User:FlyMolo93/sandbox

Alternative Rock
After the initial boom of Rock and roll through the 1940s, and 1950s, Rock music took over as one of the most prevalent music genres, and a large base from which many others were derived. Punk rock, Grunge, Indie, and New wave have their roots in Rock music, but none grew in popularity as quickly and as successfully as Alternative Rock. The genre's birth was in the early 1980s, when the term "alternative rock" was created to describe bands that did not fit in the mainstream genres of the time. Presently, Alternative as a genre has come to be popular due to its wide variety of genres collected within it and the various regional definition of "alternative" from band to band. Arcade Fire, a Canadian indie rock band based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, has been gaining immense popularity since their beginning in 2001 due to their numerous awards. In 2008 Arcade Fire won the Juno Award for their second studio album, Neon Bible, and in 2011 winning the Polaris Music Prize for their album The Suburbs. From the roots of Britpop, Alternative rock's emergence in the UK can be seen as its first habitat. U2 is still considered one of the pioneers of alternative music, originating in Ireland and being the inspiration for bands like Coldplay and Radiohead. Winning more Grammy Awards than any other band (22), U2 still boasts its success by also being part of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. From North America, R.E.M. and Nirvana were both early alternative bands, which were popularized in the late 1980s and early 1990s because of their unique sound and lyrics that most youth and young adults could relate to. Radiohead and Coldplay have been compared extensively as the two descendants of Alternative music in the UK after U2, and both have come to acknowledge each other as somewhat rivals. While alternative rock has a huge variety of sounds and themes, from light grunge to folk, the lyrics are all relatively similar in that they address topics of social concern like drug use, depression, suicide, and environmentalism. The combination of a pleasant sound and meaningful lyrics keeps Alternative music, and Alternative rock rising in popularity and gaining fans.