A Slow, Dumb Show

Via Sum 41's "Fat Lip" video, Island Records Before we get into this week's topic, I'd like to note that I've launched a music podcast called Aux Words. You can find it here. This week we're tackling a genre that was a major part of the 2000s alternative scene. It might be the biggest rock subgenre of the decade, honestly (nu metal might be its closest competition but the genre mostly died down by the second half of the 00s). 2007 was an huge time for pop punk music. Emo's third wave was in full effect. Fall Out Boy's huge Infinity on High dominated the charts in the first half of the year. My Chemical Romance's epic The Black Parade  blew up just before that. Panic! at the Disco broke out a few years earlier. Meanwhile, one of the genre's more established acts were trying to figure out how to stand out as the new guard dominated the airwaves.... Sum 41 - Underclass Hero (Island Records, 2007) Genres: pop punk, alternative ro...

This has nothing to do with the Caillat album covered here but I added it here for being one of the more notable bad songs I've heard recently The term "alternative music" basically has no meaning at this point, especially since in the 1990s the "alternative" became the mainstream. The term is as meaningless in music circles as "indie" and "hipster." So we'll find out that there are a lot of things considered "alternative" while going on this journey through the Top Alternative Albums chart. I mentioned this in last week's column, but we'll see everything from folk and indie rock acts to punk and even straight-up metal (according to these charts Metallica is classified as "alternative," which, sure).  This week's topic is something that doesn't necessarily stand out as an especially "alternative" record. It really stands out compared to the albums around it. The Smashing Pumpkins? Y...

Welcome. I've wanted to do a regular column, focused on album reviewing, for a while. A few ideas came and went through my head, but one didn't stick in my head until now. Then I started reading Tom Breihan's "The Number Ones" series, in which he reviews #1 songs from the Billboard starting at the chart's inception every day ("The Number Ones" is a self-proclaimed rip-off of Tom Ewing's "Popular" series). I decided I'd do my own riff on that kind of series, focusing on albums instead of songs and going weekly instead of daily. I decided I would focus on Billboard's Alternative Albums chart, which began in the summer of 2007. This chart was perfect for two reasons. One, there's a good amount of variety in the history of the chart. It's not just "alternative rock," but there's plenty of stuff from the realms of metal, punk, folk, and there's even some hip-hop and straight up pop thrown in ther...