos. Too many of them are unhinged, much like Swifties.
I think it’s also important to note the change in technology as well over the years. The electric guitar revolutionized the way people wrote music in the 40s and 50s. And reduced the necessity of large brass bands to both arrange melodies as well as project sound on large stages. Now instead of 20 members. You just needed 4 with amplifiers. Fast forward to 2023. I can write, record, and playback an epic track on a dope subwoofer and sound system for next to nothing (after buying the initial gear). Number of members required: 1 🤔
Yes, now it requires little artistic skill. Music was a piece of art in the past. Created in collaboration with a group of artists. Now, it is just mostly mass-generated crap. Also, rhythmic recitation (aka hip-hop) was brainwashed into zoomers as "music". Now most of pop stuff is some form of hip-hop or fake RnB (contemporary RnB), with occasional dream-pop indie.
@@Justin-fi9ye I meant to say that I agree with you and did not want to say that you have no artistic skill. Just wanted to add that nowadays it often requires much less or little skill. Just look at hip hop or reggeaton :-) In the 50s or 60s, creating een basic pop required artistic skills like playing instruments or good singing. Now pop is mostly autotuned and has the same computer-generated sound.
@@Bettie_Rage I would say don’t underestimate the artistry that goes into sound engineering and recording alone. It’s far harder than most people think and often less appreciated if even noticed at all by the typical listener. I would also argue that musical composition does not have to be “hard” to be good. Most people are not musicians, and thus don’t care. Even myself, I didn’t learn guitar because I wanted to do something that would impress people. I did it so I could entertain and have a good time. Art is human expression. You can’t tell another person what is and isn’t a sufficient form of human expression.
Yep. The entire 2010 trend was basically the "indie"-imagine dragonesque stadium crap with hooks shouting "we areee, we areeee we aree we aaaaaare" Can't stand that decade. That "alternative" music was bland, toothless and pretentious.
There is one rock band in the 2010s that were labeled as Alternative and I love this band is Royal Blood. There from the UK/Great Britain and there are a duo rock band like the White Stripes and the Black Keys. What blew my mind is the guitarist Mike Kerr uses a electric bass and use distortion to sound like a electric guitar. Their music is a heavy rock sound and Jimmy Page once describes their music sound as magma lava coming out of the volcano. They only made two albums in the 2010s era. This year they’re making their fourth album this year and I wish I could see them live in person just to experience it.
I was a huge lil peep fan when he was up and same with all the other alt SoundCloud rappers and when he died I just felt everything die with him I can’t explain it but it was hard for me to listen to other stuff coming out in that scene once he passed, truly a sad thing I couldn’t imagine where he could have led the scene if he was still alive… rip peep🖤
I was.. or still am a huge fan of peep. A little bit after he died, I too felt like listening to other music in that scene was hard. But then I ended up discovering amazing artists like 93FEETOFSMOKE, Lil Lotus, Guardin and Fats’e. He made waves for those artists which I’m glad he did. And yes I agree, he would’ve been way bigger too if he was still around RIP Peep 💜
My 14 year old daughter made me listen to Lil Peeparoni while I was driving her to school one morning. The song was called "Problems" I was really surprised by how talented he was and much I enjoyed listening to it. I wish Peep could have stayed a little longer.
@@nerdgasma882 my cousin showed me this fool, instantly knew it was garbage, since my cousin used to be a so called emo and suicidal,i knew it would be popular with females and emotional people
I've always found the term 'alternative music' confusing. Especially when my first exposure to it was when Nirvana was top of the Billboard charts, which by definition made them mainstream. It was only through Nirvana that I became familiar with a lot of other, less popular music. It reminds me of an interview Kevin Devine did, who is a very similar age to me, when he was asked if he had a favourite album, and said no, because it's impossible to answer that, but replied that In Utero was the most influential as it acted like a skeleton key. So I agree alternative must be defined by lifestyle rather than a sound, or (lack of) popularity. I wonder if the Sex Pistols were ever described as alternative, since they would qualify using that definition.
Alternative became just a genre name to people who didn't seem to notice the difference. Reminds me of kids today wearing a Sublime shirt, only to find they thought Sublime was a clothing brand.
Funny you asked that about Sex Pistols, because lot of people say alternative started with punk. Others say it begun with the likes of Velvet Underground, which is even earlier. It is a confusing and often contradictory term, that happens to be used for lot of bands i enjoy.
Alternative music as a term was created to cover musicians that don't quite fit in specific genres of the time, it has nothing to do with what instruments are used or how many people are in the "band", it's for the ones that are "hard to classify".
Back in the day alternative was what you found on college radio, the term was inclusive to pretty much anything outside mainstream. When the industry shift occurred and the whole nirvana grunge thing landed it suddenly became mainstream but pretended like it wasn’t. Whatever, it may be a lifestyle by now.
@@michaelwills1926 yeah and the interesting thing is that is how mainstream music is always created. It starts as something new (alternative) then when more people enjoy it - it gets more well known and the mainstream (changes)... then alternative starts again with a different style that people don't understand until the cycle repeats.
I think you kinda said it best in '19. It's all pop with edge. Record labels just wanted to continue to make money and found a way to market the artists as "alternative" when in reality they really are just different sounding pop.
Hi Bro, just a suggestion For mainstream terms: 80’s new wave 90’s grunge 00’s alternative 10’s you need to come up with a new label, with due respect to the genres that have come before
Last night, I took my daughter to see The Front Bottoms. Kevin Divine and the Goddamn Band. They both remind me of 90s midwest indie rock. There was 1000 kids there dancing and singing along. Most of them were the weird girls, and it was so much fun. I'm 46, and it reminded me of the college radio rock of my youth.
I'm jealous, and I don't even know any music by The Front Bottoms, and some Kevin Devine. Did he play the riff to Come as You Are before stopping? I've seen videos of him doing it for laughs a couple of times.
Really good video! I think your observations are spot on. Back in 2018, my niece was the "weird girl" at her school, dyed hair, piercings, "alternative" by all definitions. But she was all about anime and Kpop instead of nu metal or pop punk.
gen z has taken over a love of asian stuff that only a handful of millenials were just getting into by the late 90s. I started listening to a couple japanese bands within jazz and alternative but rarely watch anime.
Maybe because im from europe, but the 90's were filled with non heavy guitar alternative music. With bands like the Prodigy or Triphop bands like Portshead and Tricky and there was a huge industrial gothic scene, evolved from kraftwerk and new wave bands
I'm kinda surprised there was no mention of Tame Impala, idk if its just the people I know but to me it kind of falls in the category of like psychedelic-alternative for pot smoking former emo kids
@@erik8719 The whole band is actually just one guy, he plays all the instruments in the recordings and has people fill-in with him for live shows, insane talent.
I think there’s been a death to alternative culture in general, not just music. Hipsters in the early 2000s were the last wave of bohemian that stood counter to mainstream culture. Of course capitalism swooped in to dilute the movement as the usual anti-capitalistic attitudes permeated. But we haven’t seen Hipster evolve, which means it just died, and there’s been no replacement. Lay persons like to make these groups into style statements, but they’re actually tied to heavy leftist politics. And millennials and Gen Z have reduced these movements into “aesthetics” and style movements, completely divorced from the political meanings. Punk, Grunge, Goth,Metalheads, whatever, any variety of alternative persons was tied to politics and a way of life that ran counter to the mainstream narrative. We don’t really see that currently. And I think LGBTQ is the new alt culture - I live in the Deep South so that statement is valid here lol. I just think we’re too separated now. Everyone is into everything with access to internet. Conservatives are NOT the same conservatives we saw even 20 years ago. And someone can look alt. But now it’s just for the style of it, it doesn’t necessarily point to a way of life or political leanings like it used to. When Nirvana hit, you knew Kurt wasn’t just alternative because he looked so, it was because his politics were staunch, succinct, and ran counter to the conservative narrative. And I know some have argued that conservatism is the new punk rock 😂 BUT conservative ideas have always been a mainstay in this overly Christian nation, so conservative waves are more a doubling down of the status quo, not punk. If I tell someone I listen to alt music that no longer means anything. But for many decades the music you listened to spoke to a way of life, politics, and experience. Things are very different.
The idea of “mainstream” culture is not that meaningful now. We don’t have TV shows or types of music that almost everyone is familiar with, as was the case when 1960s counterculture happened.
@@markjames8664 I agree with that, mainstream culture has disseminated a bit. I’d say the 90s was the last decade where we had a semblance of strong mainstream culture. The internet has definitely changed our relationship to culture. I think it’s wild to go to CZcamss trending page and see major pop stars can garner only a few millions views on a song release or video, and I could go offline and meet hordes of people that didn’t even know xyz’s song or video was released. Back in the day, if MJ or Madonna would release a video, it was a damn near national event! It’d be everywhere and everyone would have seen it, regardless if you were into it or not. Now we don’t have those shared experiences or media. It’s again, so separated. We can really lead out these insular existences so easily.
I don’t know where I fall into bc I feel like everyone tries to be alternative but are ignorant and have strongly left or right opinions that align with either agenda.
I’ve always considered alternative to mean like an alternative to something. An artist of any genre doing something outside the currently established mainstream.
I didn't know RHCP put out an album in the last 15 years. Super important release there. Pierce the Veil dropped Misadventures in '16. They were winning all kinds of awards, selling out a world tour.
@@matturner6890Carry Me Home, Eddie, Bella, White Braids and Pillow Chair, Aquatic Mouth Dance, and Here Ever After are all better songs than anything they made in 2011/2016 and on par with 1999-2006.
i'm 40 i remember in the 90s people accepting other forms of music non grunge or rock based as alternative there were a new crop of electronic bands like prodigy and daft punk and the chemical brothers that had some success i wonder where the hardline was drawn because there was definitely a split in thinking sometime in the 2000s about this. yeah kpop stans are an interesting group to say the least, my daughter is 16 and is a legit stan and i'd say her personality in another era would have definitely been mall emo, their fans can be really obsessive and cringe though and very gatekeepy it's weird. songs kinda slap though for real there production is extremely good
There’s an awesome band called Failure that was around in the 90’s, actually wrote one of the best rock albums of that decade, they broke up in 97-98 and came back 17 years later. Their latest album, Wild Type Droid, is some of the best music they’ve released yet. They’re just independent from a label(by choice I’d assume, they could get a deal but just handle everything themselves instead) and their albums can’t be bought in stores. If more people knew of them they easily could get huge. Major label support can’t be understated. That’s for sure.
@@pardisazizi7703 They are! And they sound fucking great! Enjoy! And if you haven’t listened to fantastic planet in a long time, I’d suggest cranking it up and just taking it all in. Rarely do you hear something so good. It holds up to this day. “Heliotropic,” chefs 💋 fr! And the newest album is truly special. All this is subjective of course but if you’re actually happy to hear they’re back and not being sarcastic lol you should be really excited
@@khalbrando2990 haha of course I'm serious. I just didn't see it coming. I'm beyond happy to check out their new stuff you have no idea. First Hum and now Failure? Feels like a dream. I'm just obsessed with 90's rock I guess can't help it. Anyway thank you and surely seems like the best time to revisit Fantastic Planet.
Yes! Very underrated. Seen them live multiple times. They're not just a studio band & sound great live. Fantastic Planet I'd recommend to anyone curious. 🤟🏻
I remember seeing From First to Last opening up for Bad Religion… the crowd let them have it! Skrillex walked off saying “I’ll be more successful than any of you” 😕 he wasn’t wrong
Might be good to make video about the 2020s year by year so far. Seems like genres such as hyperpop, rage, aggressive drift phonk, tearout, digicore, future riddim, colour bass, etc.. are carrying on legacy of "Alternative" without even being Rock oriented. See Kordhell, Muerte, Ace Aura, 100 gecs, phonon, Chime, SEBii, etc... Tearout/heavy riddim/briddim right now is some of the harshest yet unique sounds going on. Drift phonk has been using rock/metal samples for awhile now. Heck, Kordhell (arguably biggest drift phonk artist in popularity) has background in metal music. Now, there's even a branch of metal phonk that came out of it pretty recent. Then there's this whole scene of sort of bedroom indie/EDM/y2k revival that reminds me of vibe of 2000s indietronica like Postal Service. With colour bass Chime has a song called "Intermolecular Lullaby" that gives off an Owl City vibe mixed with ASMR sounding dubstep.
Alternative music was exceptionally diverse in the '90's.: College rock, garage rock, grunge, dream pop, girls riot, hip-hop, trip-hop, big beat, britpop, jungle, ambient, house, trance, breakbeat, art pop, goth, hip house,, just to name a few genres. It was not just rock, far from it. Such a fantastic era, largely forgotten.
All the internert seems to remember these days about he 90s is stupid stuff thta we avoided like Friends and Full House and boy bands and power rangers and beanie babies.... I remember 90s nostalgia being about the stuff with an edge and that sometimes made fun of the zombie mainstream... now it's all about what the toddlers of 1999 liked 😞 And I especially hate when they throw in all the obvious stuff from 2000-2003 as "part of the 90s"... They need to do their research.
@@chrisrj9871 Yes, the '90's are superficially put in bad light and ignored. But it was the last full decade when talent was discovered, supported and shown on public media.
"should have" sounds like you made an analysis on a population of hardcore and metal fans and concluded that unfortunately, OFWGKTA did not, in fact, serve as their entry point for rap.
Other than something like RATM or other nu metal acts which were way before my time, I think my entry into modern rap as a metalhead was Run the Jewels. Idk what it is, but a lot of us seem to like RTJ. Tyler is also cool, as is DOOM... maybe because they break the mold of what more mainstream rap sounds like
Tyler was the main reason I started branching out from my young pop punk stuff into other genres like trad punk, garage punk, and even into like emo rap and like horrorcore. The guy was so easily accessible and really set the stage for the kinda alternative and punk resurgence we've gotten over the past decade.
Mid-30s guy here about to chime in about K-pop. I got into it right around the time Gangnam Style blew up. I explored a bunch of stuff and I eventually came to a love for the different hip-hop sounding groups and artists more than the actual pop artists, although I still like some. To me, the 2010s in music just reminded me of depression and I tend to want a little happiness (or catchiness) in my music as an escape. Korean music provided that. I’m less on the K-pop train these days (and I never acted like the fans you think of either), but the Korean hip-hop scene is pretty fantastic and makes me feel like I’m finding those underground rappers of old.
This guy is really insightful, and funny. Although, I feel really really old. I don't know who any of these artists are. I was with him in his timeline up until about the year 2006. I guess thats when I just unplugged from popular music world and never really returned. Whole generations of major label artists have come and gone and I missed it all. But kudos for mentioning Fugazi.
I don't really understand the hate on BMTH they're definitely one of the best experimental rock/metal bands of the time. They go A LOT harder than most of the biggest metal bands out there, but can pivot into alt pop well too. My favourite album will always be Count Your Blessings, but they only make great music so I can't help but respect their evolution over time. I'm excited to see what they do next. ✌️
I love these 'song to to sum up the year' videos. Great way to stay creative and interesting while still giving your audience what they want and not annoying them (I like the Suicide Boys etc. videos by the way 😂). Hopefully more to come.
i'd just say rock though especially that is indie rock. Rock and Roll is dead long time ago. The word meaning "roll" is doesn't exist anymore unless you rip off Elvis Presley, Led Zeppelin, Mötley Crüe I guess lol
cause you could take sounds and samples from literally anything and just rap over it. there wasn't a set sound that it had to be like Rock or Alt has had.
@@daveSoupy I feel like Led Zeppelin was their "hip hop" of their time except they steal songs lol they remake older songs to their own new sound, re-arrange, new production, more experimental.
I love that you included both Twenty One Pilots and Billie Eilish on this list. They are both some of my favorite current alternative music to listen to. I've always been more drawn to the lyrics rather than the sound of a band, and they are covering topics way closer to what alt/emo was back in the 90's/2000's, more than anything you hear on rock radio.
Anyone who is familiar with Billie Eilish's deepcuts would know that she is definitely alternative. There is no way you can classify songs like oxytocin, happier than ever, xanny, and pretty much every other song that wasnt a single as anything other than alternative.
While I understand that the genre probably needed a refresh, I do not like most of what is considered "alternative" anymore, Billie Ellish in particular makes shit music
Speaking as a guy born in the late 1980s, I began to think about rock’s/metal’s popularity decline when one journalist friend told me back in 2019ish that there are more rock/metal fans 30 and up than those younger when we were talking about the would-have-been Woodstock 2019 lineup (which I HATED like many other rockers did). Yeah I did notice that rock’s/metal’s relevance to the mainstream began to diminish rather quickly as the 2000s turned into the 2010s (I graduated from university around the time that transition happened, and I thankfully left the academe just before rock/metal was shut out completely)! But still to this day, I find the way rock/metal was so quickly ushered out of the mainstream (in the space of at most 2-3 years) to be so jarring (and tbh, quite forced by TPTB)! And pop culture was never the same since that happened (a change that ultimately wasn’t always for the better)! I honestly can’t help but feel bad for the younger generations of youth that have missed out on rock/metal being considered “cool” even by the mainstream. Pop culture had a lot more “oomph” and a sense of authenticity when guitar-driven music was relevant, and that’s a BIG LOSS IMHO!
Alternative Rock in the mainstream died in 2004, then it fully died in 2009. Alternative Rock was born in 1989 with bands like Faith No More, King’s X, early RHCP, 24-7 Spyz, Mordred, and as well Soundgarden and Nirvana in 1989. By 1991 Alternative Rock is in the mainstream with Smells like Teen Spirit and Nirvana kicking the doors down for so many bands to get signed. Alternative Rock in the mainstream died in 2004 with the Nu-Metal scene being dead by 2004, Alternative Rock then has another 5 years when it fully dies in 2009. Alternative Rock was around for 20 years from 1989 to 2009. And imo the subgenres that was under the Alternative Rock umbrella were Funk Metal, Funk Rock, Grunge, Sludge Metal, Industrial Metal, Industrial Rock, Groove Metal, Post Grunge, and Nu-Metal/Rap Metal. Nothing else was apart of that movement imo.
@@nu-metalfan2654 Alternative rock wasnt born in 1989. It was probably born in the late 60s with The Velvet Underground and then The Stooges and then continued with punk in the 70s. The of course REM and U2 in the early 80s. It was well established by 1989.
@@Chaz4543 Well basically what you’re saying is everything is Alternative Rock. What is it an Alternative of?, because every band under the sun gets labelled Alternative Rock for some strange reason. What the actual Alternative Rock movement was, started in 1989 with King’s X, Faith No More, Jane’s Addiction, early RHCP, Mordred, Living Colour, and 24-7 Spyz, and later Primus. Then Grunge/Sludge came about with the movement with Melvins, Tad, Soundgarden, AIC, Nirvana, My Sister’s Machine, Gruntruck, L7, Hole, Babes In Toyland, and Pearl Jam. While that was going on Groove Metal and Industrial was going on with Pantera, Machine Head, Prong, White Zombie, Fear Factory, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, etc etc and that was the same movement. When Grunge died Post Grunge arrived with Candlebox, Collective Soul, Dishawalla, Live, Silverchair, Tonic, Bush, Days Of The New, Our Lady Peace, Seven Mary Three and Creed. Then Nu Metal arrived with KoRn, Limp Bizkit, early Incubus, Snot, early Deftones, Hed Pe, Kittie, Slipknot, Coal Chamber, Static X etc etc. Then when Nu-Metal died the last and 2nd wave of Post Grunge bands arrived with Shinedown, Nickelback, Thoery Of A Deadman, Alter Bridge, Black Stone Cherry and Halestorm etc etc and those bands were really the last era of not only Alternative Rock but the Rock genre in general. True Alternative Rock was the movement that started with Funk Metal/Funk Rock, Grunge/Sludge, Groove Metal, and Industrial Metal/Rock, and ended with Nu-Metal/Rap Metal and Post Grunge. And all that lasted from 1989 to 2009 (1991 to 2004 in the mainstream).
@@nu-metalfan2654 Though what was considered "rock" back around 2010 (when bands like Muse were at their peak in popularity) was still aurally closer to all the Rock we all grew up and loved that came in the years before, than what became considered "rock" starting around 2012 onwards! For me, that was when Rock truly died in the mainstream!
I agree, 2016 did kind of feel unmemorable in terms of alternative music. Aside from A7X releasing The Stage kind of outta nowhere at the tail end of the year.
I can tell by the thumbnail, I'm older than you. You grow up and you chill out and realize, yeah everyone is welcome to contribute. Gatekeeping is a very young thing to do. You grow out of it.
Hip hop is definitely going through what 2016 alternative and metal/rock went through. It seems stale and the popularity has gone down. I think the artists have driven the mumble rap into the ground and people have noticed that
What are you talking about? Popularity gone down? There is literally not a single argument of this other than you talking about trap hihats. Mumble rap hasnt even been used as a hater term for 5 years, have you been frozen?
The only thing keeping Hip Hop afloat right now are the household name/legacy artists (and we haven't really had any household names emerge in Hip Hop for at least the last ten years)! The genre is pretty much were Rock was as the 2000s transitioned into the 2010s!
I think for 2016 you could’ve put ‘Look at me’ by XXXTENTACION. Even though the song came out in late Dec. of 2015, the song blew up the next year, and was basically the ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ of SoundCloud rap.
The 2010's had Arctic Monkey's AM, St. Vincent, and Queens of the Stone Age but overall guitar really seemed to get de-emphasized. Even the Mars Volta went synthy.
Thanks for recognizing Peep and who he was about to become. I'm a little older than you but, like you, I was able to appreciate and enjoy Lil Peep I could see Peep's trajectory. I'm sure I would have come to dislike his music (had he not passed) as he would've had more exposure and more become more mainstream. The only other band/group I liked was/is $B and a "guitar" band that I had an interest in the mid 2010s was Pears (I think they were on Fat Mike's label). I'm still waiting on someone new to peak my interest and impress me
I'd say Odd Future, MIA and Death Grips were the three main artists that brought that kind of punk spirit back to rap music in the early 2010's, especially in how MIA and Death Grips popularized more abrasive industrial sounds in hip hop. From there you can draw a line directly to acts like JPEGMAFIA, Injury Reserve, some of the more interesting soundcloud rappers like Lil Yachty and Lil Uzi Vert who this year both dropped albums with massive rock influences, and Playboi Carti and his whole Opium collective. The spirit of punk rock is alive and thriving in these spaces, and it seems like rap has never been more experimental and abrasive as it is right now in the places that are just beneath the surface, which is very exciting.
The reality is that there are still an overwhelming number of great alternative bands that perform using the guitar/bass/drum approach, but you have to look to find them. The industry decides what the focus will be on and they push it relentlessly until it’s adopted as the norm. I may be an old guy from the 90’s, but that perspective allows me to see that the change is music isn’t just a difference between generational tastes. Growing up in the 80’s & 90’s gave me my “own” current music, just as kids have now. The difference versus now though is that we were able to dig the music that came before too, because it was also MUSIC that was composed of notes and chords and had theory behind it. You could prefer the aggressive style of Pantera, but also appreciate and like Simon & Garfunkel or the Everly Brothers because, despite their finished products sounding radically different, they were birthed from the same place. Hell, even Rap from back then is far more sophisticated than the shit we hear today. Listen to the Chronic or Doggystyle and you hear musical instruments and incredible production. Creating beats on a computer and getting in a mic has its place, but it damn sure should not be the mainstream. Creating music shouldn’t be that easy, and isn’t…I think that’s what gets lost in the debate about what’s currently considered popular music. Knowing the amount of effort and passion that is required in mastering an instrument, or more, was one of the reasons rock or alt music was so incredible. Putting it all together to create a good song was a rare achievement. Even if you didn’t like a particular song you could still marvel at the guitarists skills or the singer’s range….that’s mostly gone in what is pushed on us today. Being “new” or “different” just for the sake of it isn’t better, and it doesn’t equate with creativity. Prince was a guy who understood that and said as much. If it were him saying this today instead of me, most people who’d want to argue otherwise wouldn’t bother; but that’s not the case unfortunately. I can guarantee that if music programming, whether online or in radio was chosen by music fans and not suits, what we’d be hearing wouldn’t sound that different from what has supposedly been lost. Here’s to hoping that popular music soon gets back into the hands of musicians…
@ciao214Z I turned 18 in 1993 when “alternative” was so prevalent that it was nearly mainstream…it was an amazing period in music. At the time of this writing I’m 48 y/o, so while I may not be 100, I’m damn near halfway there. This means that I am in fact not a Millennial, but part of the generation that spawned them; Gen X (a generation largely forgotten by today’s media, which seems to think society went from Boomers straight to Millennials. You should check us out…as not only are we a pretty hip generation, we’re the ones who invented all of the shit that the generations that followed can’t live without.)✌🏻.
I would say the disappearance of "guitar music" from the mainstream for a while did a lot of good for the genre. It encouraged newer rock bands to kinda go back to the drawing board and take inspiration from genres and scenes of the past that never got a chance to break into the mainstream, like shoegaze, dream pop, post-rock and 90's emo, or create wacky fusion sounds, essentially throwing shit at the wall and seeing what stuck like bands like Black Midi and The Last Dinner Party are doing. Since the pandemic ended we've seen all sorts of scenes come up, ranging from the new "grungegaze"/"emogaze" thing that's been all the rage on some corners of TikTok lately, to the whole Windmill scene of London with bands like Black Midi, Black Country New Road, Squid, Shame, Yard Act and Goat Girl (as well as Windmill-adjacent bands like Wet Leg and The Last Dinner Party), to the whole Eras-Tour-opening-act-core of artists like the members of boygenius, Snail Mail, Soccer Mommy, Mitski etc. which have taken rock music in a much more feminine direction. And hardcore is having a moment right now as well with a lot of aspect of hardcore culture spreading over into hip hop, even before the pandemic. All this, combined with the near-death of any distinction between "alternative" and "mainstream" in zoomer culture along with how many people of my generation don't really care about "new" music and popular trends anymore these days (in my view exemplfied by pop singers like Carly Rae Jepsen, Charli XCX and Caroline Polachek, and bands like Panchiko and Drop Nineteens being dug out of the dumpster, respectively), is making for some very interesting sounds and scenes.
No mention of Tame Impala, Grimes or St Vicent? Some of them came close to mainstream in the 2010s scooping up Grammys and propelling alternative music to great heights in the 2010s. It was a great decade for alternative music especially in the first half. I'm sorry but alternative music is nowhere near Finn's strongest topics.
I am old, Gen-X, don't know much about music after maybe 2005. To post-punk music buffs my age, Alternative actually died when Nirvana went platinum. 'Alternative' meant something when FM Top40 radio dominated American music (it really did, late 70's, 80's and early 90's). Radio ruled and almost everyone listened to Pop/Rock mixed with Disco, R&B, Country, early Hip Hop and hair metal. But people with better taste sought out 'the Alternative' that rarely got airplay outside NYC and LA. We heard about 'Alternative music' by word of mouth, college radio, underground magazines, etc. It was launched with Punk, got called 'New Wave', Independent, Post-Modern, College Radio and finally 'Alternative'. It slowly grew in popularity until finally becoming mainstream with Nirvana and grunge. But when MTV co-opted 'alternative' music, it was over. Then the internet changed everything forever.
I think the answer is simple technology has made it easy for a creative kid to make a album out of sampling,digital drum machines, software synth’s, and digital effects using a DAW program on their laptops or IPADS. They don’t need to form a band, take the time to learn to play together to express them selves. It’s quicker, cheaper, and easier. They can make a song, upload it on the Internet as soon as it’s finished.
The 2010s were horrible! Thank God i grew up in the late 90s and early 2000s with Korn Limp bizkit, linkin Park, papa roach, Staind, Blink 182, greenday,
THIS! As a late 80s baby, I am glad I graduated from uni and left the academe before rock/metal were quietly but forcefully ushered out of the mainstream (which happened as the 2000s changed into the 2010s, and by 2012ish guitar-driven music was effectively shut out of the mainstream consciousness)!
I think it’s pretty cool that you haven’t changed your persona or your overall content since becoming a success with your work, and meeting cool people. So good on you.
These vidoes where a topic in music is broadly disscused is sooooo much more entertaining and informative than a 90s/00s band's history. More of these please
Alternative music in the 2010s is all the Indie Pop hipster bands. Lumineers are the only artist in the description that fit that. Add bands like Foster the People, Vampire Weekend, MGMT, Tame Impala, M83, Chvrches, Walk the Moon, AWOL Nation, Neon Trees, The 1975, Bastill, Florence and the Machine. Thats what the major record labels were promoting as alternative in the 2010s.
It's not dead though. It still alive and thriving. There's tons of bands on Bandcamp that want to be heard. You all just stop listening to radio and started streaming only what you want to here. So that's all you hear. Turn you radio on sometime and let someone else decide what you listen to for a change.
I'm old (like you). I feel like you are my guide to the modern musical landscape (which is confusing at times). When I know a few of the artists you rattle off as examples of Point X, Y, Z I am honestly proud of myself. Your insight that K-Pop is "edgy" bc it's just slightly off from center is so on point - wow!
Mainstream itself is now a genre.. not a space that music sits in because people genuinely love the music.. your favorite music still has huge amounts of supporters and is something that would be an amazing experience to see live. Rock is not dead.. mainstream is
Your openmindedness on these sort of topics and not dismissing music that isnt "guys with guitars" is why I keep coming back to watch your videos - great run down.
absolutely lover your videos, randomly found your channel and now can't stop watching! Great balance between facts and your own opinion, jokes and reminders about grwat music hits
I think you underestimate the impact of California in 2016. I was in hs, and that was the first time I experienced that modern rock music was being regularly played and talked about in the locker rooms, at social gatherings, etc. among my age group. Lead me to becoming a huge blink fan and then a huge pop punk fan to alt rock more broadly. That album completely changed the course of what music I looked out for and listened to for the years after and through now, and I think many others I knew had a similar experience
Alternative music with guitars isn't dead,it's just not in the mainstream
I feel like some bands still make good music, but someone has to do something different abd stand out
If it’s not global rapper famous I don’t think Finn will consider it mainstream, I think it’s a fair take but I don’t completely agree
@@funwhileitlasted7664 Many artists do that, you just don't know about them. The biggest band that comes to mind in this regard is PUP. Illuminati Hotties is an example of a smaller artist doing very original alternative music
@@hrotha I mean like aesthetically, I mean to make it not dead in the eyes of the mainstream if that makes sense. I think bands like hot Mulligan, capstan, and a few others make great original alternative/rock music proving that it’s not dead. And I also just think I read his comment wrong
So bmth isn't in the mainstream?
I don’t think a ton of ppl in the 90s were getting mad that artists like Bjork or even Massive Attack or Portishead were being counted as “alternative”
Massive Attack and Portishead next to Morcheeba were extremely important in the 90s making Triphop a nice counterpart to the grungy/alt rock sounds. Mezzanine is one of the most important alternative albums of the 90s.
solid take, we most def did not, and if you listened to these artist you were kind of considered in the "know" of "good" music
We were not. Björk IS alternative
Ain't no Captain Beef heart...
@@topcatcoast2coast579 if you like captain beefheart check music by JLin. Shes doing the captain beefheart thing with chicago juke/house music.
I've always looked at alternative as an umbrella term. Alternative ROCK, alternative METAL, alternative RAP. Also, I believe we (humans) put WAAAAYYY too much emphasis on labels.
what's use to identify and describe is often used as a form classism or to form clicks you either do or dont belong to.
exactly this. maybe I'm just too old as definitions can change over time but that was the original definition. If it didn't fit into the main commercial categories (pop, country , gospel, r&b, etc..) then it was "alternative" and from there there were sub classes. It was the same with metal, punk, rap, etc.
Before Alternative, Modern Rock was the umbrella name.
if i wasnt able to search for "emo" music id be much more dull tbh. labels can also be a good thing as long as you dont gate keep it
WAAAAYYY
Can't believe Arctic Monkeys was not one of the picks, they were EVERYWHERE in 2013 after their release of AM.
Same with AWOLNation.
So
imagine dragons😂
He's got a soft spot for bring me the horizon.
And Lorde. Royals was a big deal in indie/alternative and bridging the gap between pop and indie/alternative in the way we see now.
I think the problem with some of these choices is that alternative used to be closely associated to D.I.Y. culture, giving a more raw energy. While a lot of these artists reject mainstream norms in the way they approach music, they still sound and look glitzy and over-produced, something alternative music has been strongly against.
It was the same in the ‘90s. People just forget artists/groups like Bjork, Tori Amos or Sneaker Pimps for example. They were played on “alternative” stations and had some mainstream songs. Alternative is any genre that goes against what the mainstream is currently doing until it becomes mainstream itself. Once the formula is copied by a hundred new artists/groups, alternative kids are on to the next underground sound.
People forget about the "trip hop" alternative and euro pop adjacent trip hop alternative music. The funny thing is Aqua tried to venture in that direction after their Barbie girl and Dr Jones singles success.
Love Tori Amos. But I am old enough to remember Husker Du and early REM.
Sneaker Piiiiiiiiiiiimps!!!! 🤟🤤
those were the days...also faithless and underworld.
"Alternative" as a category of the music business died in 1998 or so. It was a catch-all term for "the Big Industry won't touch it; so we'll make our own industry for it." It included college radio shows, small record stores, homemade "'zines", and shoestring-budget venues; which spawned small independent record labels. The Big Industry shut so much out, to concentrate on selling nostalgia to boomers, that the "Alternative" grew large to reflect and serve GenX. It got so big that the Big Industry bought or squeezed most of it out from 1993-1998. "Alternative" isn't a genre, or a culture; it's a way of doing things the Big Industry won't. You can do it today if you want. Today's "alternative" is called "DIY"; you'll find it in places like Bowling Green, OH at the Summit Shack, or Bless This Mess in Akron, OH, or "house venues" all over the Midwest. They're doing it there, you can do it where you are too.
facts
Late 2000’s all the alternative bands were racing for the top of the mountain with monster hits. Phoenix, Muse, Empire in the Sun, MGMT, The Killers, Modest Mouse, The Strokes, Gorillaz, Carolina Liar, The Postal Service, Kings of Leon, The Bravery, Linkend Park, Death Cab for Cutie, Passion Pit, Franz Fernanidad, Group Love, Plain White T’s, Foster the people etc. Competition was rough and Alternative Bands were stacked
Reminiscent of the grunge era imo.
Felt like it was just yesterday too 👴🏻
Dang. You've just listed out all the music stored on my phone, excepting Carolina Liar (who I've ironically never heard of) and Lincoln Park (who I've never been able to stand), with Jack White, Of Monsters & Men, Fitz & the Tantrums, Arctic Monkeys and The Fratellis falling under "...etc"
I've been wondering for a couple of years I cannot find any NEW music that sounds as good as all those artists, which is why I clicked on this video. I have a theory that the rise of Alt-COUNTRY parallels the "decline" of Alt-Rock & wonder what @finnmckentyprmba thinks. Names like Tyler Childers, Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, Zach Bryan (just to name a few) are filling a yearning for authenticity that USED to be able to be found in Alt-rock, supposably...
amazing. half of those werent ever alternative and were in fact just mainstream. u didnt understand ur own assignment lol
Yeah, that was all the music at the end of highschool right around the time i got a car and started listening to the radio. It's kind of how i transitioned out of emo and power metal into more mainstream alternative. Within two months of owning a car, i practically stopped wearing skinny jeans and cut my hair short.
I find this topic really interesting as a whole. "Alternative" is such a broad term, especially when it comes to music. You could really consider anything that's not top 40 to be alternative. But like you mentioned, even artists from Nirvana to Billie Eilish who blew up and became mainstream were/are still considered alternative. It's an interesting discussion, I especially appreciate these videos on this topic
Same here
Similar to the term pop music. Originally it just meant popular but it now defines a specific sound.
Yeah another case of semantics twisting meaning - what does the word literally mean today vs in 2010? Or calling BTS alternative bcs they're foreign - they're the most polished performance acts there are. Just bcs young girls can't find themselves in the western culture, doesn't mean these ARTISTS aren't what alternative stood AGAINST for years. Alternative is now the LA-born, homeschooled, upper class girl thrown into acting auditions since she was a kid, "Nearly every song the star has ever released was co-written with and produced by her brother Finneas O'Connell". She's the face of a project. Reminds me of the army psyops with young girls in trenches on tiktok. It used to be against playing the industry's rules, now you got this man calling BTS and Billlie alt.. This is DEFINITELYY today's nirvana bro..
nah billie eilish is pop ass
Today a 28 year old colleague wore a Nirvana shirt and I was curious and asked style or fan-shirt and she said both and that she likes that kind of classic rock. I immediately felt old AF and I am 42.
My wife is 29 and non ironically called the offspring classic rock💀
I'm 26 and I felt like dust, classic rock to me is 1950s into the 60s.
I look at IDs all day and my idea of the old enough age is older than 1988, I see 2000 and go "holy shit you're old enough". People born in the 60s and 70s tell me they're old and I'm like "nah I don't count you as old until I see 1945-1954"
lmao I'm 35 and I've started calling 90's and even some '00's bands classic rock.
@@notcontentwithlosing I'm 27 and actually kind of glad that bands like MCR became classics, because when I first listened to them I would get mocked. So I feel they're getting the respect they deserve 😂
Welcome, to the generation gap. It comes out of nowhere
I feel like the 2000s represented this euphoria over making it to the new millenia and 'the end of history'. Then, the 2010s was the beginning of the realization: "Wait, everything still sucks."
9-11 really fucked everything up.
the 80s, 90s, and 00s ALL had solo artists, that were classified as alternative, some more so than others. Billy Idol, Cyndi Lauper, Bjork, Fiona Apple, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Iggy Pop, Aphex Twin, etc.
I don't know if this counts as Alternative, but Death Grips to me was one of the most important 'Alternative' acts for the 2010s. In place of a rock band you got a DJ on crack, a budget Trash Metal vocalist that likes rap, and a wacked out drummer who cut his teeth in the mathcore scene. This was a group that was not only the opposite of a rock band, but also kind of a parody of one in a way. I think that their mixtape 'Exmilitary' from 2011 marked the beginning of raps dominance over the alternative music space. They were also really influential. I can hear bits of their brand synth playing in many songs from the 2010s, including dubstep. But this is just my opinion, they might not even be considered Alternative and just be considered Experimental.
I would definitely include them!
@@ThePunkRockMBA there's a video for you, Finn. Why are Death Grips so popular?
That’s a good idea actually!
@@ThePunkRockMBA I would genuinely love seeing that!
@@ghost_mall I'm from Sacramento, and so, doing my duty as a citizen, I've tried to get into them several times, but I've found nothing to connect with. However, they are still, while not mainstream, undoubtedly more popular than I ever would have imagined for their sound.
alternative is when it gives you an ego trip for being "different". I think by definition alternative is meant to mean something outside of the mainstream by intention (in the way it's made, not judged by how popular it gets or not).
It was also really cool that Tyler the Creator would talk about being sober and his straight edge lifestyle, because i don't know any other rappers that were doing that back then!! Most mainstream rap back then really glorified the clubbing and party lifestyle!
Talking about alternative rap tho, DO YOU REMEMBER HOPSIN?!! With his Marilyn Manson looking fxcking contacts lenses... OMG!! MEMORY UNLOCKED!
Mainstream rap was like that was because at the time pop music & mainstream music was all about club, partying though.
To me Tyler the Creator was a reaction to that rap just like what Lana Del Rey was a reaction to that style style pop music at that time.
your videos are amazing, i love how youre not snobbing out nonrock music constantly, always studied and respectful
I'm glad I learned to just like what I like at a very early age. By the time Nirvana hit, I couldn't have cared less what the media labeled certain artists as. Because of that, I got into so many different types of music and met so many different people I would never have if I had just accepted labels and stayed in a particular lane.
They say people stop listening to new music by their early 30's. I try to stay open minded and but just like when I was young, there's so much bad music you have to wade through to find the good stuff, if you're looking to stay at the tip of the spear. Now days I'm a few years late to the party, but at least I get there.
@@michaelcrossley4716 that's more or less how I am too, these days.
I've always found myself searching under the radar to keep myself interested in the music scene tbh if I didn't keep searching for music in my teen years I would probably still only listen to good oldies, which isn't bad because my parents had great music taste but I would've never formed so many attachments to such beautiful songs. I'm glad my parents opened me up to so many genres between the 50s-80s, it helped me shape what sounds I look for!
@@benamisai-kham5892 I'm very similar to that as well.
Nirvana was pretty uninteresting tbh.
A music history professor I used to work with always used to say, “everything is just mash-up culture now”. Basically his point was that since around the advent of rap there really hasn’t been anything new, just recombinations of stuff. Call it what you want but it all pretty much fits that mashup culture definition.
Your music history professor needs to look outside the mainstream
I hate to say he’s right.
Culture used to be localized. Now, it’s globalized and commercialized to the degree of zero originality
@@AmericansikkuntSad but true. You can still find unique cultures and subcultures, of course, but you have to delete social media, turn off the Internet and get out of the big cities for it. Small towns and rural areas still have uniqueness and low-key creativity, but even that is being eroded fast by social media and the “zeitgeist.”
Realistically, hasn't it always been mashup culture?? Blues and country were pretty much the same thing before records were invented and we started slapping racial tags on them. And rock n roll built upon the foundation of blues and country, then metal built on that, then punk music built off of that, then alternative music built off of that and so on and so fourth. In fact, Rap music is essentially mash-up culture in its purest and most concentrated form, in that it litterally samples from other genres to create entirely new pieces of music. As far as I'm aware, this is just the natural way art evolves and changes since the creation of music.
@@ultimadum7785 pretty much. I personally tend to think blues and black spiritual and plantation music along with post tonal theory were the last “new” inventions. So it’s arguable as to when but we’re both saying it was long before the 2010’s lol.
Lana Del Rey is missing from this.
While I agree with the premise, Cage the Elephant deserves credit in bringing guitar alternative indie into the 2010s.
Hit machines and their songs are still inserted into every alt playlist. I believe that trend continues just like it did for foo, rhcp, etc..
One of those bands where everyone knows way more songs by them than they thought they did.
I'm gonna age myself here _but,_ I remember back in the day (1987-88?) Enya was considered "Alternative" in most record/ tape stores! Alternative music just meant all of the other music that didn't fit into a predetermined genre. You know, classical, rock, country or pop. Gawd how the time flies when yer havin fun, eh?!
I remember that Sarah McLachlan was considered "alternative". But I think that may have come about due to CanCon regulations and filtered over to the US via the border cities.
I'm probably even older than you and I don't recall Enya being considered as "alternative" back in the late 80's. In fact Enya was considered more new age not alternative.
When you mention The Lumineers, it got me thinking of how Foster the People released "Pumped Up Kicks"
And that song kicked the door down for indie pop/indie rock bands to get a taste of chart but more importantly, commericial usage. Which is funny because Foster frontman Marc Foster was a jingle writer before starting a band
Yeah and major labels werent signing punk bands or guitar driven bands anymore and all they signed was that stuff. That whole entire genre is jingle music. Go listen to the hit song Passion Pit "Carried Away" and tell me that song doesnt belong in a Downy commercial.
Pumped Up Kicks is a fucking dark song too. A lot of people don't even realize the lyrics when they're singing along with a giant grin on their face.
@@itz_premiumTrue. Isn’t it about a school shooting? Pretty horrible stuff.
The *one* thing happy clap indie got right is that it was *wholesome* . And “Pumped Up Kicks” wasn’t even that.
@@hayvenforpeace yes you nailed it. "Better run better run, faster than my bullets"
Pretty gnarly shit. But yes, it's lyrics draw quite the contrast with the soundscape which is as you said, kinda upbeat and happy. The lyrics surely are not.
As someone who was a junior in high school in 2017 when peep really blew up it was insane how he just brought every clique together. Emo kids, football players, popular kids, weird kids, everyone fucked with peep. There was a collective sadness when he passed. Obviously I wasn’t alive when Kurt Cobain passed but I’d imagine that’s what it was like.
I was a fan at the time and for his niche he kinda was like Kurt. X was too in his own way. I cried hard when Peep died though he was very marketable
Nirvana was never universally loved. Hard to believe nowadays I’m sure, but a large group of rockers hated grunge.
just like a large group of rappers hated peep. same thing.@@nox7282
When I was in high school and college in the late 80s - 90s, alternative just meant music that wasn't played on the mainstream top 40 radio stations, only the college radio stations.
I feel like alternative music began to die in the 90s, back when MTV and the big record labels realized there was a lot of money to be squeezed out of disenfranchised youth. When "grunge rock" became mainstream, it dragged alternative music with it, kicking and screaming, into the light, where they both died out. When "alternative" becomes mainstream, it's no longer alternative.
A consistent “Alternative” band throughout the 2010s that wasn’t mentioned, Cage The Elephant. At the beginning of the decade, their debut album came out a year earlier & throughout the 2010s released 4 albums with consistent Alt Rock hits….
Shake me Down
Around My Head
Aberdeen
Come A little Closer
Cigarette Daydreams
Mess Around
Trouble
Cold Cold Cold
Ready To Go
Social Cues
If they came out in the past 3 decades prior with the same popularity of Alternative… they’d be a massive success
They're considered "Indy", not "Alternative".
they sound just like everyone else at the time on KROQ
About that k-pop/emo overlap, I think I might have something to contribute. My girlfriend is an ex-emo, and a current k-pop fan (not a stan) and she told me one of the biggest reason she is into the k-pop is because of the sense of community k-pop gives her, the sense of community that she used to find in the early to late 2000 emo scene. So to her, it is the replacement (or natural progression) of that feeling of belonging.
I'm a 37 year old BTS fan and I 100% agree. What's interesting is that there's this misconception that kpop fans, and BTS fans in particular, are kids. But that's far from the truth.
I get that, sense of community is important. I was into emo music in the early 2000s and it was moreso for the relatable lyrics, but the sense of community was also really uplifting.
I can’t really get into K-pop or any of the newer stuff popular with the younger generation. My sense of community is mostly tied to my faith, family, and small town-which 100% isn’t something I would have ever expected for myself at 15 or 25!
When you put it that way, it makes me think that maybe kpop united the emo band girls and the boy band girls because in the end i think both groups appreciated the sense of community, they just had different tastes
I’m a second gen K-pop fan, former emo and I feel like the K-pop community was better before BTS hit mainstream. It used to be about getting the K-pop artist views on CZcams and more popularity in the mainstream but now those K-pop fans are just obnoxious koreaboos. Too many of them are unhinged, much like Swifties.
You might be right about this.
skipping xxxtentacion is kind of crazy considering how influential and different the kid was.
"rock is country, country is pop, pop is indie, and rap is somehow not pop, despite being more popular than everything else"
-todd in the shadows
I think it’s also important to note the change in technology as well over the years. The electric guitar revolutionized the way people wrote music in the 40s and 50s. And reduced the necessity of large brass bands to both arrange melodies as well as project sound on large stages. Now instead of 20 members. You just needed 4 with amplifiers.
Fast forward to 2023. I can write, record, and playback an epic track on a dope subwoofer and sound system for next to nothing (after buying the initial gear). Number of members required: 1 🤔
Funny how things come full circle.
Yes, now it requires little artistic skill. Music was a piece of art in the past. Created in collaboration with a group of artists. Now, it is just mostly mass-generated crap. Also, rhythmic recitation (aka hip-hop) was brainwashed into zoomers as "music". Now most of pop stuff is some form of hip-hop or fake RnB (contemporary RnB), with occasional dream-pop indie.
@@Bettie_Rage …uh…I didn’t say any of that… 🤨
@@Justin-fi9ye I meant to say that I agree with you and did not want to say that you have no artistic skill. Just wanted to add that nowadays it often requires much less or little skill. Just look at hip hop or reggeaton :-) In the 50s or 60s, creating een basic pop required artistic skills like playing instruments or good singing. Now pop is mostly autotuned and has the same computer-generated sound.
@@Bettie_Rage I would say don’t underestimate the artistry that goes into sound engineering and recording alone. It’s far harder than most people think and often less appreciated if even noticed at all by the typical listener.
I would also argue that musical composition does not have to be “hard” to be good. Most people are not musicians, and thus don’t care. Even myself, I didn’t learn guitar because I wanted to do something that would impress people. I did it so I could entertain and have a good time.
Art is human expression. You can’t tell another person what is and isn’t a sufficient form of human expression.
Yep. The entire 2010 trend was basically the "indie"-imagine dragonesque stadium crap with hooks shouting "we areee, we areeee we aree we aaaaaare"
Can't stand that decade. That "alternative" music was bland, toothless and pretentious.
There is one rock band in the 2010s that were labeled as Alternative and I love this band is Royal Blood. There from the UK/Great Britain and there are a duo rock band like the White Stripes and the Black Keys. What blew my mind is the guitarist Mike Kerr uses a electric bass and use distortion to sound like a electric guitar. Their music is a heavy rock sound and Jimmy Page once describes their music sound as magma lava coming out of the volcano. They only made two albums in the 2010s era. This year they’re making their fourth album this year and I wish I could see them live in person just to experience it.
check Death from Above 1979
Thanks for the recommendation of that band. I started listening this band last year on Apple Music and they do sound awesome too.
I was a huge lil peep fan when he was up and same with all the other alt SoundCloud rappers and when he died I just felt everything die with him I can’t explain it but it was hard for me to listen to other stuff coming out in that scene once he passed, truly a sad thing I couldn’t imagine where he could have led the scene if he was still alive… rip peep🖤
I was.. or still am a huge fan of peep. A little bit after he died, I too felt like listening to other music in that scene was hard. But then I ended up discovering amazing artists like 93FEETOFSMOKE, Lil Lotus, Guardin and Fats’e. He made waves for those artists which I’m glad he did. And yes I agree, he would’ve been way bigger too if he was still around
RIP Peep 💜
My 14 year old daughter made me listen to Lil Peeparoni while I was driving her to school one morning. The song was called "Problems" I was really surprised by how talented he was and much I enjoyed listening to it. I wish Peep could have stayed a little longer.
lmao lil peep. soo bad
@@darksu6947 talented? trash taste runs in the gens
@@nerdgasma882 my cousin showed me this fool, instantly knew it was garbage, since my cousin used to be a so called emo and suicidal,i knew it would be popular with females and emotional people
I've always found the term 'alternative music' confusing. Especially when my first exposure to it was when Nirvana was top of the Billboard charts, which by definition made them mainstream.
It was only through Nirvana that I became familiar with a lot of other, less popular music. It reminds me of an interview Kevin Devine did, who is a very similar age to me, when he was asked if he had a favourite album, and said no, because it's impossible to answer that, but replied that In Utero was the most influential as it acted like a skeleton key.
So I agree alternative must be defined by lifestyle rather than a sound, or (lack of) popularity. I wonder if the Sex Pistols were ever described as alternative, since they would qualify using that definition.
Alternative became just a genre name to people who didn't seem to notice the difference. Reminds me of kids today wearing a Sublime shirt, only to find they thought Sublime was a clothing brand.
Funny you asked that about Sex Pistols, because lot of people say alternative started with punk. Others say it begun with the likes of Velvet Underground, which is even earlier. It is a confusing and often contradictory term, that happens to be used for lot of bands i enjoy.
Alternative music as a term was created to cover musicians that don't quite fit in specific genres of the time, it has nothing to do with what instruments are used or how many people are in the "band", it's for the ones that are "hard to classify".
Back in the day alternative was what you found on college radio, the term was inclusive to pretty much anything outside mainstream. When the industry shift occurred and the whole nirvana grunge thing landed it suddenly became mainstream but pretended like it wasn’t. Whatever, it may be a lifestyle by now.
@@michaelwills1926 yeah and the interesting thing is that is how mainstream music is always created. It starts as something new (alternative) then when more people enjoy it - it gets more well known and the mainstream (changes)... then alternative starts again with a different style that people don't understand until the cycle repeats.
I think you kinda said it best in '19. It's all pop with edge. Record labels just wanted to continue to make money and found a way to market the artists as "alternative" when in reality they really are just different sounding pop.
Hi Bro, just a suggestion
For mainstream terms:
80’s new wave
90’s grunge
00’s alternative
10’s you need to come up with a new label, with due respect to the genres that have come before
Last night, I took my daughter to see The Front Bottoms. Kevin Divine and the Goddamn Band. They both remind me of 90s midwest indie rock. There was 1000 kids there dancing and singing along. Most of them were the weird girls, and it was so much fun. I'm 46, and it reminded me of the college radio rock of my youth.
I'm jealous, and I don't even know any music by The Front Bottoms, and some Kevin Devine.
Did he play the riff to Come as You Are before stopping? I've seen videos of him doing it for laughs a couple of times.
Hell yeah I saw Kevin Devine back in 2010, I’m glad he’s still doing shows!
You’re a cool parent
@mitchellkeeran6388 thank you 😊
Really good video! I think your observations are spot on. Back in 2018, my niece was the "weird girl" at her school, dyed hair, piercings, "alternative" by all definitions. But she was all about anime and Kpop instead of nu metal or pop punk.
gen z has taken over a love of asian stuff that only a handful of millenials were just getting into by the late 90s. I started listening to a couple japanese bands within jazz and alternative but rarely watch anime.
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Maybe because im from europe, but the 90's were filled with non heavy guitar alternative music. With bands like the Prodigy or Triphop bands like Portshead and Tricky and there was a huge industrial gothic scene, evolved from kraftwerk and new wave bands
Your European is showing, as you said
Isn't Europe/UK known for electronic music?
I'm kinda surprised there was no mention of Tame Impala, idk if its just the people I know but to me it kind of falls in the category of like psychedelic-alternative for pot smoking former emo kids
Great band. I just got into them.
@@erik8719 The whole band is actually just one guy, he plays all the instruments in the recordings and has people fill-in with him for live shows, insane talent.
I think there’s been a death to alternative culture in general, not just music. Hipsters in the early 2000s were the last wave of bohemian that stood counter to mainstream culture. Of course capitalism swooped in to dilute the movement as the usual anti-capitalistic attitudes permeated. But we haven’t seen Hipster evolve, which means it just died, and there’s been no replacement. Lay persons like to make these groups into style statements, but they’re actually tied to heavy leftist politics. And millennials and Gen Z have reduced these movements into “aesthetics” and style movements, completely divorced from the political meanings. Punk, Grunge, Goth,Metalheads, whatever, any variety of alternative persons was tied to politics and a way of life that ran counter to the mainstream narrative. We don’t really see that currently. And I think LGBTQ is the new alt culture - I live in the Deep South so that statement is valid here lol. I just think we’re too separated now. Everyone is into everything with access to internet. Conservatives are NOT the same conservatives we saw even 20 years ago. And someone can look alt. But now it’s just for the style of it, it doesn’t necessarily point to a way of life or political leanings like it used to. When Nirvana hit, you knew Kurt wasn’t just alternative because he looked so, it was because his politics were staunch, succinct, and ran counter to the conservative narrative. And I know some have argued that conservatism is the new punk rock 😂 BUT conservative ideas have always been a mainstay in this overly Christian nation, so conservative waves are more a doubling down of the status quo, not punk. If I tell someone I listen to alt music that no longer means anything. But for many decades the music you listened to spoke to a way of life, politics, and experience. Things are very different.
The idea of “mainstream” culture is not that meaningful now. We don’t have TV shows or types of music that almost everyone is familiar with, as was the case when 1960s counterculture happened.
@@markjames8664 I agree with that, mainstream culture has disseminated a bit. I’d say the 90s was the last decade where we had a semblance of strong mainstream culture. The internet has definitely changed our relationship to culture. I think it’s wild to go to CZcamss trending page and see major pop stars can garner only a few millions views on a song release or video, and I could go offline and meet hordes of people that didn’t even know xyz’s song or video was released. Back in the day, if MJ or Madonna would release a video, it was a damn near national event! It’d be everywhere and everyone would have seen it, regardless if you were into it or not. Now we don’t have those shared experiences or media. It’s again, so separated. We can really lead out these insular existences so easily.
I don’t know where I fall into bc I feel like everyone tries to be alternative but are ignorant and have strongly left or right opinions that align with either agenda.
Nu-Metal was basically the last hard rock/metal movement that became big before SocMed began to eat into our lives! 🤣🤘
great video. As someone who grew up believing that the word Alternative was a synonym for Blind Melon, your response was much better articulated.
I’ve always considered alternative to mean like an alternative to something. An artist of any genre doing something outside the currently established mainstream.
The 2010s reminds me of peak commercialization of the folk indie movement. But also the return of legacy 90s rock bands like Toad the Wet Sprocket
The indie folk stuff was all major record labels wanted to sign and push in the 2010s in terms of "rock.". They were done with "rock music."
I didn't know RHCP put out an album in the last 15 years. Super important release there. Pierce the Veil dropped Misadventures in '16. They were winning all kinds of awards, selling out a world tour.
RHCP put out 2 albums last year too. Some good bangers in those
@@spastheghost some *generic pirate-voiced rehashes on there
@@matturner6890Carry Me Home, Eddie, Bella, White Braids and Pillow Chair, Aquatic Mouth Dance, and Here Ever After are all better songs than anything they made in 2011/2016 and on par with 1999-2006.
RHCP released two albums in 2022 that are essentially a double album like Stadium Arcadium and it is phenomenal. 😊
i'm 40 i remember in the 90s people accepting other forms of music non grunge or rock based as alternative there were a new crop of electronic bands like prodigy and daft punk and the chemical brothers that had some success i wonder where the hardline was drawn because there was definitely a split in thinking sometime in the 2000s about this. yeah kpop stans are an interesting group to say the least, my daughter is 16 and is a legit stan and i'd say her personality in another era would have definitely been mall emo, their fans can be really obsessive and cringe though and very gatekeepy it's weird. songs kinda slap though for real there production is extremely good
There’s an awesome band called Failure that was around in the 90’s, actually wrote one of the best rock albums of that decade, they broke up in 97-98 and came back 17 years later. Their latest album, Wild Type Droid, is some of the best music they’ve released yet. They’re just independent from a label(by choice I’d assume, they could get a deal but just handle everything themselves instead) and their albums can’t be bought in stores. If more people knew of them they easily could get huge. Major label support can’t be understated. That’s for sure.
Wait, they're back? I didn't know that.
@@pardisazizi7703 They are! And they sound fucking great! Enjoy! And if you haven’t listened to fantastic planet in a long time, I’d suggest cranking it up and just taking it all in. Rarely do you hear something so good. It holds up to this day. “Heliotropic,” chefs 💋 fr! And the newest album is truly special. All this is subjective of course but if you’re actually happy to hear they’re back and not being sarcastic lol you should be really excited
@@khalbrando2990 haha of course I'm serious. I just didn't see it coming. I'm beyond happy to check out their new stuff you have no idea. First Hum and now Failure? Feels like a dream. I'm just obsessed with 90's rock I guess can't help it. Anyway thank you and surely seems like the best time to revisit Fantastic Planet.
I'll check them out. Thank you!
Yes! Very underrated. Seen them live multiple times. They're not just a studio band & sound great live. Fantastic Planet I'd recommend to anyone curious. 🤟🏻
I remember seeing From First to Last opening up for Bad Religion… the crowd let them have it! Skrillex walked off saying “I’ll be more successful than any of you” 😕 he wasn’t wrong
Lmao, is there a clip of that somewhere
@@negative6442 roflmao
Imagine dragons ruined the Alternative scene 😂😂
Maroon 5, Imagine Dragons, and their ilk today are as "rock" as Willie Nelson is a sober man! 🤣🤣🤣
Might be good to make video about the 2020s year by year so far. Seems like genres such as hyperpop, rage, aggressive drift phonk, tearout, digicore, future riddim, colour bass, etc.. are carrying on legacy of "Alternative" without even being Rock oriented.
See Kordhell, Muerte, Ace Aura, 100 gecs, phonon, Chime, SEBii, etc...
Tearout/heavy riddim/briddim right now is some of the harshest yet unique sounds going on. Drift phonk has been using rock/metal samples for awhile now. Heck, Kordhell (arguably biggest drift phonk artist in popularity) has background in metal music. Now, there's even a branch of metal phonk that came out of it pretty recent.
Then there's this whole scene of sort of bedroom indie/EDM/y2k revival that reminds me of vibe of 2000s indietronica like Postal Service. With colour bass Chime has a song called "Intermolecular Lullaby" that gives off an Owl City vibe mixed with ASMR sounding dubstep.
Poppy! 😊
Alternative music was exceptionally diverse in the '90's.: College rock, garage rock, grunge, dream pop, girls riot, hip-hop, trip-hop, big beat, britpop, jungle, ambient, house, trance, breakbeat, art pop, goth, hip house,, just to name a few genres. It was not just rock, far from it. Such a fantastic era, largely forgotten.
All the internert seems to remember these days about he 90s is stupid stuff thta we avoided like Friends and Full House and boy bands and power rangers and beanie babies.... I remember 90s nostalgia being about the stuff with an edge and that sometimes made fun of the zombie mainstream... now it's all about what the toddlers of 1999 liked 😞 And I especially hate when they throw in all the obvious stuff from 2000-2003 as "part of the 90s"... They need to do their research.
@@chrisrj9871 Yes, the '90's are superficially put in bad light and ignored. But it was the last full decade when talent was discovered, supported and shown on public media.
Suprised you didn't mention Lil B, he embodied the punkness of hip-hop
Respect to Tha Based God
ya also XXX
And some writing clan
2013 Tyler should’ve been such an easy entry point for hardcore/metal fans into rap. Tyler’s entire ethos is punk to its core
there was definitely some crossover there. not to mention tyler and them did hella shows with Trash Talk which is pretty hardcore
"should have" sounds like you made an analysis on a population of hardcore and metal fans and concluded that unfortunately, OFWGKTA did not, in fact, serve as their entry point for rap.
wutang clan which are kinda similar to OF, were also popular amongst this
Other than something like RATM or other nu metal acts which were way before my time, I think my entry into modern rap as a metalhead was Run the Jewels. Idk what it is, but a lot of us seem to like RTJ. Tyler is also cool, as is DOOM... maybe because they break the mold of what more mainstream rap sounds like
Tyler was the main reason I started branching out from my young pop punk stuff into other genres like trad punk, garage punk, and even into like emo rap and like horrorcore. The guy was so easily accessible and really set the stage for the kinda alternative and punk resurgence we've gotten over the past decade.
Mid-30s guy here about to chime in about K-pop. I got into it right around the time Gangnam Style blew up. I explored a bunch of stuff and I eventually came to a love for the different hip-hop sounding groups and artists more than the actual pop artists, although I still like some. To me, the 2010s in music just reminded me of depression and I tend to want a little happiness (or catchiness) in my music as an escape. Korean music provided that. I’m less on the K-pop train these days (and I never acted like the fans you think of either), but the Korean hip-hop scene is pretty fantastic and makes me feel like I’m finding those underground rappers of old.
Zug Izland, Necro , and Blaze. Check em' out.
Lil Peep was actually really inventive and had a great vision as to where the music industry should go
🤡
Yeah you're wrong.
Not a fan of this generations music, I’m completely happy being stuck in the 90s and 2000s
what kinda music u in to
Ok boomer
There is nothing even remotely alternative about Kim Petras.
H was the only alternative feature on Nirvana too. What means alternative?
This guy is really insightful, and funny. Although, I feel really really old. I don't know who any of these artists are. I was with him in his timeline up until about the year 2006. I guess thats when I just unplugged from popular music world and never really returned. Whole generations of major label artists have come and gone and I missed it all. But kudos for mentioning Fugazi.
I don't really understand the hate on BMTH they're definitely one of the best experimental rock/metal bands of the time. They go A LOT harder than most of the biggest metal bands out there, but can pivot into alt pop well too. My favourite album will always be Count Your Blessings, but they only make great music so I can't help but respect their evolution over time. I'm excited to see what they do next. ✌️
I remember when the No Wave Scene was considered experimental.
I love these 'song to to sum up the year' videos. Great way to stay creative and interesting while still giving your audience what they want and not annoying them (I like the Suicide Boys etc. videos by the way 😂). Hopefully more to come.
Alt culture just got smashed together with nerd culture.
Mac demarco and Tame Impala are two really good artist imo who represent and revival or rejuvenating on the rock and roll indie alt sound
i'd just say rock though especially that is indie rock. Rock and Roll is dead long time ago. The word meaning "roll" is doesn't exist anymore unless you rip off Elvis Presley, Led Zeppelin, Mötley Crüe I guess lol
The line between alt rock and rock has been much more blurred in the 2000s than in the 70s, 80s, and 90s
i love how hiphop became more experimental and boundary pushing that started in the 2010s until today
cause you could take sounds and samples from literally anything and just rap over it. there wasn't a set sound that it had to be like Rock or Alt has had.
I don't, that shit is garbage now too
@@daveSoupy I feel like Led Zeppelin was their "hip hop" of their time except they steal songs lol they remake older songs to their own new sound, re-arrange, new production, more experimental.
Why do you guys ruin everything that’s nice life?
[insert lame complaint about hip hop]
@@astrowermpink tape was pretty dope and there's still good underground emo rappers
I listen to Peep & Tracy everyday tho! 😅
I love that you included both Twenty One Pilots and Billie Eilish on this list. They are both some of my favorite current alternative music to listen to. I've always been more drawn to the lyrics rather than the sound of a band, and they are covering topics way closer to what alt/emo was back in the 90's/2000's, more than anything you hear on rock radio.
@ciao214Zyou a generation
Anyone who is familiar with Billie Eilish's deepcuts would know that she is definitely alternative. There is no way you can classify songs like oxytocin, happier than ever, xanny, and pretty much every other song that wasnt a single as anything other than alternative.
Don’t think you understand what alternative music is.
alternative or not, I'd rather wax my eyelashes off than listen to her.
@@bloodlove93Billie Eyelash
While I understand that the genre probably needed a refresh, I do not like most of what is considered "alternative" anymore, Billie Ellish in particular makes shit music
Lil peep is gonna be the goat of a generation for alternative. he was such a presence in concert asw. RIP gus
suchhh a well made video, good on you for putting in the hard work here.
Speaking as a guy born in the late 1980s, I began to think about rock’s/metal’s popularity decline when one journalist friend told me back in 2019ish that there are more rock/metal fans 30 and up than those younger when we were talking about the would-have-been Woodstock 2019 lineup (which I HATED like many other rockers did).
Yeah I did notice that rock’s/metal’s relevance to the mainstream began to diminish rather quickly as the 2000s turned into the 2010s (I graduated from university around the time that transition happened, and I thankfully left the academe just before rock/metal was shut out completely)!
But still to this day, I find the way rock/metal was so quickly ushered out of the mainstream (in the space of at most 2-3 years) to be so jarring (and tbh, quite forced by TPTB)! And pop culture was never the same since that happened (a change that ultimately wasn’t always for the better)!
I honestly can’t help but feel bad for the younger generations of youth that have missed out on rock/metal being considered “cool” even by the mainstream. Pop culture had a lot more “oomph” and a sense of authenticity when guitar-driven music was relevant, and that’s a BIG LOSS IMHO!
Alternative Rock in the mainstream died in 2004, then it fully died in 2009.
Alternative Rock was born in 1989 with bands like Faith No More, King’s X, early RHCP, 24-7 Spyz, Mordred, and as well Soundgarden and Nirvana in 1989.
By 1991 Alternative Rock is in the mainstream with Smells like Teen Spirit and Nirvana kicking the doors down for so many bands to get signed.
Alternative Rock in the mainstream died in 2004 with the Nu-Metal scene being dead by 2004, Alternative Rock then has another 5 years when it fully dies in 2009.
Alternative Rock was around for 20 years from 1989 to 2009. And imo the subgenres that was under the Alternative Rock umbrella were Funk Metal, Funk Rock, Grunge, Sludge Metal, Industrial Metal, Industrial Rock, Groove Metal, Post Grunge, and Nu-Metal/Rap Metal.
Nothing else was apart of that movement imo.
there is so much wrong with this comment
@@transsexual_void_fairy No there isn’t
@@nu-metalfan2654 Alternative rock wasnt born in 1989. It was probably born in the late 60s with The Velvet Underground and then The Stooges and then continued with punk in the 70s. The of course REM and U2 in the early 80s. It was well established by 1989.
@@Chaz4543 Well basically what you’re saying is everything is Alternative Rock.
What is it an Alternative of?, because every band under the sun gets labelled Alternative Rock for some strange reason.
What the actual Alternative Rock movement was, started in 1989 with King’s X, Faith No More, Jane’s Addiction, early RHCP, Mordred, Living Colour, and 24-7 Spyz, and later Primus.
Then Grunge/Sludge came about with the movement with Melvins, Tad, Soundgarden, AIC, Nirvana, My Sister’s Machine, Gruntruck, L7, Hole, Babes In Toyland, and Pearl Jam.
While that was going on Groove Metal and Industrial was going on with Pantera, Machine Head, Prong, White Zombie, Fear Factory, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, etc etc and that was the same movement.
When Grunge died Post Grunge arrived with Candlebox, Collective Soul, Dishawalla, Live, Silverchair, Tonic, Bush, Days Of The New, Our Lady Peace, Seven Mary Three and Creed.
Then Nu Metal arrived with KoRn, Limp Bizkit, early Incubus, Snot, early Deftones, Hed Pe, Kittie, Slipknot, Coal Chamber, Static X etc etc.
Then when Nu-Metal died the last and 2nd wave of Post Grunge bands arrived with Shinedown, Nickelback, Thoery Of A Deadman, Alter Bridge, Black Stone Cherry and Halestorm etc etc and those bands were really the last era of not only Alternative Rock but the Rock genre in general.
True Alternative Rock was the movement that started with Funk Metal/Funk Rock, Grunge/Sludge, Groove Metal, and Industrial Metal/Rock, and ended with Nu-Metal/Rap Metal and Post Grunge.
And all that lasted from 1989 to 2009 (1991 to 2004 in the mainstream).
@@nu-metalfan2654 Though what was considered "rock" back around 2010 (when bands like Muse were at their peak in popularity) was still aurally closer to all the Rock we all grew up and loved that came in the years before, than what became considered "rock" starting around 2012 onwards! For me, that was when Rock truly died in the mainstream!
I agree, 2016 did kind of feel unmemorable in terms of alternative music. Aside from A7X releasing The Stage kind of outta nowhere at the tail end of the year.
I can tell by the thumbnail, I'm older than you. You grow up and you chill out and realize, yeah everyone is welcome to contribute. Gatekeeping is a very young thing to do. You grow out of it.
Alternative music was never necessarily a certain style it was called alternative because it was an alternative to the mainstream
Hip hop is definitely going through what 2016 alternative and metal/rock went through. It seems stale and the popularity has gone down. I think the artists have driven the mumble rap into the ground and people have noticed that
What are you talking about? Popularity gone down? There is literally not a single argument of this other than you talking about trap hihats.
Mumble rap hasnt even been used as a hater term for 5 years, have you been frozen?
Mumble rap??😂😂
You still stuck in 2016
Bro said mumble rap 💀💀
The only thing keeping Hip Hop afloat right now are the household name/legacy artists (and we haven't really had any household names emerge in Hip Hop for at least the last ten years)! The genre is pretty much were Rock was as the 2000s transitioned into the 2010s!
I think for 2016 you could’ve put ‘Look at me’ by XXXTENTACION. Even though the song came out in late Dec. of 2015, the song blew up the next year, and was basically the ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ of SoundCloud rap.
Good call!
2017 was the year it really had impact.
The 2010's had Arctic Monkey's AM, St. Vincent, and Queens of the Stone Age but overall guitar really seemed to get de-emphasized. Even the Mars Volta went synthy.
Thanks for recognizing Peep and who he was about to become. I'm a little older than you but, like you, I was able to appreciate and enjoy Lil Peep I could see Peep's trajectory. I'm sure I would have come to dislike his music (had he not passed) as he would've had more exposure and more become more mainstream. The only other band/group I liked was/is $B and a "guitar" band that I had an interest in the mid 2010s was Pears (I think they were on Fat Mike's label). I'm still waiting on someone new to peak my interest and impress me
Hoobastank was playing salsa the other day
That's alternative af.
I'd say Odd Future, MIA and Death Grips were the three main artists that brought that kind of punk spirit back to rap music in the early 2010's, especially in how MIA and Death Grips popularized more abrasive industrial sounds in hip hop. From there you can draw a line directly to acts like JPEGMAFIA, Injury Reserve, some of the more interesting soundcloud rappers like Lil Yachty and Lil Uzi Vert who this year both dropped albums with massive rock influences, and Playboi Carti and his whole Opium collective. The spirit of punk rock is alive and thriving in these spaces, and it seems like rap has never been more experimental and abrasive as it is right now in the places that are just beneath the surface, which is very exciting.
I would throw Run The Jewels in there to
The reality is that there are still an overwhelming number of great alternative bands that perform using the guitar/bass/drum approach, but you have to look to find them. The industry decides what the focus will be on and they push it relentlessly until it’s adopted as the norm. I may be an old guy from the 90’s, but that perspective allows me to see that the change is music isn’t just a difference between generational tastes. Growing up in the 80’s & 90’s gave me my “own” current music, just as kids have now. The difference versus now though is that we were able to dig the music that came before too, because it was also MUSIC that was composed of notes and chords and had theory behind it. You could prefer the aggressive style of Pantera, but also appreciate and like Simon & Garfunkel or the Everly Brothers because, despite their finished products sounding radically different, they were birthed from the same place. Hell, even Rap from back then is far more sophisticated than the shit we hear today. Listen to the Chronic or Doggystyle and you hear musical instruments and incredible production. Creating beats on a computer and getting in a mic has its place, but it damn sure should not be the mainstream. Creating music shouldn’t be that easy, and isn’t…I think that’s what gets lost in the debate about what’s currently considered popular music. Knowing the amount of effort and passion that is required in mastering an instrument, or more, was one of the reasons rock or alt music was so incredible. Putting it all together to create a good song was a rare achievement. Even if you didn’t like a particular song you could still marvel at the guitarists skills or the singer’s range….that’s mostly gone in what is pushed on us today. Being “new” or “different” just for the sake of it isn’t better, and it doesn’t equate with creativity. Prince was a guy who understood that and said as much. If it were him saying this today instead of me, most people who’d want to argue otherwise wouldn’t bother; but that’s not the case unfortunately. I can guarantee that if music programming, whether online or in radio was chosen by music fans and not suits, what we’d be hearing wouldn’t sound that different from what has supposedly been lost. Here’s to hoping that popular music soon gets back into the hands of musicians…
@ciao214Z I turned 18 in 1993 when “alternative” was so prevalent that it was nearly mainstream…it was an amazing period in music. At the time of this writing I’m 48 y/o, so while I may not be 100, I’m damn near halfway there. This means that I am in fact not a Millennial, but part of the generation that spawned them; Gen X (a generation largely forgotten by today’s media, which seems to think society went from Boomers straight to Millennials. You should check us out…as not only are we a pretty hip generation, we’re the ones who invented all of the shit that the generations that followed can’t live without.)✌🏻.
The Naruto run to the fridge is the main selling point for the factor meals for me.
I would say the disappearance of "guitar music" from the mainstream for a while did a lot of good for the genre. It encouraged newer rock bands to kinda go back to the drawing board and take inspiration from genres and scenes of the past that never got a chance to break into the mainstream, like shoegaze, dream pop, post-rock and 90's emo, or create wacky fusion sounds, essentially throwing shit at the wall and seeing what stuck like bands like Black Midi and The Last Dinner Party are doing. Since the pandemic ended we've seen all sorts of scenes come up, ranging from the new "grungegaze"/"emogaze" thing that's been all the rage on some corners of TikTok lately, to the whole Windmill scene of London with bands like Black Midi, Black Country New Road, Squid, Shame, Yard Act and Goat Girl (as well as Windmill-adjacent bands like Wet Leg and The Last Dinner Party), to the whole Eras-Tour-opening-act-core of artists like the members of boygenius, Snail Mail, Soccer Mommy, Mitski etc. which have taken rock music in a much more feminine direction. And hardcore is having a moment right now as well with a lot of aspect of hardcore culture spreading over into hip hop, even before the pandemic. All this, combined with the near-death of any distinction between "alternative" and "mainstream" in zoomer culture along with how many people of my generation don't really care about "new" music and popular trends anymore these days (in my view exemplfied by pop singers like Carly Rae Jepsen, Charli XCX and Caroline Polachek, and bands like Panchiko and Drop Nineteens being dug out of the dumpster, respectively), is making for some very interesting sounds and scenes.
No mention of Tame Impala, Grimes or St Vicent? Some of them came close to mainstream in the 2010s scooping up Grammys and propelling alternative music to great heights in the 2010s. It was a great decade for alternative music especially in the first half. I'm sorry but alternative music is nowhere near Finn's strongest topics.
So nice to see someone mention St Vincent.
Too Finn the only relevant rock music is adjacent to the Warped Tour.
I am old, Gen-X, don't know much about music after maybe 2005. To post-punk music buffs my age, Alternative actually died when Nirvana went platinum. 'Alternative' meant something when FM Top40 radio dominated American music (it really did, late 70's, 80's and early 90's). Radio ruled and almost everyone listened to Pop/Rock mixed with Disco, R&B, Country, early Hip Hop and hair metal. But people with better taste sought out 'the Alternative' that rarely got airplay outside NYC and LA. We heard about 'Alternative music' by word of mouth, college radio, underground magazines, etc. It was launched with Punk, got called 'New Wave', Independent, Post-Modern, College Radio and finally 'Alternative'. It slowly grew in popularity until finally becoming mainstream with Nirvana and grunge. But when MTV co-opted 'alternative' music, it was over. Then the internet changed everything forever.
I think the answer is simple technology has made it easy for a creative kid to make a album out of sampling,digital drum machines, software synth’s, and digital effects using a DAW program on their laptops or IPADS. They don’t need to form a band, take the time to learn to play together to express them selves. It’s quicker, cheaper, and easier. They can make a song, upload it on the Internet as soon as it’s finished.
The 2010s were horrible! Thank God i grew up in the late 90s and early 2000s with Korn Limp bizkit, linkin Park, papa roach, Staind, Blink 182, greenday,
THIS! As a late 80s baby, I am glad I graduated from uni and left the academe before rock/metal were quietly but forcefully ushered out of the mainstream (which happened as the 2000s changed into the 2010s, and by 2012ish guitar-driven music was effectively shut out of the mainstream consciousness)!
One thing you could have mentioned in 2016 is that was the year Ghost won the grammy award for best metal performance.
A dark day indeed.
I think it’s pretty cool that you haven’t changed your persona or your overall content since becoming a success with your work, and meeting cool people. So good on you.
These vidoes where a topic in music is broadly disscused is sooooo much more entertaining and informative than a 90s/00s band's history. More of these please
Alternative music in the 2010s is all the Indie Pop hipster bands. Lumineers are the only artist in the description that fit that. Add bands like Foster the People, Vampire Weekend, MGMT, Tame Impala, M83, Chvrches, Walk the Moon, AWOL Nation, Neon Trees, The 1975, Bastill, Florence and the Machine. Thats what the major record labels were promoting as alternative in the 2010s.
It's not dead though. It still alive and thriving. There's tons of bands on Bandcamp that want to be heard. You all just stop listening to radio and started streaming only what you want to here. So that's all you hear. Turn you radio on sometime and let someone else decide what you listen to for a change.
I'm old (like you). I feel like you are my guide to the modern musical landscape (which is confusing at times). When I know a few of the artists you rattle off as examples of Point X, Y, Z I am honestly proud of myself. Your insight that K-Pop is "edgy" bc it's just slightly off from center is so on point - wow!
it's hard to be "alternative" when you're mainstream.
Finn, great video. I really value your conclusion about how alternative goes beyond sound and has always been about culture.
Mainstream itself is now a genre.. not a space that music sits in because people genuinely love the music.. your favorite music still has huge amounts of supporters and is something that would be an amazing experience to see live. Rock is not dead.. mainstream is
Your openmindedness on these sort of topics and not dismissing music that isnt "guys with guitars" is why I keep coming back to watch your videos - great run down.
absolutely lover your videos, randomly found your channel and now can't stop watching! Great balance between facts and your own opinion, jokes and reminders about grwat music hits
I think you underestimate the impact of California in 2016. I was in hs, and that was the first time I experienced that modern rock music was being regularly played and talked about in the locker rooms, at social gatherings, etc. among my age group. Lead me to becoming a huge blink fan and then a huge pop punk fan to alt rock more broadly. That album completely changed the course of what music I looked out for and listened to for the years after and through now, and I think many others I knew had a similar experience