From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaRock music is a genre of popular music that entered the mainstream in the 1960s. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, rhythm and blues, country music and also drew on folk music, jazz and classical music.
The sound of rock often revolves around the guitar back beat laid down by a rhythm section of electric bass guitar, drums, and keyboard instruments such as organ, piano, or, since the 1970s, synthesizers. Along with the guitar or keyboards, saxophone and blues-style harmonica are sometimes used as soloing instruments. In its "purest form", it "has three chords, a strong, insistent back beat, and a catchy melody."[1]
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, rock music developed different subgenres. When it was blended with folk music it created folk rock, with blues to create blues-rock and with jazz, to create jazz-rock fusion. In the 1970s, rock incorporated influences from soul, funk, and Latin music. Also in the 1970s, rock developed a number of subgenres, such as soft rock, glam rock, heavy metal, hard rock, progressive rock, and punk rock. Rock subgenres that emerged in the 1980s included new wave, hardcore punk and alternative rock. In the 1990s, rock subgenres included grunge, Britpop, indie rock, and nu metal.
A group of musicians specializing in rock music is called a rock band or rock group. Many rock groups consist of an electric guitarist, lead singer, bass guitarist, and a drummer, forming a quartet. Some groups omit one or more of these roles or utilize a lead singer who plays an instrument while singing, sometimes forming a trio or duo; others include additional musicians such as one or two rhythm guitarists or a keyboardist. More rarely, groups also utilize stringed instruments such as violins or cellos, woodwind instruments such as saxophones, and brass instruments such as trumpets or trombones.
More recently the term rock has been used as a blanket term including forms such as pop music, soul music, and sometimes even hip hop, with which it has often been contrasted through much of its history.[2]
1950s-early 1960s
Rock and roll
Rock and roll evolved in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a mixing together of various popular musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues, gospel music, and country and western.[3] In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, and is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music.[3]
There is much debate as to what should be considered the first rock and roll record. One leading contender is "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 Sun Records in 1951.[4] Four years later, Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" (1955) 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.[5]
Elvis Presley
Rolling
Stone magazine
argued in 2004 that "That's All Right
(Mama)" (1954),
Elvis
Presley's first single
for Sun Records in Memphis, was the first rock and roll
record.[6], but, at the same time,
Big Joe
Turner's
"Shake,
Rattle & Roll",
later covered by Haley, was already at the top of
the Billboard R&B
charts. Other artists
with early rock and roll hits included Chuck
Berry,
Bo
Diddley,
Fats
Domino,
Little
Richard,
Jerry Lee
Lewis, and
Gene
Vincent.[4] Soon rock and roll was the major force in
American record sales and crooners, 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.[7]
Rock and roll has been seen as leading to
a number of distinct sub-genres, 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, Buddy Holly
and with the greatest
commercial success, Elvis Presley.[8] In contrast doo wop
placed an emphasis on
multi-part vocal harmonies and meaningless backing lyrics
(from which the genre later gained its name), which were
usually supported with light instrumentation and had its
origins in 1930s and 40s African American vocal
groups.[9] Acts like The
Crows,
The
Penguins,
The El
Dorados and
The
Turbans all scored
major hits, and groups like The
Platters, with songs
including "The Great
Pretender" (1955),
and The
Coasters with humorous
songs like "Yakety
Yak" (1958), ranked
among the most successful rock and roll acts of the
period.[10] The era also 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 Berry,
Link
Wray, and
Scotty
Moore.[11]
In the United Kingdom, the trad jazz
and folk movements brought visiting
blues
music artists to
Britain.[12] 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, moved on to
play rock and roll.[13]
Commentators have traditionally 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 Richie 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 initial rock and roll era had come to an
end.[4]
The "inbetween
years"
The period of the later 1950s and early
1960s, between the end of the initial period of innovation
and what became known in the USA as the
"British
Invasion", has
traditionally been seen as an era of hiatus for rock and
roll. More recently a number of authors have emphasised
important innovations and trends in this period without
which future developments would not have been
possible.[14][15] While early rock and roll, particularly
through the advent of rockabilly, saw the greatest
commercial success for male and white performers, in this
era the genre was dominated by black and female artists.
Rock and roll had not disappeared at the end of the 1950s
and some of its energy can be seen in the
Twist
dance craze of the early 60s,
mainly benefiting the career of Chubby
Checker.[15] Having died down in the late 1950s, Doo
Wop enjoyed a revival in the same period, with hits for
acts like The
Marcels,
The
Capris, Maurice
Williams and Shep and the
Limelights.[10] The rise of girl groups
like The
Chantels,
The
Shirelles and
The
Crystals placed an
emphasis on harmonies and polished production that was in
contrast to earlier rock and roll.[16] Some of the most significant girl group
hits were products of the Brill Building
Sound, named after the block
in New York where many songwriters were based, which
included the number 1 hit for the Shirelles
"Will
You Love Me Tomorrow"
in 1960, penned by the partnership of Gerry Goffin
and Carole
King.[17]
Cliff Richard
had the first
British rock
and roll hit with
"Move
It", effectively
ushering in the sound of British rock.[18] At the start of the 1960s, his backing
group The Shadows
was the most successful of a
number of groups recording
instrumentals.[19]
While rock 'n' roll was
fading into lightweight pop and ballads, British
rock
groups at clubs and
local dances, heavily influenced by blues-rock pioneers
like Alexis
Korner, were starting
to play with an intensity and drive seldom found in white
American acts.[20]
Also significant was the advent of soul music as a major
commercial force. Developing out of Rhythm and Blues with a
re-injection of gospel music and pop, led by pioneers
like Ray Charles
and Sam Cooke
from the mid-1950s, by the
early 60s figures like Marvin
Gaye,
Aretha
Franklin,
Curtis
Mayfield and
Stevie
Wonder were dominating
the R&B charts and breaking through into the main pop
charts, helping to accelerate their desegregation,
while Motown and Stax/Volt
Records were becoming major
forces in the record industry.[21] All of these elements, including the
close harmonies of doo wop and girl groups, the carefully
crafted song-writing of the Brill Building Sound and the
polished production values of soul, have been seen as
influencing the Merseybeat
sound, particularly the early
work of The
Beatles, and through
them the form of later rock music.[22] Some historians of music have also
pointed to important and innovative technical developments
that built on rock and roll in this period, including the
electronic treatment of sound by such innovators as
Joe
Meek, and the
elaborate production methods of the Wall of Sound
pursued by
Phil
Spector.[15
Surf
music
The instrumental rock and roll pioneered by performers such
as Duane
Eddy, Link Wray,
and The
Ventures was developed
by Dick
Dale who added
distinctive "wet" reverb, rapid alternate picking, as well as
Middle Eastern and Mexican influences, producing the
regional hit "Let's Go
Trippin'" in 1961 and
launching the surf music craze. Like Dale and his
Del-Tones,
most early surf bands were formed in Southern California,
including the Bel-Airs,
the Challengers,
and Eddie & the
Showmen.[23] The Chantays
scored a top ten national hit
with "Pipeline"
in 1963 and probably the single most famous surf tune hit
was 1963's "Wipe
Out", by the
Surfaris,
which hit # 2 and # 10 on the Billboard charts in
1965.[24]
The growing popularity of the genre led
groups from other areas to try their hand. These
included The
Astronauts,
from Boulder,
Colorado,
The
Trashmen, from
Minneapolis,
Minnesota, who had a
number 4 hit with "Surfin Bird" in 1964 and
The
Rivieras from
South Bend,
Indiana, who reached
#5 in 1964 with "California Sun".[25] The
Atlantics, from
Sydney,
Australia, made a
significant contribution to the genre, with their hit
"Bombora" (1963).[25] European instrumental bands around this
time generally focused more on the more rock and roll style
played by The Shadows, but The
Dakotas, who were the
British backing band for Merseybeat singer
Billy J.
Kramer, gained some
attention as surf musicians with "Cruel Sea" (1963), which
was later covered by American instrumental surf bands,
including The Ventures.[26]
Surf music achieved its greatest commercial success as
vocal music, particularly the work of the
Beach
Boys, formed in 1961
in Southern California. Their early albums included both
instrumental surf rock (among them 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.[25] Their first chart hit,
"Surfin'" in 1962 reached the Billboard top 100
and helped make the surf music craze a national
phenomenon.[27] From 1963 the group began to leave
surfing behind as subject matter as Brian Wilson
became their major composer
and producer, moving on to the more general themes of male
adolescence including cars and girl in songs like
"Fun,
Fun, Fun" (1964) and
"California
Girls"
(1965).[27] Other vocal surf acts followed, including
one-hit wonders like Ronny & the
Daytonas with "G. T.
O." (1964) and Rip Chords
with "Hey Little Cobra",
which both reached the top ten, but the only other act to
achieve sustained success with the formula were
Jan &
Dean, who had a number
1 hit with "Surf City" (co-written with Brian Wilson) in
1963.[25] The surf music craze and the careers of
almost all surf acts, was effectively ended by the arrival
of the British Invasion from 1964.[25] Only the Beach Boys were able to sustain
a creative career into the mid-1960s, producing a string of
hit singles and albums, including the highly
regarded Pet Sounds
in 1966, which made them,
arguably, the only American rock or pop act that could
rival The Beatles.[27]
Golden age (1963–1974)
The British
Invasion
The
Beatles
By the end of 1962, the British rock
scene had started with beat groups
like The Beatles drawing
on a wide range of American influences
including soul
music, rhythm and
blues and surf music.[28]
Initially, they
reinterpreted standard American tunes, playing for
dancers doing the twist, for example. These groups
eventually infused their original rock compositions
with increasingly complex musical ideas and a
distinctive sound. In mid-1962 The Rolling
Stones started as
one of a number of groups increasingly showing blues
influence, along with bands like The Animals
and The
Yardbirds.[20]
During 1963, The Beatles
and other beat
groups, such
as The Searchers
and The
Hollies, achieved
great popularity and commercial success in Britain.
British rock broke through to mainstream popularity in the
United States in January 1964 with the success of the
Beatles. "I Want to Hold Your
Hand" was the band's
first number-one hit on the Billboard
Hot 100
chart, starting the British
Invasion of the American music charts.[29] The song entered the chart on January 18
1964 at number 45 before it became the number one single
for 7 weeks and went onto last a total of 15 weeks in the
chart.[30] It also held the top spot in the
United
Kingdom charts. A
million copies of the single had already been ordered on
its release. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" became The Beatles'
best-selling single worldwide.[31] Their first appearance on the
Ed Sullivan
Show February 9 is
considered a milestone in American pop culture. The
broadcast drew an estimated 73 million viewers, at the time
a record for an American television program. The Beatles
went on to become the biggest selling rock band of all time
and they were followed by numerous British
bands.[32]
During the next two years, Chad &
Jeremy,
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
would have one or more number
one singles.[29] Other acts that were part of the invasion
included The Kinks
and The Dave Clark
Five.[33] British Invasion acts also dominated the
music charts at home in the United
Kingdom.[34]
The British Invasion helped make internationalize the
production of rock and roll, opening the door for
subsequent British (and Irish) performers to achieve
international success.[34] In America it arguably spelled the end of
instrumental surf
music, vocal girl
groups and (for a time) the teen
idols, that had
dominated the American charts in the late 1950s and
60s.[35] 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.[36] 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 around
guitars and drums and producing their own material
as singer-songwriters.[37]
Pop rock
Although the term pop, to describe
popular music, has been used since the early twentieth
century, from the mid-1950s the it began to be used for a
distinct genre, aimed at a youth market, often
characterized as a softer alternative to rock and
roll.[49][50] In the aftermath of the British Invasion,
from about 1967, it was increasingly used in opposition to
the term rock music, to describe a form that was more
commercial, ephemeral and accessible.[51] In contrast rock music was seen as
focusing on extended works, particularly albums, was often
associated with particular sub-cultures (like the
counter-culture),
placed an emphasis on artistic values and "authenticity",
stressed live performance and instrumental or vocal
virtuosity and was often seen as encapsulating progressive
developments rather than simply reflecting existing
trends.[49][50][51][52]
Nevertheless much pop and rock music has been very similar
in sound, instrumentation and even lyrical content. The
terms "pop-rock" and "power pop" have been used to describe
more commercially successful music that uses elements from,
or the form of, rock music.[53] Pop-rock has been defined as an "upbeat
variety of rock music represented by artists such as Elton
John, Paul McCartney, The Everly
Brothers,
Rod
Stewart,
Chicago, and Peter
Frampton."[54] In contrast, music reviewer George
Starostin defines it as a subgenre of pop music
that uses catchy pop songs
that are mostly guitar-based. Starostin argues that most of
what is traditionally called "power pop" (a term coined
by Pete
Townshend of The Who
in 1966, but not much used until it was applied to bands
like Badfinger
in the
1970s),[55] falls into the pop rock subgenre and that
the lyrical content of pop rock is "normally secondary to
the music."[56] Throughout its history there have been
rock acts that have used elements of pop, or achieved
commercial success, and pop artists who have used rock
music as a basis for their work, or striven for rock
"authenticity".
Blues-rock
Although the
first impact of the British Invasion on American popular
music was through beat and R&B based acts, the impetus
was soon taken up by a second wave of bands that drew their
inspiration more directly from American blues, including the Rolling Stones and the
Yardbirds.[57] British blues musicians of the late 1950s
and early 60s had been inspired by the acoustic playing of
figures such as Lead
Belly, who was a major
influence on the Skiffle craze, and Robert
Johnson.[58] Increasingly they adopted a loud
amplified sound, often centred around the electric guitar,
based on the Chicago
blues, particularly
after the tour of Britain by Muddy Waters
in 1958, which
prompted Cyril Davies
and guitarist
Alexis
Korner to form the
band Blues
Incorporated.[20] The band involved and inspired many of
the figures of the subsequent British blues
boom, including members of
the Rolling Stones and Cream, combining blues standards and
forms with rock instrumentation and
emphasis.[20]
Eric Clapton Performing in
Barcelona, 1974
The other key
focus for British blues was around John Mayall
who formed the
Bluesbreakers,
whose members included Eric Clapton
(after his 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.[59] Eric Clapton went on to form supergroups
Cream, Blind Faith
and Derek and the
Dominos, followed by
an extensive solo career that has been seminal in bringing
blues-rock into the mainstream.[20]
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.[20] In the late '60s Jeff
Beck, also an alumni
of the Yardbirds, moved blues-rock in the direction of
heavy rock with his band, The Jeff Beck
Group.[20] The last Yardbirds guitarist
Jimmy
Page went on to
form The New
Yardbirds which
rapidly became Led
Zeppelin, whose early
work was largely based around adaptations of blues
standards.[20] Many of the song on their first three
albums and occasionally later in their careers, were
expansions on traditional blues songs.[20]
In American blues-rock had been pioneered in the early
1960s by guitarist Lonnie
Mack,[60] but the genre began to take off in the
mid-60s as acts followed 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 and Band of
Gypsys, whose guitar
virtuosity and showmanship would be among the most emulated
of the decade.[20] Blues-rock bands like Allman Brothers
Band,
Lynyrd
Skynyrd and
eventually ZZ Top from the southern states, incorporated
country elements into their style to produce
distinctive Southern
rock.[61]
Early 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 begun
to move away from purely blues-based music into
psychedelia.[62] 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",[62] as bands began recording rock-style
albums.[62] The genre was continued in the 1970s by
figures such as George Thorogood
and Pat
Travers,[20] 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), bands became
focused on heavy metal
innovation, and blues-rock
began to slip out of the mainstream.[63]
Folk rock
Main
articles: Bob Dylan
and
Folk
rock
Joan Baez
& Bob
Dylan
By the 1960s, the scene that had
developed out of the American folk music
revival had grown to a
major movement, utilising traditional music and new
compositions in a traditional style, usually on acoustic
instruments.[64] In America the genre was pioneered by
figures such as Woody Guthrie
and Pete Seeger
and often identified
with progressive
or labor
politics.[64] In the early sixties figures such
as Joan
Baez and
Bob
Dylan had came to the
fore in this movement as
singer-songwriters.[65] Dylan had begun to reach a mainstream
audience with hits including "Blowin' in the
Wind" (1963) and
"Masters of
War" (1963), which
brought "protest
songs" to a wider
public,[66] but, although beginning to influence each
other, rock and folk music had remained largely separate
genres, often with mutually exclusive
audiences.[67]
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[68] and the Beatles "I'm a
Loser" (1965),
arguably the first Beatles song to be influenced directly
by Dylan.[69] 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.[67] With members who had been part of the
cafe-based folk scene in Los Angeles, the Byrds adopted
rock instrumentation, including drums and 12-string
Rickenbacker
guitars, which became an
major element in the sound of the genre.[67] 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.[67] 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 "Sound of
Silence" being remixed
with rock instruments to be the first of many
hits.[67]
These acts directly influenced British performers like
Donovan and Fairport
Convention.[67] In 1969 Fairport Convention abandoned
their mixture of American covers and Dylan-influenced songs
to play traditional English folk music on electric
instruments.[70] This electric folk
was taken up by bands
including Pentangle,
Steeleye
Span and
The Albion
Band, which 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.[71]
Folk rock reached its peak of commercial popularity in the
period 1967-8, before many acts moved off in a variety of
directions, including Dylan and the Byrds, who began to
develop country
rock.[72] 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".[67][73]
Psychedelic rock
Main
article: Psychedelic
rock
Psychedelic music's LSD-inspired vibe began in the folk scene,
with the New York-based Holy Modal Rounders
using the term in their 1964
recording of "Hesitation
Blues".[74] The first group advertise themselves as
psychedelic rock were the 13th Floor
Elevators from Texas,
at the end of 1965; producing an album that made their
direction clear, with The Psychedelic Sounds
of the 13th Floor Elevators the following year.[74] The Beatles introduced many of the major
elements of the psychedelic sound to audiences in this
period, with "I Feel
Fine" using guitar
feedback; in late 1965 the Rubber
Soul album
included the use of a sitar on "Norwegian
Wood" and they
employed backmasking
on their 1966 single B-side
"Rain" and other tracks that appeared on
their Revolver
album later that
year.[75]
Jimi Hendrix
live at the
Royal
Albert Hall,
February 18, 1969.
Psychedelic rock
particularly took off in California's emerging music scene
as groups followed the Byrds from folk to folk rock from
1965.[75] The psychedelic life style had already
developed in San Francisco and particularly prominent
products of the scene were The Grateful
Dead,
Country Joe
and the Fish,
The Great
Society and
Jefferson
Airplane.[75] The Byrds rapidly progressed from purely
folk rock in 1966 with their single "Eight Miles
High", widely taken to
be a reference to drug use. In Britain arguably the most
influential band in the genre were The
Yardbirds,[75] who, with Jeff Beck as their guitarist,
increasingly moved into psychedelic territory, adding
up-tempo improvised "rave ups", Gregorian chant and world
music influences to songs including "Still I'm Sad" (1965)
and "Over Under Sideways Down" (1966).[76] From 1966 the UK underground
scene based in North London,
supported new acts including Pink
Floyd,
Traffic
and Soft
Machine.[77] The same year saw Donovan's
folk-influenced hit album Sunshine
Superman,
considered one of the first psychedelic pop records, as
well as the débuts of blues rock bands Cream and The Jimi
Hendrix Experience, whose extended guitar-heavy jams became
a key feature of psychedelia.[75]
Psychedelic rock reached its apogee in the last years of
the decade. 1967 saw the the Beatles release their
definitive psychedelic statement in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band,
including the controversial track "Lucy in the Sky with
Diamonds" and the
Rolling Stones responded later that year with
Their
Satanic Majesties Request.[75] Pink Floyd produced what is usually seen
as their best psychedelic work The Piper at the Gates
of Dawn.[75] In America the Summer of Love
was prefaced by the
Human
Be-In event and
reached its peak at the Monterey Pop
Festival, the later
helping to make major American stars of Jimi Hendrix and
The Who, whose single "I Can See for
Miles" delved into
psychedelic territory.[78] Key recordings included Jefferson
Airplaine's Surrealistic
Pillow and
The
Doors'
Strange
Days.[79] These trends climaxed in the 1969
Woodstock
festival, which saw
performances by most of the major psychedelic acts, but by
the end of the decade psychedelic rock was in
retreat. Brian Jones
of the Rolling Stones
and Syd
Barrett of Pink Floyd
were early casualties and bands like The Byrds followed
Dylan into more down to earth country rock
territory.[75] The back to basics tendency would also be
evident in the Rolling Stone's Beggar's
Banquet (1968)
and the Beatles' Abbey Road
(1969) and
Let it
Be (1970).[75] The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream
broke up before the end of the decade and many surviving
acts, particularly those from Britain, moved away from
psychedelia into the wider experimentation of progressive
rock or riff laden heavy rock.[75]
Progressive rock
Yes performing in concert in
Indianapolis,
1977
Progressive
rock, sometimes used interchangeably with
art
rock, was an attempt
to move beyond established musical formulas by
experimenting with different instruments, song types, and
forms.[80] From the mid-1960s The Left
Banke, The Beatles,
The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys, had pioneered the
inclusion of harpsichords,
wind
and string sections on their recordings to produce a
form of Baroque rock
and can be heard in singles
like Procol
Harum's
"A
Whiter Shade of Pale"
(1967), with its Bach inspired
introduction.[81] The Moody Blues
used a full orchestra on
their album Days of Future
Passed (1967) and
subsequently created orchestral sounds with
synthesisers.[80]
Classical orchestration,
keyboards and synthesisers were a frequent edition to the
established rock format of guitars, bass and drums in
subsequent progressive rock.[82] Instrumentals were common, while songs
with lyrics were sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based
in fantasy
and science
fiction.[83] The Pretty
Things'
SF
Sorrow (1968) and
The Who's Tommy
(1969) introduced the format
of rock
operas and opened the
door to "concept
albums, usually
telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching
theme."[84] King
Crimson's 1969 début
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.[80]
The vibrant Canterbury scene
saw a number of acts
following Soft Machine from psychedelia, through jazz
influences, toward more expansive hard rock,
including Caravan, Hatfield and the
North,
Gong, and National
Health.[85] Greater commercial success was enjoyed by
Pink Floyd, who also moved away from psychedelia after the
departure of Syd Barrett in 1968, with Dark Side of the
Moon (1973), seen
as a masterpiece of the genre, becoming one of the
best-selling albums of all time.[86] 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 were a
supergroup who produced some of the genre's most
technically demanding work.[80] Jethro Tull
and Genesis
both pursued very different,
but distinctly English, brands of music.[87] 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.[88]
The American brand of prog rock varied form the eclectic
and innovative Frank
Zappa,
Captain
Beefheart and
Blood, Sweat
and Tears,[89] to more pop rock orientated bands
like Boston, Foreigner,
Kansas, Journey
and Styx.[80] These, beside British bands
Supertramp
and ELO, all demonstrated a prog rock influence
and while ranking among the most commercially successful
acts of the 1970s, issuing in the era of
pomp
or arena
rock, which would
last until the costs of complex shows (often with
theatrical staging and special effects), would be replaced
by more economical rock festivals
as major live venues in the
1990s.[90]
The instrumental strand of the genre resulted in albums
like Mike
Oldfield's
Tubular
Bells (1973), the
first record, and worldwide hit, for the
Virgin
Records label, which
became a mainstay of the genre.[80] Instrumental rock was particularly
significant in continental Europe, allowing bands
like Kraftwerk,
Tangerine
Dream,
Can
and Faust to circumvent the language
barrier.[91] Their synthesiser-heavy
"Kraut
rock", along with the
work of Brian Eno
(for a time the keyboard
player with Roxy
Music), would be a
major influence on subsequent synth
rock,[80]
With the advent of punk rock
and technological changes in
the late 1970s, progressive rock was increasingly dismissed
as pretentious and overblown.[92][93] Many bands broke up, but some, including
Genesis, ELP, Yes, and Pink Floyd, regularly scored top ten
albums with successful accompanying worldwide
tours.[94] Some bands which emerged in the aftermath
of punk, such as Siouxsie & the
Banshees,
Ultravox
and Simple
Minds, showed the
influence of prog, as well as their more usually recognised
punk influences.[95]
Glam rock
Main
article: Glam
rock
Glam rock emerged out of the English
Psychedelic and art rock scene of the late 1960s, defined
by artists such as T. Rex, Roxy
Music,
Steve Harley
& Cockney Rebel,
and David
Bowie, also with
origins in the theatrics of groups such as
The
Cockettes, performers
such as Lindsay
Kemp, and acts such
as Syd
Barrett's Pink Floyd
(as represented in David Bowie's cover of
See Emily
Play) and
Eddie
Cochran (as
represented by T. Rex's cover of "Summertime
Blues"). The commonly
accepted origin of Glam rock was when Tyrannosaurus Rex - a
band produced by Tony Visconti
and championed by the
legendary John Peel
- frontman/singer
Marc
Bolan changed the
band's name to T. Rex, releasing the number 1 UK
single Ride A White Swan
in December 1970, ushering in
Glam rock and the band as a pop phenomenon. Following soon
after were other notable acts such as Slade and Roxy Music, and eventually David
Bowie's Ziggy Stardust
persona, who brought Glam
rock its relatively novel and modest popularity in America,
and leading to American artists such as Lou
Reed,
Iggy
Pop,
New York
Dolls,
Jobriath,
and Alice Cooper
adopting Glam or
Glam-influenced styles.
Roxy Music
live in Toronto, 1974
Glam itself was
a nostalgic mesh of various styles, both visual art and
music, ranging from 1930s Hollywood
glamor, to 1950s pin-up sex
appeal and rock n' roll teenage rebellion, to
pre-war Cabaret
theatrics, to
Victorian
literary and
Symbolist
styles, to ancient and
occult mysticism
and mythology
(such as Bowie's references
to Aleister
Crowley's "starman" in
his song of the same name, and themes of reincarnation and
self-invention in T. Rex's Cosmic Dancer). Glam is most
noted for its sexual and gender ambiguity and androgyny,
and use of theatrics.
Throughout glam rock's popularity, many bubble-gum acts -
such as Elton
John, Slade,
Gary
Glitter, and
Alvin
Stardust - adopted
raunchier and more sexual takes on Glam style. Other
previously famous acts such as The Rolling Stones
and Lou
Reed re-invented
themselves in a glam fashion, often to great success
(including Reed's biggest hit single, "Walk on the Wild
Side"). However,
glam's success in America was modest at best, with artists
such as T. Rex and Roxy Music having only a fraction of the
success they had in the UK. However, glam went on to
influence many other genres, including punk, new wave,
goth, jangle pop, college rock, and grunge, with artists as
diverse as Siouxsie
Sioux,
Johnny
Rotten,
Billy
Corgan,
Peter
Murphy (whose
band Bauhaus
covered T. Rex's
Telegram
Sam and Bowie's Ziggy
Stardust), and Adam Ant
citing glam artists as key
influences. Glam has since enjoyed sporadic modest revivals
through bands such as Chainsaw Kittens
and The
Darkness.
Christian
rock
Stryper
Rock has been criticised by some
Christian religious leaders, who have condemned it as
immoral, anti-Christian and even
demonic.[96]
However, Christian rock
began to develop in the late 1960s, particularly out
of the Jesus movement
beginning in Southern
California, and emerged as a sub-genre in the 1970s
with artist like Larry
Norman, usually
seen as the first major "star" of Christian
rock.[97]
The genre has been
particularly popular in the United
States.[98]
Many Christian rock
performers have ties to the contemporary
Christian music scene, while other bands and artists
are closely linked to independent
music. Since the
1980s a number of Christian rock performers have
gained mainstream success, including figures
like Amy Grant
and in Britain
Cliff
Richard.[99]
From the 1990s there
were increasing numbers of acts who attempted to avoid
the Christian band label, preferring to be seen as
groups who were also Christians, including
P.O.D
and Collective
Soul.[100]
Mid to late 1970s
Hard rock and heavy
metal
Led Zeppelin live at
Chicago
Stadium, January
1975.
A second wave of
British and American rock bands became popular during the
early 1970s. Bands such as The Who, Deep
Purple, Led
Zeppelin, Thin
Lizzy,
Aerosmith,
Grand Funk
Railroad,
Black
Sabbath,
Alice
Cooper,
Mountain,
Queen, Kiss, Judas Priest
and AC/DC played highly amplified,
guitar-driven hard
rock, marked by
aggressive overdriven electric guitars and an insistent 4/4
drumbeat. As the decade progressed, bands began
incorporating different sounds into their music such as the
use of synthesizers and using influences from
progressive
rock and
disco
in their records. Although it
remained popular throughout the decade, music critics
overwhelmingly disliked the heavy metal
genre.[citation
needed]
In the 1980s bands such
as Metallica,
Iron
Maiden,
Slayer, Megadeth,
and Anthrax
continued the popularity of
the style.
[edit]
Punk rock
Main
article: Punk
rock
The
Clash, performing
in 1980
Punk rock
developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States and
the United Kingdom. Rooted in garage rock
and other forms of what is
now known as protopunk
music, punk rock bands
eschewed the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock.
They created fast, hard-edged music, typically with short
songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political,
anti-establishment lyrics. Punk embraces a
DIY
(do it yourself) ethic, with
many bands self-producing their recordings and distributing
them through informal channels.
By late 1976, acts such as the Ramones
and Patti
Smith, in New York
City, and the Sex Pistols
and The
Clash, in London, were
recognized as the vanguard of a new musical movement. The
following year saw punk rock spreading around the world.
Punk quickly, though briefly, became a major cultural
phenomenon in the United Kingdom. For the most part, punk
took root in local scenes that tended to reject association
with the mainstream. An associated punk subculture
emerged, expressing youthful
rebellion and characterized by distinctive
clothing
styles and a variety
of anti-authoritarian
ideologies.
By the beginning of the 1980s, faster, more aggressive
styles such as hardcore
and Oi! had become the predominant mode of punk
rock. Musicians identifying with or inspired by punk also
pursued a broad range of other variations, giving rise
to post-punk
and the alternative rock
movement.
Since punk rock's initial popularity in the 1970s and the
renewed interest created by the punk revival of the 1990s,
punk rock continues to have a strong underground cult
following. This has resulted in several evolved strains of
hardcore punk, such as D-beat (a distortion-heavy subgenre influenced
by the UK band Discharge),
anarcho-punk
(such as Crass), grindcore
(such as Napalm
Death), and
crust
punk.
New Wave
Main
article: New Wave
music
Punk rock attracted devotees from the art
and collegiate world and soon bands sporting a more
literate, arty approach, such as Talking
Heads, and
Devo
began to infiltrate the punk
scene; in some quarters the description New Wave
began to be used to
differentiate these less overtly punk bands.
David
Bowie
If punk rock was a social and
musical phenomenon, it garnered little in the way of
record sales (small specialty labels such as
Stiff
Records had
released much of the punk music to date) or American
radio airplay, as the radio scene continued to be
dominated by mainstream formats such as
disco
and album-oriented
rock.
Record executives, who had been mostly mystified by the
punk movement, recognized the potential of the more
accessible New Wave acts and began aggressively signing and
marketing any band that could claim a remote connection to
punk or New Wave. Many of these bands, such as
The
Cars and
The
Go-Go's were
essentially pop bands dressed up in New Wave regalia;
others, including The Police
and The Pretenders
managed to parlay the boost
of the New Wave movement into long-lived and artistically
lauded careers.
Between 1982 and 1985, influenced by Kraftwerk,
David Bowie, and Gary
Numan, New Wave went
in the direction of such New Romantics
as Spandau
Ballet,
Ultravox,
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 synthpop.
Some rock bands reinvented themselves and profited too from
MTV's airplay, for instance Golden
Earring, who had a
second round of success with "Twilight
Zone", but in general
the times of guitar-oriented rock were over. Although many
"Greatest of New Wave" collections feature popular songs
from this era, New Wave more properly refers to the earlier
"skinny tie" rock bands such as The Knack
or Blondie.
U2 in their early years: (left to
right) Clayton, Mullen, Bono, Edge
Post-punk
Alongside New Wave, post-punk developed
as an outgrowth of punk rock. In a way it was tied to punk
rock. Sometimes thought of as interchangeable with New
Wave, post-punk was typically more challenging, arty, and
abrasive. The movement was effectively started by the debut
of Public Image
Ltd.,
The
Psychedelic Furs,
and Siouxsie & the
Banshees and was soon
joined by bands such as Joy
Division,
The
Fall,
Gang of
Four,
The
Cure, and
Echo & the
Bunnymen.
Predominantly a British phenomenon, the genre continued
into the 1980s with some commercial exposure domestically
and overseas, but the most successful band to emerge from
post-punk was Ireland's U2, which by the late 1980s had become one
of the biggest bands in the world.
1980s
In the 1980s,
popular rock diversified. This period also saw the
New Wave of
British Heavy Metal with bands such as Iron Maiden
and Def Leppard
gaining popularity. The early
part of the decade saw Eddie Van Halen
achieve musical innovations
in rock guitar, while vocalists David Lee Roth
(of Van Halen) and
Freddie
Mercury (of
Queen
as he had been doing
throughout the 1970s) raised the role of frontman to near
performance art standards. Concurrently, pop-New Wave bands
remained popular, with performers like Billy Idol
and The Go-Go's
gaining fame.
American working-class oriented heartland rock
gained a strong following,
exemplified by Bruce
Springsteen,
Bob
Seger,
John (Cougar)
Mellencamp and others.
Led by the American folk singer-songwriter
Paul
Simon and the British
former progressive rock
star Peter
Gabriel, rock and roll
fused with a variety of folk music styles from around the
world; this fusion came to be known as "world
music", and included
fusions like aboriginal
rock.
Rhythm and
blues acts like
Prince
and Rick James
expperimented with rock
sounds and both had crossover appeal. Also, more extreme
forms of rock music began to evolve; in the early eighties,
the harsh and aggressive sounds of thrash metal
attracted large underground
audiences and a few bands, including Metallica
and Megadeth,
went on for mainstream success.
By the mid to late 80's, the teen band Renegade
coined the term
Commercial
Metal to signify a
combination of heavy metal instrumentation with pop rock
melodies. The term caught on and remains a viable genre
description to this day.
New Wave of British
Heavy Metal
Iron Maiden
The New Wave of
British Heavy Metal (frequently abbreviated as NWOBHM) was
a heavy metal music movement that started in the late
1970s, in Britain, and achieved some international
attention by the early 1980s. The era developed as a
reaction in part to the decline of early
heavy
metal bands such
as Deep
Purple, Led
Zeppelin, Black Sabbath
and Judas
Priest. NWOBHM bands
toned down the blues influences of earlier acts, increased the
tempos, and adopted a "tougher", harder-edged sound. The
era is considered to be a main foundation for heavy metal
sub-genres with acts such as Metallica
citing NWOBHM bands
like Diamond Head
and Motörhead
as a major influence on their
musical style.[101]
The early movement was associated with acts such as:
Iron
Maiden,
Saxon, Motörhead,
Def
Leppard,
Angel
Witch,
Tygers of Pan
Tang,
Blitzkrieg,
Avenger, Sweet
Savage,
Girlschool,
Jaguar, Demon, Diamond
Head,
Samson
and Tank, among others. The image of bands such
as Saxon (long hair, denim jackets, leather and
chains) would later become synonymous with
heavy
metal as a whole
during the 1980s. Some bands, although conceived during
this era, saw success on an underground scale, as was the
case with Venom and Quartz.
Glam metal
Twisted Sister
wore long,
hairspray-teased hair, metal studded leather outfits,
and makeup.
Glam metal was
popular in the 1980s. Combining a heavy metal musical style
and a glam rock visual look influenced from various artists
such as: Queen, Sweet and the New York
Dolls, the earliest
glam metal bands to gain notability included:
Mötley
Crüe,
Ratt
and Quiet
Riot. They became
known for their debauched lifestyles, teased hair and use
of make-up and clothing. Their songs were bombastic and
often defiantly macho, with lyrics focused on sex, drinking
and drugs. In 1987 a second wave of glam metal acts emerged
including Warrant, L.A.
Guns,
Poison
and Faster
Pussycat.
Heartland
rock
American working-class oriented heartland
rock, characterized by a straightforward musical style, a
concern with the average, blue collar American life, gained
a strong following in the US during the 1980s.
While the genre emerged recognizably into the mainstream in
the late 1970s with the commercial success of
Bruce
Springsteen,
Bob
Seger, and
Tom
Petty, the genre's
antecedents appeared throughout pop chart history, via
popular artists like Bob
Dylan,
Creedence
Clearwater Revival, Mitch Ryder and the
Detroit Wheels and Van
Morrison, and
lesser-known examples (The Flaming
Ember, whose 1971 hit
"Westbound Number Nine" was an example of the mixing of
garage rock, rhythm and blues and rock influences that
would later exemplify the genre) and earlier ones
like Eddie Cochran
and Del
Shannon.
The genre reached its commercial, artistic and influential
peak in the mid-1980s, with John Mellencamp
joining Springsteen, Seger,
and Petty as its most prominent artists.
In concert, heartland rock often took the form of
crowd-rousing anthems, leading to comparisons with
Midwestern
arena
rock groups such
as REO
Speedwagon and
Head
East, whose style
however owed more to seventies pop
rock.
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. Many heartland rock artists
continue to record today with critical and commercial
success, most notably Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and John
Mellencamp, although their works have become more personal
and experimental and do not fit easily into a single genre
anymore. Newer artists whose music would clearly have been
labeled heartland rock had it been released in the 1970s or
1980s, such as Pittsburgh's Tom
Breiding, often find
themselves these days labeled alt-country
and finding little more than
a cult following.
The emergence of
alternative rock
R.E.M.
was a successful
alternative
rock band in the
1980s.
The term
alternative rock was coined in the early 1980s to describe
rock artists which didn't fit into the mainstream genres of
the time. Bands dubbed "alternative" could be most any
style not typically heard on the radio; however, most
alternative bands were unified by their collective debt to
punk rock. Important bands of the 1980s alternative
movement included R.E.M., Jane's
Addiction,
Sonic
Youth,
The
Smiths, the
Pixies, Hüsker
Dü,
The
Cure and countless
others. Artists largely were confined to
independent
record labels,
building an extensive underground music scene based
around college
radio, fanzines,
touring, and word-of-mouth. Although these groups never
generated spectacular album sales, they exerted a
considerable influence on the generation of musicians who
came of age in the 80s and ended up breaking through to
mainstream success in the 1990s. Notable styles of
alternative rock during the 1980s include
jangle
pop,
gothic
rock,
college
rock, and
indie
pop. The next decade
would see the success of grunge in the United States and Britpop in the
United Kingdom, bringing alternative rock into the
mainstream.
Alternative goes mainstream (early–mid
1990s)
Grunge
Main
article: Grunge
The grunge group Nirvana, performing
live on MTV
in 1992.
By the early
1990s, rock was dominated by commercialized and highly
produced pop, rock, and "hair metal" artists.
MTV
had arrived and promoted
excessive focus on image and style. Disaffected by this
trend, in the mid-1980s, bands in Washington state
(particularly in the
Seattle
area) formed a new style of
rock music which sharply contrasted the mainstream rock of
the time.[102] The developing genre came to be known as
"grunge", a term meaning "dirt" or
"filth".[102] The term was seen as appropriate due to
the dirty sound of the music and the unkempt appearance of
most musicians, who actively rebelled against the
over-groomed images of popular artists. Grunge fused
elements of hardcore punk
and heavy metal
into a single sound, and made
heavy use of guitar distortion,
fuzz
and feedback.[102]
The lyrics were typically
apathetic and angst-filled, and often concerned themes such
as social alienation and entrapment, although it was also
known for its dark humor and parodies of commercial
rock.[102]
Bands such as Green
River,
Soundgarden,
the Melvins
and Skin Yard
pioneered the genre,
with Mudhoney
becoming the most successful
by the end of the decade. However grunge remained largely a
local phenomenon until 1991, when Nirvana‘s Nevermind
became a huge success thanks
to the lead single "Smells Like Teen
Spirit".[103] Nevermind was more melodic than its
predecessors, but the band refused to employ traditional
corporate promotion and marketing mechanisms. 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 of
1992.[104] The popular breakthrough of these grunge
bands prompted Rolling Stone
to nickname Seattle "the
new Liverpool."[105]
Major record labels signed
most of the remaining major grunge bands in Seattle, while
a second influx of bands moved to the city in hopes of
success.[106]
Britpop
Oasis performing in 2005
While the
American mainstream was focused on grunge, post-grunge, and
hip hop, numerous British groups launched a 1960s revival
in the mid-1990s, often called Britpop, with bands such as Oasis, Suede, The
Auteurs,
Supergrass,
Manic Street
Preachers,
Pulp
and Blur among the front-runners. These bands drew
on myriad styles from the 80s British rock underground,
including twee
pop,
shoegazing
and space rock
as well as traditional
British guitar influences like the Beatles and glam rock.
For a time, the Oasis-Blur rivalry was similar to the
Beatles-Rolling Stones rivalry, or the Nirvana-Pearl Jam
rivalry in America. While bands like Blur tended to follow
on from the Small Faces
and The
Kinks, Oasis mixed the
attitude of the Rolling Stones with the melody of the
Beatles. The Verve and Radiohead, though not Britpop but at
the forefront of the British revival of the rock, took
inspiration from performers like Elvis
Costello, Pink Floyd
and R.E.M. with their progressive rock music,
manifested in Radiohead's
most heralded album, OK
Computer.
Britpop's popularity in America was short, with the
exception of Oasis, whose second album
sold 19 million copies
worldwide, but the movement slowed down after numerous band
breakups and publicity disasters weakened popular support
in the US. The Verve
disbanded after on-going
turmoil in the band between singer Richard Ashcroft and
guitarist Nick McCabe, and Radiohead has since gone in a
more experimental, less radio-friendly direction.
Indie rock
Main
article: Indie
rock
By the mid-1990s, the term "alternative
music" had lost much of its original meaning as rock radio
and record buyers embraced increasingly slick,
commercialized, and highly marketed forms of the genre. At
the end of the decade, hip hop music
had pushed much of
alternative rock out of the mainstream, and most of what
was left played pop punk
and highly polished versions
of a grunge/rock mishmash. Many acts that, by choice or
fate, remained outside the commercial mainstream became
part of the indie rock
movement. Indie rock acts
placed a premium on maintaining complete control of their
music and careers, often releasing albums on their own
independent record labels and relying on touring,
word-of-mouth, and airplay on independent or college radio
stations for promotion. Linked by an ethos more than a
musical approach, the indie rock movement encompasses a
wide range of styles, from hard-edged, grunge influenced
bands like The Cranberries
and Superchunk
to do-it-yourself
experimental bands like Pavement
to punk-folk singers such
as Ani
DiFranco. Currently,
many countries have an extensive local indie scene, flourishing with bands with much
less popularity than commercial bands, just enough of it to
survive inside the respective country, but virtually
unknown outside them.
Hybrid genres (mid-late 1990s)
Pop punk
Green Day
One result of
the 1970s punk explosion was pop punk. Championed by bands
such as The Buzzcocks
and The
Ramones, the genre was
never as commercially successful as the name may have
suggested, but its influence can be still be heard in many
artists today; the fusion of pop melodies, rapid-fire
playing of instruments, and the raw and visceral lyrics and
sound of punk rock is apparent in everyone from
Nirvana
to Oasis. In the 2000s, pop punk is used to
describe modern rock bands with a heavy pop influence such
as Green Day
and The Offspring
are common examples of the
sub-genre, while Blink-182
brought the sub-genre to new
commercial heights in the late nineties to early 2000s.
Post-grunge
In the wake of Nirvana
singer Kurt
Cobain's death, a new
style of music called post-grunge evolved. Similar to the relationship
between pop punk and punk rock, post-grunge differed from
grunge in its more radio-friendly pop-oriented sound. After
Australia's Silverchair
achieved international
success with their debut album Frogstomp
record labels began to
actively search for the "next Nirvana". Former Nirvana
drummer Dave Grohl's new band the Foo Fighters
helped further popularize the
genre, and other bands such as Bush, Creed, Audioslave,
Candlebox,
Collective
Soul,
Goo Goo
Dolls,
Everclear
and Live helped cement post-grunge as one of the
most commercially viable sub-genres of the late 1990s.
Female solo artist Alanis Morissette
also found success while
being labeled under the post-grunge tag. In 1995, her
album Jagged Little
Pill became a
major hit by featuring blunt, revealing songs such as
"You
Oughta Know".
Combining the confessional, female-centered lyrics of
artists such as Tori Amos
with a post-grunge,
guitar-based sound created by producer Glen
Ballard, it succeeded
in moving the introspection that had become so common in
grunge to the mainstream. The success of
Jagged Little
Pill influenced
successful more pop-oriented female artists during the late
90s including Fiona
Apple,
Jewel
and Liz
Phair. In the
beginning of the 21'st century more post-grunge bands began
to emerge including Breaking
Benjamin,
Seether, 3 Doors
Down.
Nu metal and rap
rock
Linkin Park
Hip hop
and rap gained attention from
rock acts in the early 80's. The Clash ("The Magnificent
Seven") and Blondie ("Rapture") were the first two rock
acts to merge their sounds with hip hop. Early crossover
acts include Run DMC
and the Beastie
Boys. In 1990,
Faith No
More broke into the
mainstream with their success of the single 'Epic', which
combined heavy metal with rap. This paved ways for bands
like Rage Against the
Machine and
later Limp
Bizkit,
Korn
and Slipknot.
This brought a fresh sound by combining the turntable
scratching of rap and with the distorted guitars of
metal-oriented rock. Later in the decade this style, which
contained a mix of grunge, metal, and hip-hop, became known
as rap
rock and spawned a
wave of successful bands like Linkin Park
and P.O.D.. Many of these bands also considered
themselves a part of the similar genre nu metal.
Through the turn of the century, more bands broke out
like Papa Roach
whose major label
debut Infest
became a platinum hit. Other
bands like P.O.D and Disturbed
also had mainstream success.
By 2001 nu metal reached its peak as record labels signed
many nu metal bands. Though new bands were breaking out,
established bands who started the genre had massive
successful hit albums like Staind (Break the
Cycle),
P.O.D
(Satellite),
Slipknot
(Iowa)
and Linkin Park
(Hybrid
Theory).
By 2002, signs that nu metal's mainstream popularity was
weakening were apparent. Korn's long awaited fifth
album Untouchables
and Papa Roach's second
album Lovehatetragedy
didn't sell as well as their
previous albums. Nu metal bands became less played on rock
radio stations and MTV began focusing less on these bands and
more on pop
punk/Emo
bands. Since then, many bands
have changed their sound to more conventional Rock
music/Heavy metal
music.
Rock music in the new millenium (2000s)
In the early
2000s the entire music industry was shaken by claims of
massive piracy using online music file-sharing
software such as
Napster, resulting in lawsuits against private
file-sharers by the recording industry group the
RIAA. During much of the 2000s, rock has not
featured as prominently in album sales in the US as in
other countries such as the UK and Australia. Another
reason for the decline in album sales is the rise in
popularity of Hip Hop
on many music
charts.
The biggest factor that affected the production and
distribution of rock music was the rise of paid
digital
downloads in the
2000s. During the 1990s, the importance of the
buyable music single
faded when
Billboard
allowed singles without
buyable, album-separate versions to enter its
Hot 100
chart (charting only
with radio airplay). The vast majority of songs bought on
paid download sites are singles bought from their albums;
songs that are bought on a song-by-song basis off artist's
albums are considered sales of singles, even though they
have no official buyable single.[clarification
needed]
Emo
In the mid-1980s, the term
emo
described a subgenre
of hardcore punk
which stemmed from the
Washington,
D.C. music scene. In
later years, the term emocore, short for "emotional hardcore", was
also used to describe the emotional performances of bands
in the Washington, D.C.
scene and some of the
offshoot regional scenes such as Rites of
Spring,
Embrace
or Moss
Icon. In the
mid-1990s, the term emo began to refer to the indie scene
that followed the influences
of Fugazi, which itself was an offshoot of the
first wave of emo. Bands including Sunny Day Real
Estate,
Jimmy Eat
World, and
Texas Is the
Reason had a
more indie rock
style of emo, more melodic
and less chaotic.
While Jimmy Eat World had played emocore-style music early
in their career, by the time of the release of their 2001
album Bleed
American, the
band had downplayed its emo influences, releasing more
pop-oriented singles such as "The
Middle" and
"Sweetness".
Newer bands that sounded like Jimmy Eat World (and, in some
cases, like the more melodic emo bands of the late 90s)
were soon included in the genre.[107]
2003 saw the success of Chris
Carrabba, the former
singer of emo band Further Seems
Forever, and his
project Dashboard
Confessional. Carraba
found himself part of the emerging "popular" emo scene.
Carrabba's music featured lyrics founded in deep diary-like
outpourings of emotion. While certainly emotional, the new
"emo" had a far greater appeal amongst adolescents than its
earlier incarnations.[108]
At the same time, use of the term "emo" expanded beyond the
musical genre, which added to the confusion surrounding the
term. The word "emo" became associated with open displays
of strong emotion. Common fashion styles and attitudes that
were becoming idiomatic of fans of similar "emo" bands also
began to be referred to as "emo." As a result, bands that
were loosely associated with "emo" trends or simply
demonstrated emotion began to be referred to as
emo.[109]
In a strange twist, screamo,
a more aggressive sub-genre of emo that began in the early
1990s, also had a reformulation of sound and has found
greater popularity in recent years through bands such
as Glassjaw.[110]
The difficulty in defining
"emo" as a genre may have started at the very
beginning.[111]
Garage rock
revival
In the early 2000s, a garage rock revival
gained mainstream appeal and commercial airplay, something
that had eluded garage rock bands of the past. This was led
by four bands, The Hives
(from Sweden),
The
Vines (from
Australia), The Strokes
(from New York), and
The White
Stripes (From
Detroit), christened by the media as the "The" bands, or
"The saviours of rock 'n' roll".[112] Other products of the Detroit rock scene
included; The Von
Bondies,
Electric
6, The Dirtbombs
and The Detroit
Cobras[113] Elsewhere, other lesser-known acts such
as Billy Childish
and The Buff Medways
from
Britain,[114] The (International) Noise
Conspiracy from
Sweden,[115] The 5.6.7.8's
from
Japan,[116]
and the Oblivians
from
Memphis[117] enjoyed moderate underground
success and appeal. Other
notable bands that enjoyed commercial success, were
The
Libertines,
Black Rebel
Motorcycle Club, The Datsuns
and the Kings of
Leon.[118]
Post-punk revival
Additionally,
the retro trend has led to a post-punk revival with bands
like The
Hives,
The
Libertines,
The
Killers,
Arctic
Monkeys,
Bloc
Party,
Franz
Ferdinand,
Interpol,
and Editors, which were often heavily influenced by
1990s bands such as Radiohead
and Nirvana, as well as the punk genre, and
post-punk bands such as Joy
Division.
Originally, the
term "post-punk" was coined to describe those groups which
in the late seventies and early eighties took
punk
and started to experiment
with more challenging musical structures, lyrical themes,
and a self-consciously art-based image, while retaining
punk's initial iconoclastic
stance, such as
Public Image
Ltd.,
Gang of
Four, and
Joy
Division. At the turn
of the century, the term "post-punk" began to appear in the
music press again, with a number of critics reviving the
label to describe a new set of bands that shared some of
the aesthetics of the original post-punk era.
The
Rapture,
Interpol,
The
Killers,
Arctic
Monkeys, and
Franz
Ferdinand were the
first commercially successful projects to revive media
interest in the movement.[119] This second wave of post-punk
incorporates elements of dance music and genres that are part of
the dance punk
movement in much the same way
that the original post-punk movement was influenced by
the Krautrock,
Dub, and Disco music of the 1970s. Music critic
Simon
Reynolds notes that
these bands generally draw influence from the more angular
strain of post-punk bands such as Wire and Gang of
Four.[120]
Metalcore and
contemporary heavy metal
Metalcore, an
originally American hybrid of thrash metal and
hardcore
punk,[121] emerged as a commercial force in the
mid-2000s. It is rooted in the crossover thrash
style developed two decades
earlier by bands such as Suicidal
Tendencies,
Dirty Rotten
Imbeciles, and
Stormtroopers
of Death.[122] Through the 1990s, metalcore was mostly
an underground phenomenon. By 2004, melodic
metalcore—influenced as well by melodic death
metal—was popular
enough that Killswitch
Engage's
The End of
Heartache and Shadows
Fall's
The War
Within debuted at
numbers 21 and 20, respectively, on the Billboard album chart.[123] Bullet for My
Valentine, from Wales,
broke into the top 5 in both the U.S. and British charts
with Scream Aim
Fire (2008). In
recent years, metalcore bands have received prominent slots
at Ozzfest and the Download
Festival.
Lamb of
God, with a related
blend of metal styles, hit the #2 spot on the
Billboard
charts in 2009 with
Wrath.
The success of these bands and others such as
Trivium, which has released both metalcore and
straight-ahead thrash albums, and Mastodon,
which plays in a progressive/sludge style, has inspired
claims of a metal revival in the United States, dubbed by
some critics the "New Wave of American Heavy
Metal."[124]
Children of
Bodom, performing
at the 2007 Masters of
Rock festival
The term
"retro-metal" has been applied to such bands as
England's The
Darkness[125] and Australia's Wolfmother.[126]
The Darkness's
Permission
to Land (2003),
described as an "eerily realistic simulation of '80s metal
and '70s glam,"[125] topped the UK charts, going quintuple
platinum. One Way Ticket to
Hell... and Back (2005) reached number
11.[127] Wolfmother's self-titled 2005 debut
album had "Deep
Purple-ish organs," "Jimmy Page-worthy chordal riffing,"
and lead singer Andrew Stockdale
howling "notes that Robert
Plant can't reach anymore."[126] "Woman," a track from the album, won for
Best Hard Rock
Performance at
the 2007 Grammy
Awards.
In continental Europe, especially Germany and Scandinavia,
metal continues to be broadly popular. Well-established
British acts such as Judas Priest and Iron Maiden continue
to have chart success on the continent, as do a range of
local groups. In Germany, Western Europe's largest music
market, several continental metal bands placed multiple
albums in the top 20 of the charts between 2003 and 2008,
including Finnish band Children of
Bodom, Norwegian
act Dimmu
Borgir, and
Germany's Blind Guardian
and Sweden's
HammerFall.[128]
The Swedish act
In
Flames took
both Come
Clarity (2006)
and A Sense of
Purpose (2008) to
number 6 in Germany;[128] each album topped the Swedish
charts.[129]
Electronic rock
Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay of Justice.
As computer
technology has become more accessible and
music
software had advanced,
interacting with music production technology became
possible using means that bear no relationship to
traditional musical performance
practices:[130] for instance, laptop performance (laptronica)[131]
and live
coding.[132]
In the last decade a number of software-based virtual
studio environments have emerged, with products such as
Propellerhead's Reason and Ableton Live
finding popular
appeal.[133] Such tools provide viable and
cost-effective alternatives to typical hardware-based
production studios, and thanks to advances in
microprocessor
technology, it became
possible to create high quality music using little more
than a single laptop computer. Such advances have led to a
massive increase in the amount of home-produced electronic
music available to the general public via the
internet.[134] Bands such as The
Prodigy,
Pendulum,
Ratatat, and Nine Inch Nails
are a few of the most popular
electronic rock bands.
The industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails' album
Year
Zero utilized a
heavily edited and distorted guitar sound modified via
laptop computer. Allmusic's
review described the album's laptop-mixed sound: "guitars
squall against glitches, beeps, pops, and blotches of
blurry sonic attacks. Percussion looms large, distorted,
organic, looped, screwed, spindled and
broken."[135] The French electronic duo
Justice's album †
incorporates a strong rock
and metal influence into their music and image. Canadian
band Crystal Castles
incorporates elements
of chiptune
and punk rock
vocals. Icelandic
singer Bjork's song "Declare
Independence" from her
album Volta
featured a heavily modified
synth bass guitar sound and strong rock feel. Canadian
artist Peaches
and various aspects of
the Electroclash
genre often reflect a strong
Rock sensibility. New York's Ratatat
is often cited as achieving
an "electronic rock" sound.
Dance-punk
Many groups in
the post-punk era adopted a more rhythmic tempo, conducive
to dancing. These bands were influenced by
disco, funk, and other dance musics
popular at the time, as well
as being anticipated by some of the 1970s work of
David
Bowie,[136] Brian
Eno, and
Iggy
Pop, and some
recordings by the German groups referred to as
Krautrock.