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
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.
