Portal:Rock music
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 is 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 few distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, Southern rock, raga rock, and jazz rock, which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock, influenced by the countercultural 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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Bootlegs reached new popularity with Bob Dylan's Great White Wonder, a compilation of studio outtakes and demos released in 1969 using low-priority pressing plants. The following year, the Rolling Stones' Live'r Than You'll Ever Be, an audience recording of a late 1969 show, received a positive review in Rolling Stone. Subsequent bootlegs became more sophisticated in packaging, particularly the Trademark of Quality label with William Stout's cover artwork. Compact disc bootlegs first appeared in the 1980s, and Internet distribution became increasingly popular in the 1990s.
Changing technologies have affected the recording, distribution, and profitability of the bootlegging industry. The copyrights for the music and the right to authorise recordings often reside with the artist, according to several international copyright treaties. The recording, trading and sale of bootlegs continues to thrive, even as artists and record companies release official alternatives. (Full article...)
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Turner began her musical career with her future husband Ike Turner's band, the Kings of Rhythm, in 1956. Under the name Little Ann, she appeared on her first record, "Boxtop", in 1958. In 1960, she debuted as Tina Turner with the hit single "A Fool in Love". The Ike & Tina Turner Revue became "one of the most formidable live acts in history". The duo released hits such as "It's Gonna Work Out Fine", "River Deep – Mountain High", "Proud Mary", and "Nutbush City Limits" before disbanding in 1976.
In the 1980s, Turner launched "one of the greatest comebacks in music history". Her 1984 multi-platinum album Private Dancer contained the hit song "What's Love Got to Do with It", which won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and became her first and only number-one song on the Billboard Hot 100. Her chart success continued with "Better Be Good to Me", "Private Dancer", "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)", "Typical Male", "The Best", "I Don't Wanna Fight", and "GoldenEye". She embarked on the Break Every Rule World Tour (1987–1988), which became the top-grossing female tour of the 1980s and set a Guinness World Record for the then-largest paying audience in a concert (180,000). Turner also acted in the films Tommy (1975) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). In 1986, she published her autobiography I, Tina: My Life Story, which was adapted for the 1993 film What's Love Got to Do with It. In 2009, Turner retired after completing her Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour. In 2018, she was the subject of Tina, a jukebox musical.
Turner sold more than 100 million records worldwide, becoming one of the best-selling recording artists of all time. She received 12 Grammy Awards, which include eight competitive awards, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and three Grammy Hall of Fame inductions. She was the first black artist and first woman to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone ranked her among the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. Turner has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice: with Ike Turner in 1991 and as a solo artist in 2021. She was also a 2005 recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors and the Women of the Year award. (Full article...)
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Love It to Death is the third studio album by American rock band Alice Cooper, released on March 9, 1971. It was the band's first commercially successful album and the first album that consolidated the band's aggressive hard-rocking sound, instead of the psychedelic and experimental rock style of their first two albums. The album's best-known track, "I'm Eighteen", was released as a single to test the band's commercial viability before the album was recorded.
Formed in the mid-1960s, the band took the name Alice Cooper in 1968 and became known for its outrageous theatrical live shows. The loose, psychedelic freak rock of the first two albums failed to find an audience. The band moved to Detroit in 1970 where they were influenced by the aggressive hard rock scene. A young Bob Ezrin was enlisted as producer; he encouraged the band to tighten its songwriting over two months of rehearsing ten to twelve hours a day. The single "I'm Eighteen" achieved Top 40 success soon after, peaking at No. 21. This convinced Warner Bros. that Alice Cooper had the commercial potential to release an album. After its release in March 1971, Love It to Death reached No. 35 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and has since been certified platinum. The album's second single, "Caught in a Dream", charted at No. 94.
The original album cover featured the singer Cooper posed with his thumb protruding so it appeared to be his penis; Warner Bros. soon replaced it with a censored version. The Love It to Death tour featured an elaborate shock rock live show: during "Ballad of Dwight Fry"—about an inmate in an insane asylum—Cooper would be dragged offstage and return in a straitjacket, and the show climaxed with Cooper's mock execution in a prop electric chair during "Black Juju". Ezrin and the Coopers continued to work together for a string of hit albums until the band's breakup in 1974. The album has come to be seen as a foundational influence on hard rock, punk, and heavy metal; several tracks have become live Alice Cooper standards and are frequently covered by other bands. (Full article...)
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"City of Blinding Lights" is a song by Irish rock band U2. It is the fifth track on their eleventh studio album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004), and was released as the album's fourth single on 6 June 2005. It was produced by Flood, with additional production by Chris Thomas and Jacknife Lee. The song reached number one in Spain, and peaked in the top ten in Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and several other countries. The music video was shot at the General Motors Place in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
The earliest incarnation of the song was developed during sessions for the band's 1997 album, Pop. The lyrics were written by the band's lead vocalist Bono, taking partial inspiration from his recollection of his first trip to London, and from the band's experience playing in New York City in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks during their Elevation Tour in 2001. Other lyrics refer to Bono's relationship with his wife Ali. The song's underlying theme reflects lost innocence and was inspired by an image Bono saw of himself from the early 1980s. The sound has been compared to the tone of U2's 1984 album, The Unforgettable Fire and their 1987 single "Where the Streets Have No Name".
"City of Blinding Lights" was well received by critics and won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Song at the 2006 ceremony. The song made its live debut on the group's 2005–2006 Vertigo Tour, when it was commonly played as the opening song. It has been performed at nearly every show from a U2 concert tour since. The track has been used in episodes of The Simpsons and Entourage, and in the film The Devil Wears Prada. Former U.S. President Barack Obama used the song at his campaign events during the 2008 and 2012 U.S. presidential elections, and listed it as one of his favourite songs; U2 performed it at his 2009 inaugural celebration at the Lincoln Memorial; and the song was used to introduce Obama's speech endorsing Kamala Harris for president on the second night of the Democratic National Convention in 2024. (Full article...)
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Enzifer, a guitarist for Urgehal, a black metal band from Norway, wearing corpse paint and performing in Belgium.
Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that when rock musician Warren Zevon received a terminal diagnosis of lung cancer, he learned to "enjoy every sandwich"?
- ... that the heavy metal band Cradle of Filth released a T-shirt that was so offensive that several people were arrested for wearing it?
- ... that heavy metal led Ossian D'Ambrosio to druidism?
- ... that heavy metal band Judas Priest took their name from Bob Dylan's song "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest"?
- ... 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?
- ... that Desulfovibrio vulgaris can remove toxic heavy metals from the environment?
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Garage rock (sometimes called garage punk or '60s punk) is a raw and energetic style of rock music that flourished in the mid-1960s, most notably in the United States and Canada, and has experienced a series of subsequent revivals. The style is characterized by basic chord structures played on electric guitars and other instruments, sometimes distorted through a fuzzbox, as well as often unsophisticated and occasionally aggressive lyrics and delivery. Its name derives from the perception that groups were often made up of young amateurs who rehearsed in the family garage, although many were professional. (Full article...)
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Slipknot (/ˈslɪpnɒt/ SLIP-not) is an American heavy metal band formed in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1995 by percussionist Shawn Crahan, former vocalist Anders Colsefni and bassist Paul Gray. After several lineup changes in its early years, the band settled on nine members for more than a decade: Crahan, Gray, Joey Jordison, Craig Jones, Mick Thomson, Corey Taylor, Sid Wilson, Chris Fehn, and Jim Root. Slipknot is well known for its attention-grabbing image, aggressive style of music, and energetic and chaotic live shows.
The band rapidly rose to fame following the release of their eponymous debut album in 1999. The 2001 follow-up album, Iowa, although darker in tone, made the band more popular. After a brief hiatus, Slipknot returned in 2004 with Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses), before going on another hiatus and returning in 2008 with its fourth album, All Hope Is Gone, which debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart. After another long hiatus, Slipknot released its fifth studio album, .5: The Gray Chapter, in 2014. Their sixth studio album, We Are Not Your Kind, was released on August 9, 2019. Their seventh studio album, The End, So Far, was released on September 30, 2022. The band has released two live albums titled 9.0: Live and Day of the Gusano: Live in Mexico, a compilation album titled Antennas to Hell, and five live DVDs. The band has sold 30 million records worldwide and over 12 million in their home country. (Full article...)More did you know...
- ... that David Bowie's first gig as lead singer was at the Green Man, Blackheath?
- ... that Carlton le Willows Academy alumni include cricketer Mark Footitt, Air Supply singer/guitarist Graham Russell, and balloonist Janet Folkes?
- ... that the video for Marilyn Manson's soft-rock ballad "Running to the Edge of the World" was widely condemned for its depiction of violence against women?
- ... that Susan Beschta was a punk rocker and federal judge?
- ... that the FM Non-Duplication Rule adopted by the FCC 60 years ago led to the creation of the album-oriented and classic rock radio formats?
- ... that The Elvis Dead, a retelling of Evil Dead II in the style of Elvis Presley, features songs such as "Standing in a State of Shock", "I've Been Possessed", and "Wrapped Up in Vines"?
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