Record companies started to apply the term ‘new wave’ as a label to groups they wanted to promote as an alternative for punk rock. Music critics rather speak of ‘alternative rock’ – or ‘alt-rock’ – an umbrella term for all music they consider more original, challenging, or experimental than the musical ‘mainstream’. Unlike ‘art-rock’, it is about music that makes audiences dance and sing along, and bands that fans can identify with. R.E.M. is an example, as well as Nirvana, Pearl jam, Red hot chili peppers, Pixies, Cure and Green day’ who all figured in the alt-rock boom in the 1990s and later. Here R.E.M. sings ‘The one I love’.
Grunch
Another recognisable style developed under the alt-rock umbrella, namely ‘grunge’, with the city of Seattle at its epicentre. Nirvana’s ‘Smells like teen spirit’ on the album Nevermind marked the beginning of this genre. Listen to singer Kurt Cobain in the song ‘About a girl’ here. I choose an ‘unplugged’ version to illustrate Kurt’s musical prowess.
Grunge, like punk, was a reaction to the commercialisation of pop music. Grunge refers to the ‘raw’ sound of the music, sometimes also the result of the amateurish nature of the recordings. Grunch combines elements of post-punk and heavy metal. Most songs are introspective, melodic and have a melancholic undertone. Whatever you call the genre, the musical level towers above that of most famous (or infamous) punk groups.
Grunge may be a reaction to the commercialisation of pop music, but the genre also unintentionally contributed to it through its (cash) success. Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana also known as the voice of generation X, was uncomfortable with this. We don’t know if this led to the fatal self-inflicted shot that ended his life.
Under the predictable rubric of ‘post-grunge’, bands like Bush and Candlebox imitated the sound of Nirvana. Other post-grunge bands in the early 20ste century included Queens of the stone age, 3 Doors down, Foo Fighters, Nickelback and Matchbox Twenty. Alanis Morissette is one of the female solo artists within the genre. Form your own picture by clicking on the links. Listen here to Queens of the stone age with ‘Go with the flow’.
Britpop
Grunge was a predominantly American phenomenon, and as a reaction to the pessimism of grunge, another form of alt-rock developed in Britain, namely Britpop, fronted by bands such as Blur and Oasis. Oasis’ album ‘(What is the story) Morning glory’ (1995) was the third best-selling album in British history. Listen to Oasis’ song Wonderwall here
Of course, several groups also resisted the fact that these two groups defined the image of Britpop. Examples include Radiohead, Travis and Coldplay. In their turn, they used the label – how could it be otherwise – post-Britpop. Listen here to Radiohead’s ‘Karma police’, a good example of the broad genre of ‘alt-rock’ because it is more original, challenging and experimental than the musical ‘mainstream’, however you name it.
Rock versus pop
This gives cause to reflect on the terms rock and pop music. Rock artists generally set themselves apart from pop. Either because they found pop too commercial, or because of their artistic pretensions or because of their connection to the subculture from which the music they made came. Much of pop music is made with the intention that a wide audience will appreciate it and buy the albums in question. The ‘producers’ of this music are outspoken professionals with no artistic pretensions in the first place. They usually employ a mix of styles to create ‘hooks’ to attract and hold the audience’s attention.
What about art?
But when is art? Such a predicate remains extremely subjective. The fact that songs are ‘played’ and ‘covered’ for decades may be an indication of their artistic level. The same is true of much ‘early music’. Of the many compositions from past centuries, only a small proportion are constantly played, listened to, praised, and elevated to art.
Parts of the rock music I am featuring in this series are now widely known and appreciated. Think of the songs that have been in the upper echelons of the Dutch NPO Top 2000 for decades. It’s only one criterion, but I have little problem speaking of art in such cases. I will close this series of posts not with number 1 (Bohemian rhapsody), a work of art par excellence, but with the long-standing number 2, the original version of Hotel California by the Eagles (1977), a song that shows off both my daughter’s and my grandson’s playlists. This version features Felder and Walsh’s famous two-minute-plus guitar solo:
Society, environment, art and music 