TuneCore Publishing

Britpop is a UK-centered movement of the early-to-mid 1990s that revived classic British guitar-pop values—memorable hooks, concise songcraft, and everyday storytelling—while positioning itself as a confident alternative to American grunge. It celebrated Britishness in sound and subject matter, drawing heavily on 1960s and 1970s British pop and rock traditions. Stylistically, britpop tends to feature jangly or crunchy electric guitars, sing-along choruses, and tuneful melodies over straightforward rhythms. Lyrics often focus on ordinary life, class, romance, and wry social observation, typically delivered in unvarnished British accents. The production is generally clean and punchy, favoring clarity over heavy effects and emphasizing immediacy and radio-friendliness.

Folk is a song-centered acoustic tradition rooted in community storytelling, everyday life, and social history. It emphasizes clear melodies, simple harmonies, and lyrics that foreground narrative, protest, and personal testimony. As a modern recorded genre, folk coalesced in the early-to-mid 20th century in the United States out of older ballad, work song, and rural dance traditions. It typically features acoustic instruments (guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, harmonica), strophic song forms, and participatory singing (choruses, call-and-response).

Ghazal is a South Asian light-classical vocal genre built around the Urdu–Persian poetic form of the same name. It sets couplets (sher) that share a rhyme (qaafiya) and refrain (radif), often opening with a matla and ending with a maqta featuring the poet’s takhallus. Themes revolve around love, longing, separation, metaphysical yearning, and refined wit. Musically, ghazal draws on Hindustani classical grammar but prioritizes text clarity and melodic expressiveness over elaborate improvisation. Performances commonly feature a singer accompanied by harmonium and tabla (with sarangi, sitar, or guitar as color), use raga-informed melodies, and keep lilting tala cycles such as dadra (6 beats) or keherwa (8 beats). The style favors intimate delivery, subtle ornamentation (meend, murki), and immaculate diction, making it ideal for salon (mehfil) settings as well as recorded and film music.

Glam rock is a style of rock music that emerged in the early 1970s, defined as much by its flamboyant image and theatricality as by its sound. Artists embraced androgynous fashion, glitter, makeup, platform boots, and bold stage personas, using spectacle to amplify simple, catchy, riff-driven songs. Musically, glam rock fuses the drive of 1950s rock and roll with hard rock crunch, bubblegum pop hooks, and a sense of artful provocation. Songs often feature stomping, chant-ready rhythms, big choruses, guitar riffs, handclaps, and shout-along refrains. Lyrically, it leans into themes of fantasy, fame, gender play, street romance, and campy drama, blurring the line between pop accessibility and avant-garde performance.

Punk rock is a fast, raw, and stripped‑down form of rock music that foregrounds energy, attitude, and the DIY ethic over technical polish. Songs are short (often 90–180 seconds), in 4/4, and driven by down‑stroked power‑chord guitars, eighth‑note bass, and relentless backbeat drumming. Vocals are shouted or sneered rather than crooned, and lyrics are direct, often political, anti‑establishment, or wryly humorous. Production is intentionally unvarnished, prioritizing immediacy and live feel over studio perfection. Beyond sound, punk rock is a culture and practice: independent labels, fanzines, all‑ages venues, self‑organized tours, and a participatory scene that values inclusivity, affordability, and self‑reliance.

Alternative is an umbrella term for non-mainstream popular music that grew out of independent and college-radio scenes. It emphasizes artistic autonomy, eclectic influences, and a willingness to subvert commercial formulas. Sonically, alternative often blends the raw immediacy of punk with the mood and texture of post-punk and new wave, adding elements from folk, noise, garage, and experimental rock. While guitars, bass, and drums are typical, production ranges from lo-fi to stadium-ready, and lyrics tend toward introspection, social critique, or surreal storytelling. Over time, “alternative” became both a cultural stance and a market category, spawning numerous substyles (alternative rock, alternative hip hop, alternative pop, etc.) and moving from underground circuits to mainstream prominence in the 1990s.