Alternative
This section covers album stories, birthdays, and anniversaries from artists across alternative and indie rock, plus notes on vinyl reissues as they come out. Alternative music grew up alongside independent labels, and many of its defining albums were pressed in comparatively modest runs the first time around, which is part of why later represses and anniversary editions get treated as real events rather than routine catalog work. Expect stories about how records were actually made — home studios, small budgets, unlikely breaks — and context on the pressings collectors look for when a favorite title finally returns to vinyl.
254 STORIES
Mika: From MySpace Outcast to Cartoon Pop King
A Lebanese-born, dyslexic kid bullied out of school built a massive MySpace following and turned it into a global pop career. He ended up duetting with Paul McCartney.
· 4 min read
Everlast: The Rap Rebel Who Went Acoustic
A rapper with a platinum plaque for 'Jump Around' could have coasted on that one song forever. Instead, Erik Schrody, known as Everlast, walked away from House …
· 3 min read
Phoebe Bridgers and the Binaural Confessional
Phoebe Bridgers turns 32 today. From open mic nights in Los Angeles to a stadium tour with Taylor Swift and a Grammy-winning supergroup, her confessional songwriting reshaped alternative music.
· 5 min read
Belinda Carlisle: Topping Charts Without a Man in the Room
Belinda Carlisle fronted The Go-Go's to a historic Billboard 200 number one. Her solo career then produced the global hit Heaven Is a Place on Earth.
· 5 min read
The Cake Left Out in the Rain: Jimmy Webb at 80
Jimmy Webb, born on August 15, 1946, built a sound where a symphony orchestra was the backing band and a single song could contain a lifetime of loss.
· 4 min read
A Forest, a Piano, and 24 Hours That Broke Spotify
At midnight on July 24, 2020, the digital silence of a locked-down world cracked open with a single black-and-white image: Taylor Swift, standing alone among to…
· 5 min read
Utah Saints: When Kate Bush Said Yes to a Rave Anthem
A graffiti writer and an indie guitarist walk into a Leeds club where both are DJing — and somehow, the result is a group named after a misheard phrase about U2…
· 5 min read
The Ledge: Slim Dunlap and the Replacements' College Rock Turn
A song about suicide got banned from MTV, and the guitarist who wrote it had barely found his footing in the band. Slim Dunlap joined the Replacements right aft…
· 4 min read
Tanya Donelly: The Voice That Left Every Band She Started
The recording desk at Palladium Studios in Edinburgh sat surrounded by open space — no baffles, no isolation, just a room miked to catch every accidental string…
· 4 min read
Devo’s Whip It: a whip, a magazine, and a synth-R&B hit
Devo's 'Whip It' was released on August 13, 1980, and became an unlikely synth-R&B hit after a radio DJ championed the song region by region.
· 4 min read
Ben Gibbard and the CD Era’s Slow Fade into Vinyl
Ben Gibbard turned a mail-order side project into Sub Pop’s best-selling album after Nirvana’s Nevermind. He then guided Death Cab for Cutie from CD-era indie to vinyl-era institution.
· 6 min read
Neneh Cherry: The Buffalo Stance That Refused to Pick a Lane
Neneh Cherry built a career on refusing to pick a single lane. From post-punk squats and free-jazz sessions to the global smash 'Buffalo Stance' and the trip-hop blueprint of 'Raw Like Sushi'.
· 5 min read
How Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell Escaped the Grave
Born in Dallas 79 years ago, Meat Loaf fought through years of rejection to turn a theatrical rock opera into the best-selling debut album in history.
· 5 min read
The Prisoner of Samba: Caetano Veloso at 84
A guitar chord rang out in a Rio de Janeiro nightclub, and within days, two of Brazil’s most vital songwriters were behind bars. The charge sheet for Caetano Ve…
· 5 min read
Raul Malo and The Mavericks’ Latin-Country Vinyl Fusion
Raul Malo and The Mavericks’ 1991 debut captured a sound no major label had yet dared to champion. It was country music rooted in American honky-tonk but pulsing with a Cuban heartbeat.
· 4 min read
Goose Lake: the forgotten giant after Woodstock
The first chords ripped through the Michigan humidity just past noon on August 7, 1970, as more than 200,000 bodies pressed toward a sprawling stage in Leoni. T…
· 4 min read
Andy Warhol: The Banana You Peeled Before the Needle Dropped
Andy Warhol turned the record sleeve into a standalone art object, starting with a peelable banana on The Velvet Underground & Nico in 1967.
· 5 min read
Elliott Smith: The White Suit and the Four-Track
A white suit, stark against the polished spectacle of the 1998 Academy Awards stage, once held a whisper. The man inside it, Elliott Smith, strummed an acoustic…
· 5 min read
When The Cure’s Dark Wave Became a CD Catalog
In 1980 The Cure shed their post-punk skin with ‘Seventeen Seconds’. By 1992 they had built a CD catalog that defined alternative rock.
· 5 min read
Lucinda Williams: Americana Before the Label Existed
From a Folkways debut in 1979 to a Grammy-winning masterpiece in 1998, Lucinda Williams built the sound of Americana long before the genre had a name.
· 5 min read
Pete Burns and the 12-Inch That Spun the World
A glossy, oversized 12-inch single sleeve holds more than music — it captures a moment when pop swelled into something club-ready, theatrical, and unapologetica…
· 5 min read
Mojo Nixon: The Man Who Made Henley Sing His Own Demise
Mojo Nixon, born Neil Kirby McMillan Jr., spent a career mocking celebrities with psychobilly satire — and once shared a stage with Don Henley performing 'Don Henley Must Die'.
· 4 min read
Moya Brennan: The Voice Behind Gaelic's UK Top 5 Hit
Moya Brennan’s crystalline voice carried Clannad’s ‘Theme from Harry’s Game’ to number 5 in the UK Singles Chart in 1982. The song made Irish the first Gaelic language to crack the top 5.
· 5 min read
Butch Vig and the Sound City Sessions That Shaped a CD Decade
A reel of two-inch tape threads through the Studer machine at Sound City in Van Nuys, California. Butch Vig leans over the console, coaxing a second vocal take …
· 5 min read