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 blues and rhythm and blues genres of African-American music 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...)

General images - load new batch

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

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

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Sum 41 is a Canadian rock band from Ajax, Ontario. The band was formed in 1996 and currently consists of Deryck Whibley (lead vocals, guitars, keyboards), Dave Baksh (lead guitar, backing vocals), Jason McCaslin (bass, backing vocals), Tom Thacker (guitars, keyboards, backing vocals), and Frank Zummo (drums, occasional backing vocals).

In 1999, Sum 41 signed an international record deal with Island Records and released its first EP, Half Hour of Power, in 2000. The band released its debut album, All Killer No Filler, in 2001. The album achieved mainstream success with its first single, "Fat Lip", which reached number one on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and remains the band's most successful single to date. The album's next singles "In Too Deep" and "Motivation" also achieved commercial success. All Killer No Filler was certified platinum in both the United States and the United Kingdom and triple platinum in Canada. In 2002, the band released Does This Look Infected?, which was also a commercial and critical success. The singles "The Hell Song" and "Still Waiting" both charted highly on the modern rock charts.

The band released its next album, Chuck, in 2004, led by singles "We're All to Blame" and "Pieces". The album proved successful, peaking at number 10 on the Billboard 200. In 2007, the band released Underclass Hero, which was met with a mixed reception, but became the band's highest-charting album to date. It was also the band's last album on Aquarius Records. The band released the album Screaming Bloody Murder, on Island Records in 2011 to a generally positive reception, though it fell short of its predecessors' commercial success. The band's sixth studio album, 13 Voices was released in 2016, through Hopeless Records. IMPALA awarded the album with a double gold award for 150,000 sold copies across Europe. The band's seventh studio album Order in Decline was released on July 19, 2019. It was the band's last album on Hopeless Records. The band's eighth studio album, Heaven :x: Hell, was released on March 29, 2024, through Rise Records. In May 2023, the band announced that the album would be their last as they would be disbanding after its release and a worldwide headlining tour.

The band often performed more than 100 times each year and holds long global tours, most of which lasted more than a year. The group was nominated for seven Juno Awards and won twice – Group of the Year in 2003, and Rock Album of the Year for Chuck in 2005. Sum 41 was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance for the song "Blood in My Eyes". From their formation to 2016, Sum 41 were the 31st best-selling Canadian artist in Canada. (Full article...)

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Sir George Ivan Morrison OBE (born 31 August 1945) is a singer-songwriter and musician from Northern Ireland whose recording career spans seven decades.

Morrison began performing as a teenager in the late 1950s, playing a variety of instruments including guitar, harmonica, keyboards and saxophone for various Irish showbands, covering the popular hits of that time. Known as "Van the Man" to his fans, Morrison rose to prominence in the mid-1960s as the lead singer of the Belfast R&B band Them, with whom he wrote and recorded "Gloria", which became a garage band staple. His solo career started under the pop-hit oriented guidance of Bert Berns with the release of the hit single "Brown Eyed Girl" in 1967.

After Berns's death, Warner Bros. Records bought Morrison's contract and allowed him three sessions to record Astral Weeks (1968). While initially a poor seller, the album has come to be regarded as a classic. Moondance (1970) established Morrison as a major artist, and he built on his reputation throughout the 1970s with a series of acclaimed albums and live performances.

Much of Morrison's music is structured around the conventions of soul music and early rhythm and blues. An equal part of his catalogue consists of lengthy, spiritually inspired musical journeys that show the influence of Celtic tradition, jazz and stream of consciousness narrative, such as the album Astral Weeks. The two strains together are sometimes referred to as "Celtic soul", and his music has been described as attaining "a kind of violent transcendence". (Full article...)

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The untitled fourth studio album by the English rock band Led Zeppelin, commonly known as Led Zeppelin IV, was released on 8 November 1971 by Atlantic Records. Produced by the band's guitarist, Jimmy Page, it was recorded between December 1970 and February 1971, mostly in the country house Headley Grange. The album contains the band's most well-known recording, the eight-minute-long "Stairway to Heaven".

The informal recording environment inspired the band, allowing them to try different arrangements of material and create songs in various styles. After the band's previous album Led Zeppelin III (1970) received lukewarm reviews from critics, they decided their fourth album would officially be untitled and represented instead by four symbols – one chosen by each band member – without featuring the name or any other details on the cover. Unlike the prior two albums, the band was joined by guest musicians: the singer Sandy Denny on "The Battle of Evermore", and the pianist Ian Stewart on "Rock and Roll". As with prior albums, most of the material was written by the band, though there was one cover song, a hard rock re-interpretation of the Memphis Minnie blues song "When the Levee Breaks".

The album was an instant critical and commercial success and is Led Zeppelin's best-selling album, having shipped over 37 million copies worldwide. It is one of the best-selling albums in the United States and of all time, while critics have regularly placed it high on lists of the greatest albums of all time. (Full article...)

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"Mothers of the Disappeared" is a song by Irish rock band U2. It is the eleventh and final track on their 1987 album The Joshua Tree. The song was inspired by lead singer Bono's experiences in Nicaragua and El Salvador in July 1986, following U2's participation in the Conspiracy of Hope tour of benefit concerts for Amnesty International. He learned of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, a group of women whose children had "forcibly disappeared" at the hands of the Argentine and Chilean dictatorships. While in Central America, he met members of COMADRES, a similar organization whose children had been abducted by the government in El Salvador. Bono sympathized with the Madres and COMADRES and wanted to pay tribute to their cause.

The song was written on a Spanish guitar, and the melody lifted from a piece Bono composed in Ethiopia in 1985 to help teach children basic forms of hygiene. The lyrics contain an implicit criticism of the Reagan Administration, which backed two South American regimes that seized power during coups d'état and which provided financial support for the military regime in El Salvador. Thematically it has been interpreted as an examination of failures and contradictions in US foreign policy. The drum beat provided by Larry Mullen Jr. was processed through an effects unit that gave it a drone-like quality, which bassist Adam Clayton described as "evocative of that sinister death squad darkness".

"Mothers of the Disappeared" was favourably received by critics, who variously described it as "powerful", "a moving tribute", and containing "stunning beauty and sadness". The song was played seven times on the 1987 Joshua Tree Tour, and some recordings were considered for the ending sequence of the 1988 film Rattle and Hum. It was revived for four concerts on the 1998 PopMart Tour in South America, and for two of them, the Madres joined the band onstage for the performance, one of which was broadcast on television in Chile. Bono used the opportunity to ask former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet to reveal to the Madres the locations of their children's bodies. The song was played a further three times on the U2 360° Tour; one performance was dedicated to Fehmi Tosun, an ethnic Kurd who forcibly disappeared in Turkey in 1995. Bono re-recorded the song a cappella in 1998 for the album ¡Ni Un Paso Atras! (English: Not One Step Back!). (Full article...)

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Credit: Vassil

Enzifer, a guitarist for Urgehal, a black metal band from Norway, wearing corpse paint and performing in Belgium.

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Did you know (auto-generated)

... 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 Dutch radio and TV presenter Hanneke Kappen presented the second Dutch radio show dedicated to heavy metal music?
... that when rock musician Warren Zevon received a terminal diagnosis of lung cancer, he learned to "enjoy every sandwich"?
... that the heavy metal musician Leah has sometimes been called "the metal Enya"?
... that before charting on the UK Albums Chart with Are We There Yet?, the indie rock musician James Marriott had made a career of mocking other YouTubers' music?
... that heavy metal led Ossian D'Ambrosio to druidism?

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The new wave of British heavy metal (commonly abbreviated as NWOBHM) was a nationwide musical movement that started in England in the mid-1970s and achieved international attention by the early 1980s. Editor Alan Lewis coined the term for an article by Geoff Barton in a May 1979 issue of the British music newspaper Sounds to describe the emergence of new heavy metal bands in the mid to late 1970s, during the period of punk rock's decline and the dominance of new wave music. (Full article...)