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Alternative rock's leading lights shouldn't be written off--R.E.M. and Hootie probably both have more than a few big, interesting albums left in them. It's worth remembering too that the music business is cyclic. Every few years critics proclaim that rock is dead, and then a band like Nirvana--or the Sex Pistols before them--comes around and changes everything. Now the hunt is definitely on for the next Next Big Thing. Ska is a candidate, with groups like No Doubt racking up sales. Trip-hop is another contender, with performers such as Tricky and Portishead. There are also electronic-dance-music forms like Jungle. "We see 1997 as a time of exploration in the music biz," says MTV's Schuon. Explains Lisa Cortes, former president of Loose Cannon Records: "People are hungry for different stories." While alternative rock tended to be mostly white, the newer genres tend to be multiethnic. The alternative to alternative could be bands that look less like a stereotype of suburbia and more like America.
--Reported by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles and David E. Thigpen/New York