Right. Using the OP’s wording, I’d say Pearl Jam and Nirvana made it popular, or mainstream. U2 and REM definitely opened the door, but Nirvana slammed it shut as they walked through.
Another thing muddying the waters is that, once a lot more people DID start getting into the alternative music scene, you had a lot of people picking up artists’ back catalogs and swearing that they were totally into [band] back in 1982 when they released their first EP.
Definitely tangential to this, but I’ll never understand why these two bands made it big but Sleater-Kenney never did. In a perfect world (the one inside my head), Pearl Jam or Nirvana are openers for SK on their world tours.
Let’s put it this way- did ELvis Presley invent rock and roll? Of course not- it had been around for quite a while before Elvis hit the scene, and lots of artists (mostly blacks) had been playing rock and roll before Elvis. But it’s STILL fair to say that “Elvis made rock and roll popular” in the sense that he was the first singer to get rock and roll into the Billboard Top Ten, and the first singer to get rock and roll heavy radio airplay.
Similarly, Nirvana didn’t invent alt rock, but they were the first alt band to get heavy play on FM radio and on MTV. For millions of kids, Nirvana was the first taste of alt rock.
I never heard the term “alternative” until freshman year in 1991. Bands like The Cure, Joy Division, Depeche Mode, Violent Femmes, Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, New Order, INXS, early U2, REM, The Police, B-52s, Siouxsie and the Banshees were all called “college rock” or “new wave” in the 80s.
And while there were no hard and fast rules about who listed to what, the audience in my high school tended to be preppier kids, some nerds (a lot of nerds listened to prog rock like Rush or Jethro Tull), skaters and A.V Club kids.
It was only after I got to college that all those bands got retroactively lumped under “alternative” music. Sort of the way a lot of 90s alternative now gets retroactively lumped under “indie rock”.
Another interesting point - MTV ran their alternative rock show “120 Minutes” since 1986.
R.E.M. a “novelty act”? No. I started listening to R.E.M. in 1983 when I was 14. They were not a “novelty act” by any stretch of the imagination.
They Might be Giants are considered “alt rock”? WTH? I mostly remember them for their rather faithful rendition of the 50’s song " Istanbul (Not Constantinople)". And can “Birdhouse in your soul” be realistically put inthe same category as any Nirvana song?
Eta: and looking them up now, they have 4 children’s albums out!
I’d agree, but I’d also say that in my perfect world Hüsker Dü and The Replacements would have achieved the success Nirvana did in their '80s heydays (being realistic, I don’t see any way the Minutemen were ever going to have radio hits).
As someone who was into alternative music in high school (graduated '88), I can attest that The Smiths, The Cure (especially pre-, Kiss Me, Kiss Me) et al were seen as “weirdo” music back then, despite their reputations now. Hell, I had friends who hated the R.E.M. songs I’d put on mixtapes for them back in the day (before “The One I Love” brought them some level of radio-friendliness) - it’s hard to believe now, especially after schlock like “Everybody Hurts” and “Shiny Happy People”, but they were considered decidedly uncommercial for most of the '80s. Most people I knew who objected had major problems with Michael Stipe’s, Morrissey’s and Robert Smith’s voices above and beyond the music.
A fine discussion. I will use it to share a book that speaks to truly indie side of things leading up to Nirvana really, really well - Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life:
Can’t recommend it strongly enough. Each chapter looks at truly indie banks like Black Flag, Husker Du, Mission of Burma, Minor Threat, etc. and discusses what the situation was like and how they built up grass roots followings that were a huge backdrop to the emergence of Nirvana and other grunge bands…
Nope-- that was REM. “Losing My Religion” was huge on MTV, in fact it was 1991 Video of the Year at the VMAs. As well as #1 on the album chart.
Sure, you were. Most people were not and knew them entirely from songs like Stand and Shiny Happy People.
I didn’t say they were a novelty act, I said mainstream people who knew them from those songs viewed them as such – the guys with the silly happy songs.
I love Sleater-Kinney, and am kicking myself for never getting a chance to see them when they were around (I wasn’t in the US for most of that time and, when I was, I had something else going on, but I have seen Wild Flag). That said, they seemed to me to not quite have the mainstream polish of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, so I’m not at all surprised that they never quite hit the mainstream.
We called it alternative in the late 80s here, as I remember it. Once it got mainstream, it felt a bit odd to call it “alternative” music when it wasn’t “alternative” anymore.
Here’s a New York Times cite of it being used in 1988. That’s how basically I remember it, and it wasn’t a genre descriptor as many different genres fell under “alternative.”
Nirvana and Pearl Jam were just the bands that had the most popular songs when the wave finally crested. It had been moving toward shore well before then, hot on the heels of the hair metal wave, which seems to have crested sometime around 1987 or so with Motley Crue, Guns 'N Roses and Poison being the most widely known bands.
As far as alternative music goes, Depeche Mode and The Cure were widely known (and even top 40 artists) by the time Nirvana hit it big. So were Jane’s Addiction, Faith No More, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. All of those bands were relatively popular in the 1988-1991 time frame.
Beyond that, even in the grunge scene Nirvana was around well before 1991 when “Smells Like Teen Spirit” came out- I used to have a tape that had Soundgarden’s “Louder than Love” on one side, and Alice in Chains’ “Facelift” on the other that was from 1990 or so when I was in high school. "Man in the Box was a big hit for Alice in Chains in 1991 about 6 months before Nirvana hit it big in 1991.
What’s with the snarky bullshit? You do realize some people were listening to R.E.M. during their IRS years (I was one of them - started with Reckoning also at age 14), don’t you? This whole idea that people only retroactively claim to have been into indie bands before they got famous for cool points is a weird kind of reverse-snobbishness. We did exist, which was exactly how these bands were able to keep making records. The idea that we were all really listening to Dire Straits and Wham! and merely claim to have gotten in on the ground floor is insulting.
Add in to the mix MTV and X-Files. esp MTV
But yeah, Nirvana turned alt mainstream. There were dozens of good Alt bands, certain individual songs were extremely popular, but if you mentioned Alt Rock back then to any fan of other genres, they would talk about Nirvana
We first started using the term alternative around '84 in reference to the Replacements.
Of course. I’ve said so twice now.
Also, I’m pretty sure that using the phrase “you DO realize…” pretty much negates one’s ability to bitch about “snark” 
Edit: I may have been misunderstood. I was saying “Sure, you were” as in “I agree that you were even if most were not” not “Sure you were” as in “You’re a big liar-head”.
There was a lot of alternative music around before Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but alternative hard rock was very fringe. Bands like REM and early U2 were alternative, but by no means could they be called hard rock. Thanks to Nirvana and Pearl Jam, the hard rock scene switched from hair metal to grunge/alt basically overnight.