Rock music is a Music genre of popular music that originated in the United States as "rock and roll" in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of styles from the mid-1960s, primarily in the United States and United Kingdom. It has its roots in rock and roll, a style that drew from the black musical genres of blues and rhythm and blues, as well as from country music. Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk music, and incorporated influences from jazz and other styles. Rock is typically centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar, drum kit, and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a Time signature and using a verse–chorus form; however, the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock was the most popular genre of music in the U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s up to the 2010s.
Rock musicians in the mid-1960s began to advance the album ahead of the single as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, with the Beatles at the forefront of this development. Their contributions lent the genre a cultural legitimacy in the mainstream and initiated a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. By the late 1960s "classic rock" period, a few distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, Southern rock, raga rock, and jazz rock, which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock, influenced by the countercultural psychedelia. New genres that emerged included progressive rock, which extended artistic elements, heavy metal, which emphasized an aggressive thick sound, and glam rock, which highlighted showmanship and visual style. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques. Punk was an influence in the 1980s on new wave, post-punk and eventually alternative rock.
From the 1990s, alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop, and indie rock. Further subgenres have since emerged, including pop-punk, electronic rock, rap rock, and rap metal. Some movements were conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including the garage rock and post-punk revival in the 2000s. Since the 2010s, rock has lost its position as the pre-eminent popular music genre in world culture, but remains commercially successful. The increased influence of hip-hop and electronic dance music can be seen in rock music, notably in the techno-pop scene of the early 2010s and the pop-punk-hip-hop revival of the 2020s.
Rock has also embodied and served as the vehicle for cultural and social movements, leading to major subcultures including mods and rockers in the U.K., the hippie movement and the wider Western counterculture movement that spread out from San Francisco in the U.S. in the 1960s, the latter of which continues to this day. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the goth subculture, punk, and emo subcultures. Inheriting the Folk music tradition of the protest song, rock music has been associated with political activism, as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex, and drug use, and is often seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult conformity. At the same time, it has been commercially highly successful, leading to accusations of selling out.
Rock music is traditionally built on a foundation of simple syncopated rhythms in a meter, with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four.C. Ammer, The Facts on File Dictionary of Music (New York: Infobase, 4th edn., 2004), , pp. 351–352. Melodies often originate from older musical modes such as the Dorian mode and Mixolydian, as well as Major scale and Minor mode modes. Harmonies range from the common triad to parallel and Perfect fifth and dissonant harmonic progressions. Since the late 1950s, and particularly from the mid-1960s onwards, rock music often used the verse–chorus structure derived from blues and folk music, but there has been considerable variation from this model.J. Covach, "From craft to art: formal structure in the music of the Beatles", in K. Womack and Todd F. Davis, eds, (New York: SUNY Press, 2006), , p. 40. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock.T. Gracyk, Rhythm and Noise: an Aesthetics of Rock, (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996), , p. xi. Because of its complex history and its tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that "it is impossible to bind rock music to a rigidly delineated musical definition."P. Wicke, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), , p. x. In 1981, music journalist Robert Christgau said, "the best rock jolts folk arts virtues—directness, utility, natural audience—into the present with shots of modern technology".
Unlike many earlier styles of popular music, rock lyrics have dealt with a wide range of themes, including romantic love, sex, rebellion against the establishment, social concerns, and life styles. These themes were inherited from a variety of sources such as the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music, and rhythm and blues.
Christgau characterizes rock lyrics as a "cool medium" with simple diction and repeated refrains, and asserts that rock's primary "function" "pertains to music, or, more generally, noise." The predominance of white, male, and often middle class musicians in rock music has often been noted, and rock has been seen as an appropriation of Black musical forms for a young, white and largely male audience.S. Waksman, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), , p. 176. As a result, it has also been seen to articulate the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics. Christgau, writing in 1972, said in spite of some exceptions, "rock and roll usually implies an identification of male sexuality and aggression".Since the term "rock" started being used in preference to "rock and roll" from the late 1960s, it has usually been contrasted with pop music, with which it has shared many characteristics; however, rock is often distanced from pop; the former has an emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and a focus on serious and progressive themes as part of an ideology of authenticity that is frequently combined with an awareness of the genre's history and development.T. Warner, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), , pp. 3–4. According to Simon Frith, rock was "something more than pop, something more than rock and roll" and "rock musicians combined an emphasis on skill and technique with the romantic concept of art as artistic expression, original and sincere".
In the new millennium, the term rock has occasionally been used as a blanket term including forms like pop music, reggae music, soul music, and even hip hop, which it has been influenced with but often contrasted through much of the latter's history.R. Beebe, D. Fulbrook and B. Saunders, "Introduction" in R. Beebe, D. Fulbrook, B. Saunders, eds, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), , p. 7. Christgau has used the term broadly to refer to popular and semipopular music that caters to his sensibility as "a rock-and-roller", including a fondness for a good beat, a meaningful lyric with some wit, and the theme of youth, which holds an "eternal attraction" so objective "that all youth music partakes of sociology and the field research."
Debate surrounds the many recordings which have been suggested as "the first rock and roll record". Contenders include "Strange Things Happening Every Day" by Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1944);
"That's All Right" by Arthur Crudup (1946), which was later Cover version by Elvis Presley in 1954; "The House of Blue Lights" by Ella Mae Morse and Freddie Slack (1946); Wynonie Harris' "Good Rocking Tonight" (1948);Will the creator of modern music please stand up? Alexis Petridis The Guardian 16 April 2004 Goree Carter's "Rock Awhile" (1949);Robert Palmer, "Church of the Sonic Guitar", pp. 13–38 in Anthony DeCurtis, Present Tense, Duke University Press, 1992, p. 19. Jimmy Preston's "Rock the Joint" (1949), also covered by Bill Haley & His Comets in 1952; and "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats (in fact, Ike Turner and his band the Kings of Rhythm), recorded by Sam Phillips for Chess Records in 1951.In 1951, Cleveland, disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music (then termed "race record") for a multi-racial audience, and is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music.T. E. Scheurer, American Popular Music: The Age of Rock (Madison, WI: Popular Press, 1989), , p. 170. Four years later, Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" (1954) became the first rock and roll song to top Billboard magazine's main sales and airplay charts, and opened the door worldwide for this new wave of popular culture.P. Browne, The Guide to United States Popular Culture (Madison, WI: Popular Press, 2001), , p. 358. Other artists with early rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Gene Vincent. Soon rock and roll was the major force in American record sales and , such as Eddie Fisher, Perry Como, and Patti Page, who had dominated the previous decade of popular music, found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed.R. S. Denisoff, W. L. Schurk, Tarnished Gold: the Record Industry Revisited (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 3rd edn., 1986), , p. 13.
Rock and roll has led to a number of distinct subgenres, including rockabilly, combining rock and roll with "hillbilly" country music, which was usually played and recorded in the mid-1950s by white singers such as Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly and with the greatest commercial success, Elvis Presley.. Hispanic and Latino American movements in rock and roll, which would eventually lead to the success of Latin rock and Chicano rock within the US, began to rise in the Southwest; with rock and roll standard musician Ritchie Valens and even those within other heritage genres, such as Al Hurricane along with his brothers Tiny Morrie and Baby Gaby as they began combining rock and roll with country-western within traditional New Mexico music. In addition, the 1950s saw the growth in popularity of the electric guitar, and the development of a specifically rock and roll style of playing through such exponents as Chuck Berry, Link Wray, and Scotty Moore.J. M. Curtis, Rock Eras: Interpretations of Music and Society, 1954–1984 (Madison, WI: Popular Press, 1987), , p. 73. The use of distortion, pioneered by Western swing guitarists such as Junior Barnard and Eldon Shamblin was popularized by Chuck Berry in the mid-1950s.
The use of , pioneered by Francisco Tárrega and Heitor Villa-Lobos in the 19th century and later on by Willie Johnson and Pat Hare in the early 1950s, was popularized by Link Wray in the late 1950s.Commentators have perceived a decline of rock and roll in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By 1959, the death of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens in a plane crash, the departure of Elvis for the army, the retirement of Little Richard to become a preacher, prosecutions of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry and the breaking of the payola scandal (which implicated major figures, including Alan Freed, in bribery and corruption in promoting individual acts or songs), gave a sense that the rock and roll era established at that point had come to an end.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, U.S. blues music and blues rock artists, who had been surpassed by the rise of rock and roll in the US, found new popularity in the UK, visiting with successful tours.
Lonnie Donegan's 1955 hit "Rock Island Line" was a major influence and helped to develop the trend of skiffle music groups throughout the country, many of which, including John Lennon's The Quarrymen (later the Beatles), moved on to play rock and roll.Roberts, J. (2001). The Beatles. Mineappolis, MN: Lerner Publications. p. 13. . While former rock and roll market in the US was becoming dominated by lightweight pop and ballads, British rock groups at clubs and local dances were developing a style more strongly influenced by blues-rock pioneers, and were starting to play with an intensity and drive seldom found in white American acts;Eder, B. "British Blues", in V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra, S.T. Erlewine, eds, All Music Guide to the Blues: The Definitive Guide to the Blues (Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 3rd ed., 2003), p. 700. . this influence would go on to shape the future of rock music through the British Invasion.
Surf music achieved its greatest commercial success as vocal pop music, particularly the work of the Beach Boys, formed in 1961 in Southern California. Their early albums featured both instrumental surf rock (including covers of music by Dick Dale) and vocal songs, drawing on rock and roll and doo wop and the close harmonies of vocal pop acts like the Four Freshmen. The Beach Boys first chart hit, "Surfin' (1961), reached the Billboard top 100 and helped make the surf music craze a national phenomenon.W. Ruhlman, et al., "Beach Boys", in Bogdanov et al., 2002, pp. 71–75. The surf music craze and the careers of almost all surf acts were effectively ended by 1965 after the arrival of the British Invasion.
"I Want to Hold Your Hand" was the Beatles' first number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100, spending seven weeks at the top and a total of 15 weeks on the chart.H. Bill, The Book Of Beatle Lists (Poole, Dorset: Javelin, 1985), , p. 66. Their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February 1964, drawing an estimated 73 million viewers (at the time a record for an American television program) is considered a milestone in American pop culture. During the week of 4 April 1964, the Beatles held 12 positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the entire top five. The Beatles went on to become the biggest selling rock band of all time and they were followed into the US charts by numerous British bands.R. Unterberger, "British Invasion", in Bogdanov et al., 2002, pp. 1316–1317. During the next two years, British acts dominated their own and the US charts with Peter and Gordon, the Animals, Manfred Mann, Petula Clark, Freddie and the Dreamers, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, Herman's Hermits, the Rolling Stones, the Troggs, and Donovan all having one or more number one singles. Other major acts that were part of the invasion included the Kinks, the Who, and the Dave Clark Five..
The British Invasion helped internationalize the production of rock and roll, opening the door for subsequent British (and Irish) performers to achieve international success. In America it arguably spelled the end of instrumental surf music, vocal and (for a time) the , that had dominated the American charts in the late 1950s and 1960s.K. Keightley, "Reconsidering rock" in, S. Frith, W. Straw and J. Street, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), , p. 117. It dented the careers of established R&B acts like Fats Domino and Chubby Checker and even temporarily derailed the chart success of surviving rock and roll acts, including Elvis.F.W. Hoffmann, "British Invasion" in F.W. Hoffmann and H. Ferstler, eds, Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound, Volume 1 (New York: CRC Press, 2nd edn., 2004), , p. 132. The British Invasion also played a major part in the rise of a distinct genre of rock music, and cemented the primacy of the rock group, based on guitars and drums and producing their own material as singer-songwriters.R. Shuker, Popular Music: the Key Concepts (Abingdon: Routledge, 2nd edn., 2005), , p. 35. Following the example set by the Beatles' 1965 LP Rubber Soul in particular, other British rock acts released rock albums intended as artistic statements in 1966, including the Rolling Stones' Aftermath, the Beatles' own Revolver, and the Who's A Quick One, as well as American acts in the Beach Boys ( Pet Sounds) and Bob Dylan ( Blonde on Blonde).
The other key focus for British blues was John Mayall; his band, the Bluesbreakers, included Eric Clapton (after Clapton's departure from the Yardbirds) and later Peter Green. Particularly significant was the release of Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (Beano) album (1966), considered one of the seminal British blues recordings and the sound of which was much emulated in both Britain and the United States.T. Rawlings, A. Neill, C. Charlesworth and C. White, Then, Now and Rare British Beat 1960–1969 (London: Omnibus Press, 2002), , p. 130. Eric Clapton went on to form supergroups Cream, Blind Faith, and Derek and the Dominos, followed by an extensive solo career that helped bring blues rock into the mainstream. Green, along with the Bluesbreaker's rhythm section Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, formed Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, who enjoyed some of the greatest commercial success in the genre. In the late 1960s Jeff Beck, also an alumnus of the Yardbirds, moved blues rock in the direction of heavy rock with his band, the Jeff Beck Group. The last Yardbirds guitarist was Jimmy Page, who went on to form The New Yardbirds which rapidly became Led Zeppelin. Many of the songs on their first three albums, and occasionally later in their careers, were expansions on traditional blues songs.
In the United States, blues rock had been pioneered in the early 1960s by guitarist Lonnie Mack;P. Prown, H.P. Newquist and J.F. Eiche, Legends of Rock Guitar: the Essential Reference of Rock's Greatest Guitarists (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard Corporation, 1997), , p. 25. however, the genre began to take off in the mid-1960s as acts developed a sound similar to British blues musicians. Key acts included Paul Butterfield (whose band acted like Mayall's Bluesbreakers in Britain as a starting point for many successful musicians), Canned Heat, the early Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter, the J. Geils Band, and Jimi Hendrix with his power trios, the Jimi Hendrix Experience (which included two British members, and was founded in Britain), and Band of Gypsys, whose guitar virtuosity and showmanship would be among the most emulated of the decade. Blues rock bands from the southern states, like the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and ZZ Top, incorporated Country music elements into their style to produce the distinctive genre Southern rock.R. Unterberger, "Southern Rock", in Bogdanov et al., 2002, pp. 1332–1333.
Blues rock bands often emulated jazz, playing long, involved improvisations, which would later be a major element of progressive rock. From about 1967 bands like Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience had moved away from purely blues-based music into psychedelia. By the 1970s, blues rock had become heavier and more riff-based, exemplified by the work of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, and the lines between blues rock and hard rock "were barely visible",. as bands began recording rock-style albums. The genre was continued in the 1970s by figures such as George Thorogood and Pat Travers, but, particularly on the British scene (except perhaps for the advent of groups such as Status Quo and Foghat who moved towards a form of high energy and repetitive boogie rock), the subgenre became focused on heavy metal, and blues rock began to slip out of the mainstream.P. Prown, H.P. Newquist and J.F. Eiche, Legends of Rock Guitar: the Essential Reference of Rock's Greatest Guitarists (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard Corporation, 1997), , p. 113.
The style had been evolving from regional scenes as early as 1958. "Tall Cool One" (1959) by the Wailers (from Tacoma, Washington) and the 1963 version of "Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen (Portland, Oregon) are mainstream examples of the genre in its formative stages. Otfinoski, Steven. The Golden Age of Rock Instrumentals. Billboard Books, (1997), p. 36, By 1963, garage band singles were creeping into the national charts in greater numbers, including Paul Revere and the Raiders (Boise),W.E. Studwell and D.F. Lonergan, The Classic Rock and Roll Reader: Rock Music from its Beginnings to the mid-1970s (Abingdon: Routledge, 1999), , p. 213. the Trashmen (Minneapolis)J. Austen, TV-a-Go-Go: Rock on TV from American Bandstand to American Idol (Chicago IL: Chicago Review Press, 2005), , p. 19. and the Rivieras (South Bend, Indiana).
Other influential garage bands, such as the Sonics (Tacoma, Washington), never reached the Billboard Hot 100.F.W. Hoffmann "Garage Rock/Punk", in F.W. Hoffman and H. Ferstler, Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound, Volume 1 (New York: CRC Press, 2nd edn., 2004), , p. 873.The British Invasion greatly influenced garage bands, providing them with a national audience, leading many (often Surf rock or hot rod groups) to adopt a British influence, and encouraging more groups to form. Several garage bands in the United States and Canada produced regional hits during the era. Despite scores of bands being signed to major or large regional labels, most were commercial failures. Garage rock peaked both commercially and artistically around 1966, and by 1968 the style largely disappeared from the national charts and at the local level. New styles had evolved to replace garage rock.
Early attempts to combine elements of folk and rock included the Animals' "House of the Rising Sun" (1964), which was the first commercially successful folk song to be recorded with rock and roll instrumentation
and the Beatles "I'm a Loser" (1964), arguably the first Beatles song to be influenced directly by Dylan.. The folk rock movement is usually thought to have taken off with the Byrds' recording of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" which topped the charts in 1965. With members who had been part of the café-based folk scene in Los Angeles, the Byrds adopted rock instrumentation, including drums and 12-string Rickenbacker guitars, which became a major element in the sound of the genre. Later that year Dylan adopted electric instruments, much to the outrage of many folk purists, with his "Like a Rolling Stone" becoming a US hit single. According to Ritchie Unterberger, Dylan (even before his adoption of electric instruments) influenced rock musicians like the Beatles, demonstrating "to the rock generation in general that an album could be a major standalone statement without hit singles", such as on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963).Folk rock particularly took off in California, where it led acts like the Mamas & the Papas and Crosby, Stills, and Nash to move to electric instrumentation, and in New York, where it spawned performers including the Lovin' Spoonful and Simon and Garfunkel, with the latter's acoustic "The Sounds of Silence" (1965) being remixed with rock instruments to be the first of many hits. These acts directly influenced British performers like Donovan and Fairport Convention. In 1969 Fairport Convention abandoned their mixture of American covers and Dylan-influenced songs to play traditional English folk music on electric instruments.M. Brocken, The British Folk Revival 1944–2002 (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2003), , p. 97. This British folk-rock was taken up by bands including Pentangle, Steeleye Span and the Albion Band, which in turn prompted Irish groups like Horslips and Scottish acts like the JSD Band, Spencer's Feat and later Five Hand Reel, to use their traditional music to create a brand of Celtic rock in the early 1970s.C. Larkin, The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music (London: Guinness, 1992), , p. 869.
Folk-rock reached its peak of commercial popularity in the period 1967–68, before many acts moved off in a variety of directions, including Dylan and the Byrds, who began to develop country rock.G.W. Haslam, A.H. Russell and R. Chon, Workin' Man Blues: Country Music in California (Berkeley CA: Heyday Books, 2005), , p. 201. However, the hybridization of folk and rock has been seen as having a major influence on the development of rock music, bringing in elements of psychedelia, and helping to develop the ideas of the singer-songwriter, the protest song, and concepts of "authenticity".K. Keightley, "Reconsidering rock" in, S. Frith, W. Straw, and J. Street, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), , p. 121.
Sgt. Pepper was later regarded as a starting point for the album era, during which rock music transitioned from the singles format to albums and achieved cultural legitimacy in the mainstream.
Led by the Beatles in the mid-1960s, rock musicians advanced the LP as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, initiating a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades.
Instrumentals were common, while songs with lyrics were sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based in fantasy and science fiction.E. Macan, Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), , p. 64. The Pretty Things' SF Sorrow (1968), the Kinks' Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969), and the Who's Tommy (1969) introduced the format of rock operas and opened the door to , often telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme.. King Crimson's 1969 debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King, which mixed powerful guitar riffs and mellotron with jazz and symphonic music, is often taken as the key recording in progressive rock, helping the widespread adoption of the genre in the early 1970s among existing blues-rock and psychedelic bands, as well as newly formed acts. The vibrant Canterbury scene saw acts following Soft Machine from psychedelia, through jazz influences, toward more expansive hard rock, including Caravan, Hatfield and the North, Gong, and National Health.E. Macan, Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), , p. 129. The French group Magma around drummer Christian Vander almost single-handedly created the new music genre zeuhl with their first albums in the early 1970s.
Pink Floyd also moved away from psychedelia after the departure of Syd Barrett in 1968, with The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time.R. Reising, Speak to Me: The Legacy of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), . There was an emphasis on instrumental virtuosity, with Yes showcasing the skills of both guitarist Steve Howe and keyboard player Rick Wakeman, while Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP) were a supergroup who produced some of the genre's most technically demanding work. Jethro Tull and Genesis both pursued very different, but distinctly English, brands of music.M. Brocken, The British Folk Revival, 1944–2002 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), , p. 96. Renaissance, formed in 1969 by ex-Yardbirds Jim McCarty and Keith Relf, evolved into a high-concept band featuring the three-octave voice of Annie Haslam.. Most British bands depended on a relatively small cult following, but a handful, including Pink Floyd, Genesis, and Jethro Tull, managed to produce top ten singles at home and break the American market.K. Holm-Hudson, Progressive Rock Reconsidered (London: Taylor & Francis, 2002), , p. 9. The American brand of progressive rock varied from the eclectic and innovative Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart and Blood, Sweat & Tears,N.E. Tawa, Supremely American: Popular Song in the 20th Century: Styles and Singers and What They Said About America (Lanham, MA: Scarecrow Press, 2005), , pp. 249–50. to more pop rock orientated bands like Boston, Foreigner, Kansas, Journey, and Styx. These, beside British bands Supertramp and ELO, all demonstrated a prog rock influence and ranked among the most commercially successful acts of the 1970s, heralding the era of pomp or arena rock.
The instrumental strand of the genre resulted in albums like Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells (1973), the first record for the Virgin Records label, which became a worldwide hit and a mainstay of the genre. Instrumental rock was particularly significant in continental Europe, allowing bands like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Can, Focus and Faust to circumvent the language barrier.P. Bussy, Kraftwerk: Man, Machine and Music (London: SAF, 3rd end., 2004), , pp. 15–17. Their synthesiser-heavy "krautrock", along with the work of Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy Music), would be a major influence on subsequent electronic rock.
With the advent of punk rock and technological changes in the late 1970s, progressive rock was increasingly dismissed as pretentious and overblown.K. Holm-Hudson, Progressive Rock Reconsidered (London: Taylor & Francis, 2002), , p. 92. Many bands broke up, but some, including Genesis, ELP, Yes, and Pink Floyd, regularly scored top ten albums with successful accompanying worldwide tours. Some bands which emerged in the aftermath of punk, such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, Ultravox, and Simple Minds, showed the influence of progressive rock, as well as their more usually recognized punk influences.T. Udo, "Did Punk kill prog?", Classic Rock Magazine, vol. 97, September 2006.
British acts to emerge in the same period from the blues scene, to make use of the tonal and improvisational aspects of jazz, included NucleusI. Carr, D. Fairweather and B. Priestley, The Rough Guide to Jazz (London: Rough Guides, 3rd edn., 2004), , p. iii. and the Graham Bond and John Mayall spin-off Colosseum. From the psychedelic rock and the Canterbury scenes came Soft Machine, who, it has been suggested, produced one of the artistically successfully fusions of the two genres. Perhaps the most critically praised fusion came from the jazz side of the equation, with Miles Davis, particularly influenced by the work of Hendrix, incorporating rock instrumentation into his sound for the album Bitches Brew (1970). It was a major influence on subsequent rock-influenced jazz artists, including Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Weather Report. The genre began to fade in the late 1970s, as a mellower form of fusion began to take its audience, but acts like Steely Dan, Frank Zappa and Joni Mitchell recorded significant jazz-influenced albums in this period, and it has continued to be a major influence on rock music.R. Unterberger, "Jazz Rock", in Bogdanov et al., 2002, pp. 1328–1330.
Rock saw greater commodification during this decade, turning into a multibillion-dollar industry and doubling its market while, as Christgau noted, suffering a significant "loss of cultural prestige". "Maybe the Bee Gees became more popular than the Beatles, but they were never more popular than Jesus", he said. "Insofar as the music retained any mythic power, the myth was self-referential – there were lots of songs about the rock and roll life but very few about how rock could change the world, except as a new brand of painkiller ... In the '70s the powerful took over, as rock industrialists capitalized on the national mood to reduce potent music to an often reactionary species of entertainment—and to transmute rock's popular base from the audience to market."
In 1968, Gram Parsons recorded Safe at Home with the International Submarine Band, arguably the first true country rock album.R. Unterberger, "Country Rock", in Bogdanov et al., 2002, p. 1327. Later that year he joined the Byrds for Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968), generally considered one of the most influential recordings in the genre. The Byrds continued in the same vein, but Parsons left to be joined by another ex-Byrds member Chris Hillman in forming the Flying Burrito Brothers who helped establish the respectability and parameters of the genre, before Parsons departed to pursue a solo career. Bands in California that adopted country rock included Hearts and Flowers, Poco, New Riders of the Purple Sage, the Beau Brummels, and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.B. Hinton, "The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band", in P. Buckley, ed., Rock: The Rough Guide (London: Rough Guides, 1st edn., 1996), , pp. 612–13. Some performers also enjoyed a renaissance by adopting country sounds, including: the Everly Brothers; one-time teen idol Rick Nelson who became the frontman for the Stone Canyon Band; former Monkee Mike Nesmith who formed the First National Band; and Neil Young. The Dillards were, unusually, a country act, who moved towards rock music. The greatest commercial success for country rock came in the 1970s, with artists including the Doobie Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles (made up of members of the Burritos, Poco, and Stone Canyon Band), who emerged as one of the most successful rock acts of all time, producing albums that included Hotel California (1976).N.E. Tawa, Supremely American: Popular Song in the 20th Century: Styles and Singers and What They Said About America (Lanham, MA: Scarecrow Press, 2005), , p. 227–28.
The founders of Southern rock are usually thought to be the Allman Brothers Band, who developed a distinctive sound, largely derived from blues rock, but incorporating elements of boogie, soul, and country in the early 1970s. The most successful act to follow them were Lynyrd Skynyrd, who helped establish the "Good ol' boy" image of the subgenre and the general shape of 1970s' guitar rock. Their successors included the fusion/progressive instrumentalists Dixie Dregs, the more country-influenced Outlaws, funk/R&B-leaning Wet Willie and (incorporating elements of R&B and gospel) the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. After the loss of original members of the Allmans and Lynyrd Skynyrd, the genre began to fade in popularity in the late 1970s, but was sustained the 1980s with acts like .38 Special, Molly Hatchet and the Marshall Tucker Band.
The origins of glam rock are associated with Marc Bolan, who had renamed his folk duo to T. Rex and taken up electric instruments by the end of the 1960s. Often cited as the moment of inception is his appearance on the BBC music show Top of the Pops in March 1971 wearing glitter and satins, to perform what would be his second UK Top 10 hit (and first UK Number 1 hit), "Hot Love".Mark Paytress, Bolan – The Rise And Fall of a 20th Century Superstar (Omnibus Press 2002) , pp. 180–181. From 1971, already a minor star, David Bowie developed his Ziggy Stardust persona, incorporating elements of professional make up, mime and performance into his act.P. Auslander, "Watch that man David Bowie: Hammersmith Odeon, London, July 3, 1973" in I. Inglis, ed., Performance and Popular Music: History, Place and Time (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), , p. 72. These performers were soon followed in the style by acts including Roxy Music, The Sweet, Slade, Mott the Hoople, Mud and Alvin Stardust. While highly successful in the single charts in the United Kingdom, very few of these musicians were able to make a serious impact in the United States; Bowie was the major exception becoming an international superstar and prompting the adoption of glam styles among acts like Lou Reed, New York Dolls and Jobriath, often known as "glitter rock" and with a darker lyrical content than their British counterparts.P. Auslander, "Watch that man David Bowie: Hammersmith Odeon, London, July 3, 1973" in Ian Inglis, ed., Performance and Popular Music: History, Place and Time (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), , p. 80. In the UK the term glitter rock was most often used to refer to the extreme version of glam pursued by Gary Glitter and his support musicians the Glitter Band, who between them achieved eighteen top ten singles in the UK between 1972 and 1976.D. Thompson, "Glitter Band" and S. Huey, "Gary Glitter", in Bogdanov et al., 2002, p. 466. A second wave of glam rock acts, including Suzi Quatro, Roy Wood's Wizzard and Sparks, dominated the British single charts from about 1974 to 1976. Existing acts, some not usually considered central to the genre, also adopted glam styles, including Rod Stewart, Elton John, Queen and, for a time, even the Rolling Stones. It was also a direct influence on acts that rose to prominence later, including Kiss and Adam Ant, and less directly on the formation of gothic rock and glam metal as well as on punk rock, which helped end the fashion for glam from about 1976. Glam has since enjoyed sporadic modest revivals through bands such as the DarknessR. Huq, Beyond Subculture: Pop, Youth and Identity in a Postcolonial World (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), , p. 161. and in R&B crossover act Prince.P. Auslander, Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2006), , p. 227.
Also from the late 1960s, the term "heavy metal" began to be used to describe some hard rock played with even more volume and intensity, first as an adjective and by the early 1970s as a noun.R. Walser, Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1993), , p. 7. The term was first used in music in Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" (1967); the term began to be associated with bands like San Francisco's Blue Cheer, Cleveland's James Gang and Michigan's Grand Funk Railroad.R. Walser, Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1993), , p. 9. By 1970, three key British bands had developed the characteristic sounds and styles which would help shape the subgenre. Led Zeppelin added elements of fantasy to their riff laden blues-rock, Deep Purple brought in symphonic and medieval interests from their progressive rock phase and Black Sabbath introduced facets of the gothic rock and Musical mode, helping to produce a "darker" sound.R. Walser, Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1993), , p. 10. These elements were taken up by a "second generation" of hard rock and heavy metal bands into the late 1970s, including: Judas Priest, UFO, Motörhead and Rainbow from Britain; Kiss, Ted Nugent, and Blue Öyster Cult from the US; Rush from Canada and Scorpions from Germany, all marking the expansion in popularity of the subgenre. Despite a lack of airplay and very little presence on the singles charts, late 1970s heavy metal built a considerable following, particularly among adolescent working-class males in North America and Europe.R. Walser, Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1993), , p. 3.
In the 1980s, bands such as Bon Jovi, Guns N' Roses, Metallica, Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard saw mainstream success, with hard rock and a Glam metal of hard rock and heavy metal with pop. During the 1990s, hard rock saw a slight decline in popularity, save for some major hits like Guns N' Roses' "November Rain", and Metallica's "Enter Sandman".
Exemplified by the commercial success of singer songwriters Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, and Tom Petty, it was partly a reaction to post-industrial urban decline in the East and Mid-West, often dwelling on issues of social disintegration and isolation, beside a form of good-time rock and roll revivalism. The genre reached its commercial peak in the mid-1980s, with Springsteen's Born in the USA (1984) topping the charts worldwide and spawning a series of top ten singles, together with the arrival of artists including John Mellencamp, Steve Earle and more gentle singer-songwriters such as Bruce Hornsby.
Heartland rock faded away as a recognized genre by the early 1990s, as rock music in general, and blue-collar and white working class themes in particular, lost influence with younger audiences, and as heartland's artists turned to more personal works.
By the beginning of the 1980s, faster, more aggressive styles such as hardcore punk and Oi! had emerged,
which evolved into strains of hardcore punk such as D-beat (a distortion-heavy subgenre influenced by the UK band Discharge), anarcho-punk (e.g. Crass), grindcore (e.g. Napalm Death), and crust punk.T. Gosling, "'Not for sale': The Underground network of Anarcho-punk" in A. Bennett and R.A. Peterson, eds, Music Scenes: Local, Translocal and Virtual (Nashville TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004), , pp. 168–86. Musicians identifying with or inspired by punk also pursued a broad range of other variations, giving rise to new wave, post-punk and the alternative rock movement.
Between 1979 and 1985, influenced by Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, David Bowie and Gary Numan, British new wave went in the direction of such New Romantics as Spandau Ballet, Ultravox, Japan, Duran Duran, A Flock of Seagulls, Culture Club, Talk Talk and the Eurythmics, sometimes using the synthesizer to replace all other instruments. This period coincided with the rise of MTV and led to a great deal of exposure for this brand of synth-pop, creating what has been characterised as a second British Invasion.S. Reynolds, Rip It Up and Start Again Postpunk 1978–1984 (London: Penguin Books, 2006), , pp. 340, 342–343. Some more traditional rock bands were also successful, such as Dire Straits, whose "Money for Nothing" gently poked fun at MTV,M. Haig, Brand Royalty: How the World's Top 100 Brands Thrive & Survive (London: Kogan Page Publishers, 2006), , p. 54. but in general guitar-oriented rock was commercially eclipsed.
The first wave of British post-punk included Gang of Four, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Joy Division, who placed less emphasis on art than their US counterparts and more on the dark emotional qualities of their music. Bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, the Cure, and the Sisters of Mercy, moved increasingly in this direction to found gothic rock, which had become the basis of a major sub-culture by the early 1980s. Similar emotional territory was pursued by Australian acts like the Birthday Party and Nick Cave. Members of Bauhaus and Joy Division explored new stylistic territory as Love and Rockets and New Order respectively. Another early post-punk movement was the industrial musicC. Gere, Digital Culture (London: Reaktion Books, 2002), , p. 172. developed by British bands Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, and New York-based Suicide, using a variety of electronic and sampling techniques that emulated the sound of industrial production and which would develop into a variety of forms of post-industrial music in the 1980s.
The second generation of British post-punk bands that broke through in the early 1980s, including the Fall, the Pop Group, the Mekons, Echo and the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes, tended to move away from dark sonic landscapes. Arguably the most successful band to emerge from post-punk was Ireland's U2, who incorporated elements of religious imagery together with political commentary into their often anthemic music, and by the late 1980s had become one of the biggest bands in the world.F.W. Hoffmann and H. Ferstler, Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound, Volume 1 (New York: CRC Press, 2nd edn., 2004), , p. 1135. Although many post-punk bands continued to record and perform, it declined as a movement in the mid-1980s as acts disbanded or moved off to explore other musical areas, but it has continued to influence the development of rock music and has been seen as a major element in the creation of the alternative rock movement.D. Hesmondhaigh, "Indie: the institutional political and aesthetics of a popular music genre" in Cultural Studies, 13 (2002), p. 46.
Few of these early bands achieved mainstream success, although exceptions to this rule include R.E.M., the Smiths, and the Cure. Despite a general lack of spectacular album sales, the original alternative rock bands exerted a considerable influence on the generation of musicians who came of age in the 1980s and ended up breaking through to mainstream success in the 1990s. Styles of alternative rock in the US during the 1980s included jangle pop, associated with the early recordings of R.E.M., which incorporated the ringing guitars of mid-1960s pop and rock, and college rock, used to describe alternative bands that began in the college circuit and college radio, including acts such as 10,000 Maniacs and the Feelies. In the UK, by the end of the 1980s, indie or dream pop bands like Primal Scream and the Wedding Present, and what were dubbed shoegaze bands like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and Ride entered. Particularly vibrant was the Madchester scene, producing such bands as Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses.R. Shuker, Popular Music: the Key Concepts (Abingdon: Routledge, 2nd edn., 2005), , p. 7. The next decade would see the success of grunge in the US and Britpop in the UK, bringing alternative rock into the mainstream.
Bands such as Green River, Soundgarden, and Melvins pioneered the genre, with Mudhoney becoming the most successful by the end of the decade. Grunge remained largely a local phenomenon until 1991, when Nirvana's album Nevermind became a huge success, containing the anthemic song "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Nevermind was more melodic than its predecessors; by signing to Geffen Records the band was one of the first to employ traditional corporate promotion and marketing mechanisms such as an MTV video, in store displays and the use of radio "consultants" who promoted airplay at major mainstream rock stations. During 1991 and 1992, other grunge albums such as Pearl Jam's Ten, Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger, and Alice in Chains' Dirt, along with the Temple of the Dog album featuring members of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, became among the 100 top-selling albums.J. Lyons, Selling Seattle: Representing Contemporary Urban America (London: Wallflower, 2004), , p. 136. Major record labels signed most of the remaining grunge bands in Seattle, while a second influx of acts moved to the city in the hope of success.M. Azerrad, (Boston, MA: Little Brown and Company, 2001), , pp. 452–453. However, after the death of Kurt Cobain and the subsequent break-up of Nirvana in 1994, the genre began to decline, partly to be overshadowed by Britpop and more commercial sounding post-grunge..
Some post-grunge bands, like Candlebox, were from Seattle, but the subgenre was marked by a broadening of the geographical base of grunge, with bands like Los Angeles' Audioslave, and Georgia's Collective Soul and beyond the US to Australia's Silverchair and Britain's Bush, who all cemented post-grunge as one of the most commercially viable subgenres of the late 1990s. Although male bands predominated post-grunge, female solo artist Alanis Morissette's 1995 album Jagged Little Pill, labelled as post-grunge, also became a multi-platinum hit.S.T. Erlewine, "Alanis Morissette", in Bogdanov et al., 2002, p. 761. Bands like Creed and Nickelback took post-grunge into the 21st century with considerable commercial success, abandoning most of the angst and anger of the original movement for more conventional anthems, narratives and romantic songs, and were followed in this vein by newer acts including Shinedown, Seether, 3 Doors Down and Puddle of Mudd.
A second wave of pop-punk was spearheaded by Blink-182, with their breakthrough album Enema of the State (1999), followed by bands such as Good Charlotte, Simple Plan and Sum 41, who made use of humour in their videos and had a more radio-friendly tone to their music, while retaining the speed, some of the attitude and even the look of 1970s punk. Later pop-punk bands, including All Time Low, the All-American Rejects and Fall Out Boy, had a sound that has been described as closer to 1980s hardcore, while still achieving commercial success.
By the end of the 1990s many recognisable subgenres, most with their origins in the late 1980s alternative movement, were included under the umbrella of indie. Lo-fi eschewed polished recording techniques for a D.I.Y. ethos and was spearheaded by Beck, Sebadoh and Pavement. The work of Talk Talk and Slint helped inspire both post rock, an experimental style influenced by jazz and electronic music (exemplified by acts such as Bark Psychosis, Tortoise, Stereolab, and Laika),S. Taylor, A to X of Alternative Music (London: Continuum, 2006), , pp. 154–55.. as well as leading to more dense and complex, guitar-based math rock, developed by acts like Polvo and Chavez.. Space rock looked back to progressive roots, with drone heavy and minimalist acts like Spacemen 3, the two bands created out of its split, Spectrum and Spiritualized, and later groups including Flying Saucer Attack, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Quickspace. In contrast, sadcore emphasised pain and suffering through melodic use of acoustic and electronic instrumentation in the music of bands like American Music Club and Red House Painters,. while the revival of baroque pop reacted against lo-fi and experimental music by placing an emphasis on melody and classical instrumentation, with artists like Arcade Fire, Belle and Sebastian and Rufus Wainwright..
Hip hop had gained attention from rock acts in the early 1980s, including the Clash with "The Magnificent Seven" (1980) and Blondie with "Rapture" (1980).. Early crossover acts included Run DMC and the Beastie Boys. Rappers who sampled rock songs included Ice-T, the Fat Boys, LL Cool J, Public Enemy and Whodini. The mixing of thrash metal and rap was pioneered by Anthrax on their 1987 comedy-influenced single "I'm the Man".
In 1990, Faith No More broke into the mainstream with their single "Epic", often seen as the first truly successful combination of heavy metal with rap.S. T. Erlewine, et al., "Faith No More", in Bogdanov et al., 2002, pp. 388–389. This paved the way for the success of existing bands like 24-7 Spyz and Living Colour, and new acts including Rage Against the Machine and Red Hot Chili Peppers, who all fused rock and hip hop among other influences.T. Grierson, "What Is Rap-Rock: A Brief History of Rap-Rock" , About.com. Retrieved 31 December 2008. Among the first wave of performers to gain mainstream success as rap rock were 311, Bloodhound Gang, and Kid Rock. A more metallic sound nu metalwas pursued by bands including Limp Bizkit, Korn and Slipknot. Later in the decade this style, which contained a mix of grunge, punk, metal, rap and turntable scratching, spawned a wave of successful bands like Linkin Park, P.O.D. and Staind, who were often classified as rap metal or nu metal, the first of which are the best-selling band of the genre.L. McIver, Nu-metal: The Next Generation of Rock & Punk (London, Omnibus Press, 2002), , p. 10.
In 2001, nu metal reached its peak with albums like Staind's Break the Cycle, P.O.D's Satellite, Slipknot's Iowa and Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory. New bands also emerged like Disturbed, Godsmack and Papa Roach, whose major label debut Infest became a platinum hit.B. Reesman, "Sustaining the success", Billboard, 23 June 2001, 113 (25), p. 25. By 2002, nu metal bands were played more infrequently on rock radio stations and MTV began focusing on pop punk and emo. Since then, many bands have changed to a more conventional hard rock, heavy metal, or electronic music sound.
Post-Britpop bands have been seen as presenting the image of the rock star as an ordinary person and their increasingly melodic music was criticised for being bland or derivative. Post-Britpop bands like Travis from The Man Who (1999), Stereophonics from Performance and Cocktails (1999), Feeder from Echo Park (2001), and particularly Snow Patrol from Final Straw (2003), Keane from their debut album Hopes and Fears (2004), and Coldplay from their debut album Parachutes (2000), achieved wider international success than many of the Britpop groups that had preceded them, and were some of the most commercially successful acts of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Emo also emerged from the hardcore scene in 1980s Washington, D.C., initially as "emocore", used as a term to describe bands who favored expressive vocals over the more common abrasive, barking style.. Emo broke into mainstream culture in the early 2000s with the platinum-selling success of Jimmy Eat World's Bleed American (2001) and Dashboard Confessional's The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most (2003). The new emo had a much more mainstream sound than in the 1990s and a far greater appeal among adolescents than its earlier incarnations. At the same time, use of the term emo expanded beyond the musical genre, becoming associated with fashion, a hairstyle and any music that expressed emotion. By 2003 post-hardcore bands had also caught the attention of major labels and began to enjoy mainstream success in the album charts. A number of these bands were seen as a more aggressive offshoot of emo and given the often vague label of screamo.
The commercial breakthrough from these scenes was led by four bands: the Strokes, who emerged from the New York club scene with their debut album Is This It (2001); the White Stripes, from Detroit, with their third album White Blood Cells (2001); the Hives from Sweden after their compilation album Your New Favourite Band (2001); and the Vines from Australia with Highly Evolved (2002).P. Buckley, The Rough Guide to Rock (London: Rough Guides, 3rd edn., 2003), , pp. 498–99, 1024–26, 1040–41, 1162–64. They were dubbed by the media as "the saviours of rock 'n' roll".
A second wave of bands that gained international recognition due to the movement included Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Killers, Interpol and Kings of Leon from the US,S.J. Blackman, Chilling Out: the Cultural Politics of Substance Consumption, Youth and Drug Policy (Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill International, 2004), , p. 90. the Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party, Editors, Kaiser Chiefs and Franz Ferdinand from the UK,
In the 2010s and through to the 2020s, the genre saw even greater commercial success, with Bring Me the Horizon's album (2020) and Architects' For Those That Wish to Exist (2021) both reaching number one in the UK album charts.
The rock bands which had chart success in the 2010s were mostly associated with the trends that had been popular in the 2000s and earlier decades rather than reflecting new scenes and sounds. Some pop rock and hard rock bands continued to see commercial success during this period, including Ghost, Maroon 5, Twenty One Pilots, Fall Out Boy, Imagine Dragons, Halestorm, Panic! at the Disco, Greta Van Fleet, and the Black Keys. In 2013, Queens of the Stone Age's album ...Like Clockwork topped the charts in several countries.
Psychedelic trends in rock have also seen a revival in Europe, which has been described as "really good" for new psychedelic music, with many American stoner rock bands choosing to tour in Europe as opposed to North America.
At the start of the 2020s, pop and rap music artists released successful pop-punk-influenced recordings, including Machine Gun Kelly's 2020 album Tickets to My Downfall, which topped the Billboard 200, and Olivia Rodrigo's number-one hit single "Good 4 U" (2021).
When an international rock culture developed, it supplanted cinema as the major source of fashion influence.S. Bruzzi and P. C. Gibson, Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations, and Analysis (Abingdon: Routledge, 2000), , p. 260. However, followers of rock music have often mistrusted the world of fashion, which has been seen as elevating image above substance. Rock fashions have been seen as combining elements of different cultures and periods, as well as expressing divergent views on sexuality and gender, and rock music in general has been noted and criticised for facilitating greater sexual freedom.G. Lipsitz, Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture (Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), , p. 123. Rock has also been associated with various forms of drug use, including the taken by mods in the early to mid-1960s, the LSD, mescaline and other hallucinogenic drugs linked with psychedelic rock in the mid- to late 1960s and early 1970s; and sometimes cannabis, cocaine and heroin, all of which have been eulogised in song.R. Coomber, The Control of Drugs and Drug Users: Reason or Reaction? (Amsterdam: CRC Press, 1998), , p. 44.P. Peet, Under the Influence: the Disinformation Guide to Drugs (New York: The Disinformation Company, 2004), , p. 252.
Rock has been credited with changing attitudes to race by opening up African-American culture to white audiences. However, at the same time, rock has been accused of appropriating and exploiting that culture.
M.T. Bertrand, Race, Rock, and Elvis (Chicago IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000), , pp. 95–96. Rock music has absorbed many influences and introduced Western audiences to different musical traditions,J. Fairley, "The 'local' and 'global' in popular music" in S. Frith, W. Straw and J. Street, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), , pp. 272–89. and inherited the folk tradition of protest song, making political statements on subjects such as war, religion, poverty, civil rights, justice and the environment.T.E. Scheurer, American Popular Music: The Age of Rock (Madison, WI: Popular Press, 1989), , pp. 119–20. Activism reached a mainstream peak with the "Do They Know It's Christmas?" single (1984) and Live Aid concert for Ethiopia in 1985, which, while raising awareness of world poverty and funds for aid, have also been criticised (along with similar events), for providing a stage for self-aggrandisement and increased profits for the rock stars involved.D. Horn and D. Bucley, "Disasters and accidents", in J. Shepherd, Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World: Media, Industry and Society (London: Continuum, 2003), , p. 209.Since its early development, rock music has been associated with rebellion against social and political norms, most in early rock and roll's rejection of an adult-dominated culture, the counterculture's rejection of consumerism and conformity and punk's rejection of all forms of social convention;P. Wicke, Rock Music: Culture, Aesthetics and Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn., 1995), , pp. 91–114. however, it can also be seen as providing a means of commercial exploitation of such ideas and of diverting youth away from political action.
In the early decades of rock music, rebellion "was largely a male rebellion; the women—often, in the 1950s and 60s, girls in their teens—in rock usually sang songs as personae, utterly dependent on their macho boyfriends." Philip Auslander says that "although there were many women in rock by the late 1960s, most performed only as singers, a traditionally feminine position in popular music." Some women played instruments in American All-female band, but none of these bands achieved more than regional success. When Suzi Quatro emerged in 1973, "no other prominent female musician worked in rock simultaneously as a singer, instrumentalist, songwriter, and bandleader".
An all-female band is a musical group that is exclusively composed of . This is distinct from a girl group, in which the female members are vocalists, though this terminology is not universally followed.For example, vocalists Girls Aloud are referred to as a "girl band" in OK magazine and The Guardian, while Girlschool are termed a "girl group" at the imdb and Belfast Telegraph.
|
|