2018 Year in Review: Alt Rock Music Moments
2018 had interesting alternative rock music moments. Some were heartfelt, exciting, sad and downright disappointing. Let’s recap these alt-rock music moments.
Dolores O’Riordan: Rest in Peace (September 6, 1971 – January 15, 2018)
As I was trying to recover from the news of Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington passing away in 2017, Delores’s death for me would prove to be another struggle. We all know her as the lead singer of The Cranberries. With powerful, still impactful hits, this Irish band has a great catalog of songs that forever evoke strong emotions. “Linger”, “Zombie”, “Dreams” and “Why ” to name a few are masterpieces of work that we will always have to remember her by.
I wish the best for her family and will miss that unique Irish vocal in the alternative music space.
Grammys 2018: Alt, Rock, Metal Music
Best Alternative Music Album Winner: Sleep Well Beast — The National
Other nominees:
Everything Now — Arcade Fire
Humanz — Gorillaz
American Dream — LCD Soundsystem
Pure Comedy — Father John Misty
Best Rock Performance Winner: “You Want It Darker” — Leonard Cohen
Other nominees:
“The Promise” — Chris Cornell
“Run” — Foo Fighters
“No Good” — Kaleo
“Go To War” — Nothing More
Best Rock Song Winner: “Run” — Foo Fighters, songwriters (Foo Fighters)
Other nominees:
“Atlas, Rise!” — James Hetfield & Lars Ulrich, songwriters (Metallica)
“Blood In The Cut” — JT Daly & Kristine Flaherty, songwriters (K.Flay)
“Go To War” — Ben Anderson, Jonny Hawkins, Will Hoffman, Daniel Oliver, David Pramik & Mark Vollelunga, songwriters (Nothing More)
“The Stage” — Zachary Baker, Brian Haner, Matthew Sanders, Jonathan Seward & Brooks Wackerman, songwriters (Avenged Sevenfold)
Best Rock Album Winner: A Deeper Understanding — The War On Drugs
Other nominees:
Emperor Of Sand — Mastodon
Hardwired…To Self-Destruct — Metallica
The Stories We Tell Ourselves — Nothing More
Villains — Queens Of the Stone Age
Best Metal Performance Winner: “Sultan’s Curse” — Mastodon
Other nominees:
“Invisible Enemy” — August Burns Red
“Black Hoodie” — Body Count
“Forever” — Code Orange
“Clockworks” — Meshuggah
Imagine Dragons – Linkin Park Heartfelt Speech
Linkin Park for me growing up made a huge impact on my adolescent. Their music spoke to my experience. We’ll never forget Chester Bennington, and our hearts go out Mike, the band, family and friends.
Dan Reynolds of Imagine Dragons gave a heartfelt speech and dedicated “Yesterday” to Chester, Mike, and Linkin Park.
Arctic Monkeys – Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino was released with mixed reviews, especially by fans
Arctic Monkeys released their 6th album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino on May 11, 2018. Some fans didn’t like the mood of this album. Some acknowledged that it was too mellow. After listening to the whole album, it was definitely a choice and direction to make the whole album in a mellow state. The one critique I’ll say as the reverse happens generally for albums that are mostly uptempo, there are interludes that are usually midtempo or mellow to create a break/contrast in the listening experience. I would have loved to hear uptempo interludes for this album to create that contrast.
Finally, we got to allow our bands/artists to stretch their wings creatively and test the waters. They are musicians after all creating music. A lot of work goes into the creation of albums. I mean I grew up on reggae music so the tempo of the songs on this album was great to hear.
An interesting thing to note: if you are trying to find a playlist on youtube to allow you have dreamy background music to relax/study/work to, this Arctic Monkeys album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino will definitely help you out.
Metallica awarded the Polar Music Prize 2018
On June 14, 2018, at the Grand Hôtel Stockholm Metallica was awarded The Polar Music Prize. This award is given for international recognition of excellence in the world of music.
Past winners of this award included: Chuck Berry in 2014, Sting in 2017, Led Zepplin in 2006, Joni Mitchell in 1996, Youssou N’Dour in 2013, and Miriam Makeba in 2002.
Congratulations to the band. Lars Ulrich and Robert Trujillo accepted the award. Check out the speech below:
Farewell Vans Warped Tour 1995-2018
There will be a 25th-anniversary event that will be scheduled for summer 2019.
System of a Down Tension
It was quite an eventful 2018 for the band System of a Down. In a Facebook post entitled Confessions about SOAD lead singer Serj Tankian commented on the band’s inability to produce a record and why they were on hiatus for so long. The members could not come to a decision on the creative direction and financial decisions of the band.
Many statements were made to the media and as this inaction grew, tension grew within the band. Does the band need a therapist? Can Daron and Serj make a decision on new music? Is Serj no longer into heavy music? Time will tell, let’s keep our eyes and ears peeled.
Rock music not taken seriously at awards shows when rappers can win the rock music category
In one of the most disappointing but not surprising news of 2018, a rap music group won the award for favourite rock group. This is another example of the mistreatment rock music has had to deal with in the mainstream. The American Music Awards in 2018 ACTUALLY awarded the rap music duo Migos with the Favourite Duo/Group Pop/Rock. The only nominees for this category included Imagine Dragons and
Maroon 5.
Now the first issue here is why is fave Duo/Group combined with Pop/Rock as a category? I didn’t realize Duo/Group was a music genre. It seems to be that weird phenomenon where back in 2016 when Matt Damon won the Golden Globe for Best Comedy for the film The Martian, which was an Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi film and not a comedy. I mean this is all a joke to people apparently.
There is no shortage of music acts to nominate by the way, so combining best group into a music genre category made no sense. I didn’t realize it was the music hunger games and there were no more rock music acts left on the planet but the people that were nominated for this award.
Other categories to point out:
Favorite Male Artist Pop/Rock:
Drake
Post Malone (Winner)
Ed Sheeran
Favorite Duo/Group Pop/Rock:
Imagine Dragons
Maroon 5
Migos (Winner)
Favorite Song Pop/Rock:
Camila Cabello, “Havana” (Winner)
Drake, “God’s Plan”
Ed Sheeran, “Perfect”
Favorite Album Pop/Rock:
Drake, Scorpion
Ed Sheeran, ÷ (Divide)
Taylor Swift, reputation (Winner)
Wow, a lot of Drake and Ed Sheeran for pop/rock, and each category only have 3 nominees. At the very least Paramore should have been nominated. Heres a thought maybe have the Pop category and Rock category as separate. That should be a start and then actually nominate ACTUAL alt-rock artists. It’s not difficult.
Honorable Mention
Mike Shinoda performance of “In The End” where the crowd sang Chester’s parts. This gets me emotional every time.
Where there any moments that I missed out? Let me know in the comments below.
