No Stupid Questions

It’s not very intuitive, for sure. It really is about if you were there at the time and probably place (up until, say, 2005) hearing XYZ song/style becoming popular on the radio and mass media. Only then do you pick up the lingo and see how other people referred to it.

Plus, go browse the racks at a music store in another country (preferably where the main language is different from your own). I remember seeing a Tower Records in a major Japanese city have a whole area designated as “Black Music” (not like a seasonal feature/display, but a section/‘genre’) and being baffled, like all soul blues funk R&B early rap gangsta rap and dance pop was all one section (filtered only by skin color)? But then again, is all J-pop or K-pop always the same style, or do English-language listeners lump a lot of things together by overarching basic criteria? (Like just shuffling music off based on country/language of origin etc)

Alternative rock was different to the popular rock from on mainstream stations in the 70s/80s and early 90s. See also “college rock.” But then alternative rock becomes mainstream and fractures into subgenres (for example, compare Limp Bizmit once called “nü rock” and White Stripes “garage rock” — fairly different styles), less mainstream artists continue plugging away in their various “indie” lanes, plus what does “college rock” (like REM of the 80s) mean in the 2010s/2020s anyway? Short answer: big fat nothing; long answer is, first you start doing deep dives in music journalism of yore, browsing the categories/sections at record stores, talk to old music heads and hear their opinions (mostly opinions, right, less ‘facts’), and then you have a better lay of the many various musical landscapes and keep exploring.