Frank Frazetta “Phoenix Prime” by Ted White (1966) Cap'n's Comics (29MP)

Also used for Wolfmother’s "Joker & the Thief"

nothing against those bands, but the years following where everything sounded like them just wasn't fun for me.

it's fair if you didn't go for that pop punk/emo/00s "scene" sound, it was definitely not for everyone. But the interesting thing with 00s alt rock looking back on it for me has been realising how many different subgenre scenes were happening in parallel, and everyone seems to have differing memories on which dominated (so I think none did? I was not from an alt rock country. Our first breakthrough band formed in 1999, so I'm not best placed to judge the sentiment).

For a while there was garage rock revival, indie rock sounds that bands like the Strokes and Libertines had, that the NME absolutely worshiped (they had the Strokes on the cover way too many times). On the more disco side of that indie rock spectrum were bands like Franz Ferdinand. On the dreamier side of it were bands like Broken Social Scene.

There was the a little rock band scene too: folks like Muse, The Darkness, Jet, Wolfmother, The Hives, The Donnas (The Donnas really don't get their due in this godforsaken industry). There were a pretty big anti-Jet and Darkness thing too, though it seems with Justin Hawkins' reemergence as a music industry commentator on his YouTube channel, people are finally revaluating them and giving them their due.

There was the electroclash scene — Ladytron, Peaches, Gravy Train!!!!, Scissor Sisters, etc.

So yeah, 00s alt rock definitely wasn't limited to Fall Out Boy, Paramore, MCR, Panic!, 30 Seconds To Mars and all the others that broadly made up the "scene kids"' music taste (you're right, it's not all pop punk, it's not all emo, but that's the closest descriptor I can think of too). Or it's definitely not remembered as just that one sound. But we always know whatever was around us, especially before geographical musical barriers broke down bigtime with the internet. Maybe emo, etc. were the subgenres you saw the most around you? It was always going to be too ambitious to try and classify so many different sounds (across countries) with the same name, so it was bound to happen.

No harm in liking (and disliking) whatever you want though, personal taste isn't snobbish. The only time I raise an eyebrow about musical hates is when big outlets and curators try and rally hate against entire genres of fans. (Remember the disco burning of the 70s?) So you not liking emo? Fair enough. Daily Mail trying to create emo/MCR scares in 2005 by implying that MCR fans were uniquely suicide-prone? Objectively evil and untrue. So you're good anon!

Looking back, a lot of these subcultures had dissipated by the end of the decade (including the emo/pop punk bands prominent in the 00s — some of them had split up, gone on hiatus, some were moving towards softer sounds, others like Sum 41 were started to get a bit metal?) The 'sound of alt rock' after 2009 is a confusing thing I can't really define — was it the electropop Xx or pop rock 1975 stuff? Was it the, like, four heavy albums of 2013-14, Royal Blood, ...Like Clockwork. (QOTSA), AM and maybe Blush by Wolf Alice? Was it instead The Bones Of What You Believe by CHVRCHES?

Cosmic Egg

Artist: Wolfmother

Release: 2009

Note: A cosmic egg (aka world egg or mundane egg) is a motif found in the mythology of many cultures. Typically, it hatches and either creates the universe or creates a primordial being that then creates the universe.

This is How We Get Better

Artist: The Narcissist Cookbook

Bill S Preston Esquire x Reader