10 Perfect Albums That Will Make You Love Alternative Rock

There's no real timeline for when the concept of alternative rock got started. Even though there had been the realms of art rock as far back as the Beatles, the entire alt rock revolution didn't really get underway until the underground scenes started to break artists like the Pixies on their stations. The actual genesis of the genre may have been a bit fuzzy, but the Velvet Underground's first record makes for a nice ground zero for the genre.

Because when Lou Reed's little art rock experiment first came out in the '60s, people were more confused than anything else. In the era of Flower Power, what the hell were we supposed to do with this kind of music? Here were some of the most chaotic guitars ever put to tape along with one of the most abrasive production jobs ever heard on a rock album. And at the same time, you had songs that didn't even seem to have a genre, like the S&M song Venus in Furs or the droning blast of noise on Heroin.

While the rest of the world might not have been ready for this kind of album upon release, it ended up being the kind of niche record that kickstarted thousands of other genres, like the punks embracing songs like Heroin and even metal bands taking a few cues from the chaotic nature of their sound. If you had to put it under one roof though, this was the biggest alternative to anything else that was going on in the era of the Beatles and the Stones. Only on the first alt rock record would you have a song about dealing drugs on Waiting for the Man right next to a beautiful ballad like Sunday Morning.