If I Could Turn Back Time…

Over the past few years, there has been a shift in popularity from Britney and Christina (our favorite infamous music face-off) to the wilder image of current rock bands like The White Stripes and Radiohead. When did it become cool to be indie and alternative? The answer may be in the heightened popularity of the “hipster.”

Our generation has taken the image from such bands and mainstreamed it to the general public through our fashion choices (think rock t-shirts paired with skinny jeans instead of the platform shoe and bell-bottomed low risers). This shift has come to the dismay of the original listeners who appreciated the heavy sound of Jack White long before our local sorority girls were rocking out to it on the elliptical at the gym. The question is: do these people really enjoy the energized sound of bands like Arcade Fire, or is it the idea of living on the fringe of society and wearing the clothes that the celebrities are currently styling?

This alternative rock sound originated out of an effort to be different from mainstream pop culture, but now that your average guy and gal are listening to these hits, it may be losing many of its original listeners. Will a new level of extreme music be created in the coming years to out-beat the increasingly popular sound of alternative rock? I hope so.

We are now praying for music to turn from alternative pop back to alternative rock, to help us find the bands that we haven’t heard yet, and to shake it up a bit. Perhaps the damage has been done in this new age of music, but I know that many music lovers out there are hoping to again find the classic alternative rock we grew up with.

- Michelle