Main article: 1980s in music
In the 1980s,
popular rock included a wide range of variety. The early part of the decade saw
pop-New Wave bands remain extremely popular, while the first pop-punk
performers, like Billy Idol and
The Go-Go's, saw widespread fame. Led by the American folky singer-songwriter Paul Simon and
the British former prog rock star Peter Gabriel, rock became fused with a variety of folk music styles from around the
world. This came to be known as "world music",
and included fusions like Aboriginal rock and punta-rockero.
Main article: Hair metal
Heavy metal languished in obscurity during most of the 70s. A few bands
maintained large followings, like Kiss and Aerosmith, and there were occasional mainstream hits, like Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper". Music critics overwhelmingly hated
the genre, though, and mainstream listeners generally avoided it because of its
strangeness. It left its mark on hard progressive bands like Chicago and
flamboyant glam rock
performers like Gary Glitter.
Even while innovative metal bands like Metallica were forming numerous subgenres of metal, and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal was finding its own fans, a group of musicians were formulating what
became known as hair metal. Bon Jovi are often regarded as the first of these bands to gain
popularity. They were known for long hair and feminized use of make-up,
clothing and jewelry; nevertheless, their songs were defiantly masculine, even
macho, focusing on girls, drinking and violence. Within a few years, hair metal
dominated radio; bands like Def Leppard, Ratt and Extreme rose
to fame, often collapsing under pressure later. Many were one-hit wonders.
By the end of the 1980s, a formula was developing in which a hair metal
band had two hits, one a soft ballad, and the other a hard-rocking anthem. 1987 saw
the release of Appetite for Destruction by Guns n' Roses, which skyrocketed to the top of the charts. Led by controversial
frontman Axl Rose, Guns
n' Roses rode the hair metal wave, wearing long hair and playing pop-metal. In
contrast to other bands, they were not feminized in the slightest and
incorporated influences from genres like thrash metal.
Main article: Alternative music
The term alternative music (also often known as alternative rock) was coined in the early 1980s to describe bands which didn't fit into the mainstream genres of the
time. Bands dubbed "alternative" could be most any style not
typically heard on the radio, however, most alternative
bands were unified by their collective debt to punk. Although these groups never generated spectacular album sales, they
exerted a considerable influence on the generation of musicians who came of age
in the 80s. Two of the most important bands were R.E.M. and
the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
Main article: Grunge music
By the late 1980s rock radio was dominated by aging rock artists, slick
commercial pop-rock and hair metal; MTV had arrived and brought with it a perception that style was more
important than substance. Any remaining traces of rock and roll rebelliousness
or the punk ethic seemed to have been subsumed into corporate-sponsored and
mass-marketed product. Disaffected by this trend, some young musicians began to
reject the polished, glamour-oriented approach and created crude, sometimes
angry music. The American Pacific Northwest region, especially Seattle, became a hotbed of this movement, dubbed grunge.
Early grunge bands, particularly Mudhoney and Soundgarden, took
much of their sound from early heavy metal and much of their approach from
punk, though they eschewed punk's ambitions towards political and social
commentary to proceed in a more nihilistic direction. Grunge remained a mostly
local phenomenon until the breakthrough of Nirvana in
1991 with their album Nevermind. A slightly more melodic, more completely produced variation on their
predecessors, Nirvana was an instant sensation worldwide and made much of the
competing music seem stale and dated by comparison, hair metal faded almost
completely from the mainstream.
Nirvana whetted the public's appetite for more direct, less polished
rock music, leading to the success of bands like Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots. Pearl Jam took a somewhat more traditional rock approach than other
grunge bands but shared their passion and rawness. Pearl Jam were a major
commercial success from their debut but, beginning with their second album,
refused to buy in to the corporate promotion and marketing mechanisms of MTV and Ticketmaster, with
whom they famously engaged in legal skirmishes over ticket service fees.
While grunge itself can be seen as somewhat limited in range, its
influence was felt across many geographic and musical boundaries; many artists
who were similarly disaffected with commercial rock music suddenly found record
companies and audiences willing to listen, and dozens of disparate acts
positioned themselves as alternatives to mainstream music; thus alternative rock emerged from the underground.
Main article: Britpop
While America was full of grunge, post-grunge, and hip hop, Britain
launched a 1960s revival in the mid-90s, often called Britpop, with
bands like Oasis, Radiohead, Pulp and Blur.
These bands drew on a myriad of styles from the 80s British rock underground,
including twee pop, shoegazing and space rock and
from the alternative rock. For a time, the Oasis-Blur rivalry was similar to
the Beatles-Rolling Stones rivalry. While bands like Blur tended to follow on
from the Small Faces and The Kinks, Oasis mixed the attitude of the Rolling
Stones with the melody of the Beatles. Radiohead took inspiration from
performers like Elvis Costello, Pink Floyd and R.E.M. with
their progressive rock music, manifested in their eponymous album - OK Computer.
These bands became very successful, and for a time Oasis was given the title
"the biggest band in the world" but slowed down after band breakups
and slightly less popular support. On the other hand Radiohead threw themselves
into electronic experimentation in their latest records.
Main article: Indie rock
Alternative music and the rebellious, DIY ethic
it espoused became the inspiration for grunge, the popularity of which,
paradoxically, took alternative rock into the mainstream. By the mid-90s, the
term "alternative music" had lost much of its original meaning as
rock radio and record buyers embraced increasingly slick, commercialized, and
highly marketed forms of the genre. At the end of the decade, hip hop music had pushed much of alternative rock out of the mainstream, and most of
what was left played pop-punk and
highly polished versions of a grunge/rock mishmash.
Following the lead of Pearl Jam, many acts who,
by choice or fate, remained outside the commercial mainstream, became part of
the indie rock
movement. Indie rock acts placed a premium on maintaining complete control of
their music and careers, often releasing albums on their own independent record
labels and relying on touring, word-of-mouth, and airplay on independent or
college radio stations for promotion. Linked by an ethos more than a musical
approach, the indie rock movement encompasses a wide range of styles, from
hard-edged, grunge influenced bands like Superchunk to punk-folk singers such as Ani DiFranco.
Currently, many countries have an extensive local Indie scene,
flourishing with bands with much less popularity than commercial bands, just
enough of it to survive inside the respective country, but virtually unknown
outside them.