We discuss the presence of phonons and the interplay between spontaneous and explicit breaking of translations in the context of holography. Using two different bottom-up models we show the existence of transverse and longitudinal phonons, whose properties are in perfect agreement with elastic theory and hydrodynamics. We focus our attention on the elastic and transport features of the dual QFT also in the presence of a small explicit breaking. We conclude speculating about the possibility of having gravitational duals for strongly coupled viscoelastic materials.