Portal:Rock music

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The Rock Music Portal

Rock is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles from the mid-1960s, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the genres of blues, rhythm and blues, and from country music. Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock has centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar, drums, and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a ⁴
₄ time signature using a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock was the most popular genre of music in the U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s to the 2010s.

Rock musicians in the mid-1960s began to advance the album ahead of the single as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, with the Beatles at the forefront of this development. Their contributions lent the genre a cultural legitimacy in the mainstream and initiated a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. By the late 1960s "classic rock" period, a number of distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, southern rock, raga rock, and jazz rock, which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock, influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene. New genres that emerged included progressive rock, which extended artistic elements, and glam rock, which highlighted showmanship and visual style. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques. Punk was an influence in the 1980s on new wave, post-punk and eventually alternative rock.

From the 1990s, alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop, and indie rock. Further fusion subgenres have since emerged, including pop-punk, electronic rock, rap rock, and rap metal. Some movements were conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including the garage rock/post-punk revival in the 2000s. Since the 2010s, rock has lost its position as the pre-eminent popular music genre in world culture, but remains commercially successful. The increased influence of hip-hop and electronic dance music can be seen in rock music, notably in the techno-pop scene of the early 2010s and the pop-punk-hip-hop revival of the 2020s. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various rock music-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Sign commemorating the role of Alan Freed and Cleveland, Ohio, in the origins of rock and roll (from Rock and roll)
Image 2Baker, Bruce and Clapton of Cream, whose blues rock improvisation was a major factor in the development of the genre (from Hard rock)
Image 3Nirvana were at the forefront of the 1990s grunge era. (from Hard rock)
Image 4Big Joe Turner and Pete Johnson's record "Roll 'Em Pete" is regarded as a precursor to rock and roll. (from Rock and roll)
Image 5Buddy Holly and his band, the Crickets (from Rock and roll)
Image 6Little Richard in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 7Aerosmith performing at Quilmes Rock in Buenos Aires, Argentina on April 15, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 8Chuck Berry in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 9Poison, seen here in 2008, were among the most successful acts of the 1980s glam metal era. (from Hard rock)
Image 10Original member Izzy Stradlin' on stage with Guns N' Roses in 2006 (from Hard rock)
Image 11Kiss onstage in Boston in 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 12The Who on stage in 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 13Led Zeppelin live at Chicago Stadium, January 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 14Golden Earring receives a gold record in 1970. (from Hard rock)
Image 15Wolfmother, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 16"There's No Romance in Rock and Roll" made the cover of True Life Romance in 1956. (from Rock and roll)
Image 17Rush on stage in Milan, Italy, 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 18Bill Haley and his Comets performing in the 1954 Universal International film Round Up of Rhythm (from Rock and roll)
Image 19Drum notation for a backbeat (from Hard rock)
Image 20Tommy Steele, one of the first British rock and rollers, performing in Stockholm in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 21Foo Fighters performing an acoustic show in 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 22Elvis Presley in a promotion shot for Jailhouse Rock in 1957 (from Rock and roll)

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American popular music (also referred to as "American Pop") is popular music produced in the United States and is a part of American pop culture. Distinctive styles of American popular music emerged early in the 19th century, and in the 20th century the American music industry developed a series of new forms of music, using elements of blues and other genres. These popular styles included country, R&B, jazz and rock. The 1960s and 1970s saw a number of important changes in American popular music, including the development of a number of new styles, such as heavy metal, punk, soul, and hip hop.

American popular music is incredibly diverse, with styles including ragtime, blues, jazz, swing, rock, bluegrass, country, R&B, doo wop, gospel, soul, funk, pop, punk, disco, house, techno, salsa, grunge and hip hop. In addition, the American music industry is quite diverse, supporting a number of regional styles such as zydeco, klezmer and slack-key. Though these styles were not always in the sense of mainstream, they were commercially recorded and therefore are examples of popular music as opposed to folk or classical music.

American popular musical styles have had a significant influence on global culture. (Full article...)

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Courtney Michelle Love (née Harrison; born July 9, 1964) is an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, and actress. A figure in the alternative and grunge scenes of the 1990s, her career has spanned four decades. She rose to prominence as the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the alternative rock band Hole, which she formed in 1989. Love has drawn public attention for her uninhibited live performances and confrontational lyrics, as well as her highly publicized personal life following her marriage to Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. In 2020, NME named her one of the most influential singers in alternative culture of the last 30 years.

Love had an itinerant childhood, but was primarily raised in Portland, Oregon, where she played in a series of short-lived bands and was active in the local punk scene. After briefly being in a juvenile hall, she spent a year living in Dublin and Liverpool before returning to the United States and pursuing an acting career. She appeared in supporting roles in the Alex Cox films Sid and Nancy (1986) and Straight to Hell (1987) before forming the band Hole in Los Angeles with guitarist Eric Erlandson. The group received critical acclaim from underground rock press for their 1991 debut album Pretty on the Inside, produced by Kim Gordon, while their second release, Live Through This (1994), was met with critical accolades and multi-platinum sales. In 1995, Love returned to acting, earning a Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance as Althea Leasure in Miloš Forman's The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), which established her as a mainstream actress. The following year, Hole's third album, Celebrity Skin (1998), was nominated for three Grammy Awards.

Love continued to work as an actress into the early 2000s, appearing in big-budget pictures such as Man on the Moon (1999) and Trapped (2002), before releasing her first solo album, America's Sweetheart, in 2004. The subsequent several years were marred with publicity surrounding Love's legal troubles and drug relapse, which resulted in a mandatory lockdown rehabilitation sentence in 2005 while she was writing a second solo album. That project became Nobody's Daughter, released in 2010 as a Hole album but without the former Hole lineup. Between 2014 and 2015, Love released two solo singles and returned to acting in the network series Sons of Anarchy and Empire. In 2020, she confirmed she was writing new music. Love has also been active as a writer; she co-created and co-wrote three volumes of a manga, Princess Ai, between 2004 and 2006, and wrote a memoir, Dirty Blonde (2006). (Full article...)

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No Jacket Required is the third solo studio album by English drummer and singer-songwriter Phil Collins. It was released on 18 February 1985 by Virgin Records in the UK and by Atlantic and WEA internationally.

After finishing touring commitments with Genesis and working with Eric Clapton in 1984, Collins resumed his solo career and started work on a new album. He made a conscious decision to write more uptempo and dance-oriented songs, as much of his previous material was influenced by matters surrounding his first divorce. The album features Helen Terry, Peter Gabriel, and Sting as guest backing vocalists. Some songs, like "Don't Lose My Number" and "Sussudio", were based around improvisation, and others, like "Long Long Way to Go", had a political message.

No Jacket Required was received favourably by the majority of critics and was a huge worldwide commercial success, reaching number one in the UK for five consecutive weeks and for seven non-consecutive weeks in the US. It was the second-best-selling album of 1985 in the UK, behind Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms. "One More Night", "Sussudio", "Don't Lose My Number" and "Take Me Home" were released as singles with corresponding music videos. All four were top ten hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, with "Sussudio" and "One More Night" reaching number one. The three singles released in the UK all reached the top 20. Some tracks were featured on the television shows Miami Vice and Cold Case, and "The Man with the Horn" was re-written and re-recorded for the episode "Phil the Shill".

In 2001, No Jacket Required was certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America for selling 12 million copies in the US and amassed worldwide sales of over 25 million copies, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. It won three Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. The No Jacket Required World Tour saw Collins perform 85 concerts which culminated with a performance at both Live Aid shows in London and Philadelphia. Remixes of six songs from the album were released on the compilation 12"ers (1987). In 2010, it was among ten albums nominated for the best British album of the previous 30 years by the Brit Awards. It ranked No. 74 on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "Definitive 200" list. A remastered deluxe edition with updated artwork and bonus tracks was released in 2016. (Full article...)

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"Watching the River Flow" is a blues rock song by American singer Bob Dylan. Produced by Leon Russell, it was written and recorded during a session in March 1971 at the Blue Rock Studio in New York City. The collaboration with Russell formed in part through Dylan's desire for a new sound—after a period of immersion in country rock music—and for a change from his previous producer.

The song was praised by critics for its energy and distinctive vocals, guitar, and piano. It has been interpreted as Dylan's account of his writer's block in the early 1970s and of his wish to deliver less politically engaged material and to find a new balance between public and private life.

Charting in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, the song was included on the 1971 Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II and other Dylan compilation albums. In 2011, five current and former Rolling Stones appeared on a recording of "Watching the River Flow" as part of a tribute project for pianist Ian Stewart. The song has been covered by the Earl Scruggs Revue, Steve Gibbons, Colin James, Russell, and many others. (Full article...)

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Credit: Sven-Sebastian Sajak

Mike Dirnt, singer and bassist of Green Day, stands on the Centerstage during Rock im Park ("Rock in the Park") Festival 2013.

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Did you know (auto-generated)

... that Skálmöld & Sinfóníuhljómsveit Íslands documents a symphony orchestra playing heavy metal music?
... that heavy metal band Judas Priest took their name from Bob Dylan's song "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest"?
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... that the Diaspora Yeshiva Band infused rock and bluegrass with Jewish lyrics, creating a music style it called "Hasidic rock" or "Country and Eastern"?
... that the heavy metal musician Leah has sometimes been called "the metal Enya"?
... that the Liverpool Echo described British rock and roll star Tommy Steele as "quite unable to sing and play the guitar at the same time" when reviewing his first album?

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Glam metal (also known as hair metal or pop metal) is a subgenre of heavy metal that features pop-influenced hooks and guitar riffs, upbeat rock anthems, and slow power ballads. It borrows heavily from the fashion and image of 1970s glam rock.

Early glam metal evolved directly from the glam rock movement of the 1970s, as visual elements taken from acts such as T. Rex, the New York Dolls, and David Bowie (and to a lesser extent, the punk and new wave movements taking place concurrently in New York City) were fused with the decidedly more heavy metal leaning and theatrical acts such as Alice Cooper and Kiss. The first examples of this fusion began appearing in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the United States, particularly on the Los Angeles Sunset Strip music scene. Early glam metal bands include Mötley Crüe, Hanoi Rocks, Night Ranger, Ratt, Quiet Riot, Twisted Sister, Bon Jovi, and Dokken. Glam metal achieved significant commercial success from approximately 1983 to 1991, bringing to prominence bands such as Poison, Skid Row, Cinderella and Warrant. From a strictly visual perspective, glam metal is defined by flashy and tight-fitting clothing, makeup, and an overall androgynous aesthetic in which the traditional "denim & leather" aspect of heavy metal culture is replaced by spandex, lace, and usually heavy use of bright colours. (Full article...)