Underground music

Underground music comprises musical genres beyond mainstream culture. Any song that is not being legally commercialized is considered underground. Such music may tend to express common ideals, such as high regard for sincerity and intimacy, freedom of creative expression as opposed to the highly formulaic composition of commercial music, and appreciation of artistic individuality as opposed to conformity to current mainstream trends. Apart from perhaps the underground rock scenes in the pre-Mikhail Gorbachev Soviet Union, very few types of underground music are completely hidden, although performances and recordings may be difficult for outsiders to find.

Some underground musical genres never left their non-mainstream roots, such as jagged, aggressive UK 82-style hardcore punk bands like Discharge. Some underground styles eventually became mainstream, commercialized pop styles, as did for example the underground hip hop style of the early 1980s. In the 2000s, the increasing availability of the Internet and digital music technologies has made underground music easier to distribute using streaming audio and podcasts. Some experts in cultural studies now argue that "there is no underground" because the Internet has made what was underground music accessible to everyone at the click of a mouse. One expert, Martin Raymond, of London-based company The Future Laboratory commented in an article in The Independent, saying trends in music, art and politics are:

David Bowie

David Robert Jones (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016), known as David Bowie (/ˈboʊ.i/), was an English singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, painter, and actor. He was a figure in popular music for over five decades, and was considered by critics and musicians as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, and his music and stagecraft significantly impacted popular music. During his lifetime, he sold an estimated 140 million records worldwide. In the UK, he was awarded nine platinum album certifications, eleven gold and eight silver, and released eleven number-one albums. In the US, he received five platinum and seven gold certifications. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

Avril Lavigne

Avril Ramona Lavigne (/ˈævrɪl ləˈviːn/; French pronunciation: ​[avʁil laviɲ]; born 27 September 1984) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and actress. She was born in Belleville, Ontario, and spent most of her youth in the town of Greater Napanee. By the age of 15, she had appeared on stage with Shania Twain; by 16, she had signed a two-album recording contract with Arista Records worth more than $2 million. In 2002, when she was 17 years old, Lavigne entered the music industry with her debut album, Let Go, becoming one of the most popular pop punk artists, a reason she earned her reputation of a "skater punk" persona and "pop punk princess". Since her professional debut, she has sold more than 30 million albums and over 50 million singles worldwide.