Alternative country
In the 1990s the term alternative country (which is like the term alternative rock, which was becoming popular at the same time), began to be used to talk about different groups of musicians and singers who did not follow the same traditions of regular country music, and who had a different sound. Many of them did not follow the high production values (such as spending a lot of money in the recording studio) of the big country music industry at the time, which was mostly based in Nashville, Tennessee.