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 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...)
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Lynott led the group throughout their fourteen-year recording career of twelve studio albums, writing or co-writing almost all the band's material. He was the first Black Irishman to achieve commercial success in the field of rock music. Thin Lizzy featured several guitarists throughout their history, with Downey and Lynott as the rhythm section, on the drums and bass guitar. As well as being multiracial, the band drew their early members not only from both sides of the Irish border but also from both the Catholic and Protestant communities during The Troubles.
After Lynott's death in 1986, various incarnations of the band emerged over the years based initially around guitarists Gorham and Sykes, though Sykes left the band in 2009. Gorham later continued with a new line-up including Downey. In 2012, Gorham and Downey decided against recording new material as Thin Lizzy so a new band, Black Star Riders, was formed to tour and produce new releases. Thin Lizzy have since reunited for occasional concerts.
Rolling Stone magazine describes the band as distinctly hard rock, "far apart from the braying mid-70s metal pack". AllMusic critic John Dougan has written that "As the band's creative force, Lynott was a more insightful and intelligent writer than many of his ilk, preferring slice-of-life working-class dramas of love and hate influenced by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and virtually all of the Irish literary tradition." (Full article...)
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Mullen was born in Dublin, where he attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School. In 1976, he co-founded U2 after posting a message on the school's notice board in search of musicians. Mullen has worked on numerous side projects during his career. In 1990, he produced the Ireland national football team's song "Put 'Em Under Pressure" for the 1990 FIFA World Cup. In 1996, he worked with U2 bandmate Adam Clayton on a dance re-recording of the "Theme from Mission: Impossible". He has also collaborated with musicians such as Maria McKee, Nanci Griffith, Emmylou Harris, and Alice Cooper. Mullen has sporadically acted in films, most notably in Man on the Train (2011) and A Thousand Times Good Night (2013).
Mullen has received 22 Grammy Awards and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2016, Rolling Stone ranked Mullen the 96th-greatest drummer of all time. (Full article...)
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Europe '72 is a live triple album by the Grateful Dead, released in November 1972. It is the band's third live album and their eighth album overall. It covers the band's tour of Western Europe in April and May that year, and showcases live favourites, extended improvisations and several new songs including "Jack Straw" and "Brown Eyed Women". The album was the first to include pianist Keith Godchaux and his wife, vocalist Donna Jean Godchaux, and the last to feature founding member Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, who died shortly after its release.
The European tour was expensive and logistically complicated, and the band's record company hoped that a live album would recoup its costs. Consequently, the entire tour was recorded, with highlights making it onto the final release. Europe '72 is one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed albums by the Dead. It was one of the first triple-record rock albums to be certified gold by RIAA; the album has since been certified double platinum. A second volume was released in 2011, in conjunction with the release of the entire 22-date tour as Europe '72: The Complete Recordings. (Full article...)
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"Since U Been Gone" is a song recorded by American singer Kelly Clarkson from her second studio album, Breakaway (2004). The song, which was written and produced by Max Martin and Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald, was released as the lead single from Breakaway two weeks before the album was released. It is an uptempo pop rock and power pop power ballad that infuses electronic sounds with a mixture of a soft and loud pop rock sound. Martin originally wrote "Since U Been Gone" with Pink in mind, but she turned it down. It was then given to Hilary Duff, but she rejected the song because she could not reach its higher notes. The song was finally given to Clarkson after Clive Davis convinced the writers to give it to her. Clarkson decided to add heavier guitars and harder drums to the song after noticing that the demo had an obvious pop sound. Lyrically, the song is written from a woman's point of view where she expresses her sense of relief with the end of her troubled relationship.
"Since U Been Gone" received positive reviews from music critics who considered the song to be the highlight of Breakaway. Critics also felt that it was one of the best pop songs in the last decade. Rolling Stone ranked it at number 482 of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2010 and at number 93 in the revamped 2021 ranking, while Billboard ranked it as the fifth greatest pop song of all time. "Since U Been Gone" was a commercial success. In the United States, the song peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100. It topped the US Pop 100 for six consecutive weeks and the US Pop Songs for seven consecutive weeks respectively. It was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments of over one million copies sold. "Since U Been Gone" was also a worldwide success, peaking in the top five in Austria, Australia, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. It also peaked in the top ten in Norway, Germany, and Switzerland.
Clarkson performed "Since U Been Gone" at the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards and at the 2006 BRIT Awards. It has been included on the set-list of Clarkson's many tours. The song's accompanying music video was directed by Alex De Rakoff, which shows Clarkson ruining her ex-boyfriend's apartment. The music video was nominated for three awards in the 2005 MTV Music Awards, winning two out of the three awards namely Best Female Video and Best Pop Video. At the 48th Grammy Awards, the song won the award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. "Since U Been Gone" was covered by many artists, notably the American rock band A Day to Remember, indie rocker Ted Leo as well as the Canadian indie rock band, Tokyo Police Club, and used in the musical & Juliet. (Full article...)
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Hayley Williams, lead vocalist of the American rock band Paramore, at Rock im Park ("Rock in the Park") 2013 in Nuremberg, Germany.
Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that heavy metal led Ossian D'Ambrosio to druidism?
- ... that the neofolk album The Lone Furrow features several guest vocalists from heavy metal bands, and critics thought it might appeal to fans of that genre?
- ... that during his tenure as Governor of Central Java, Muhammad Ismail banned rock music concerts and car rallies?
- ... that Shin Hae-chul, who previously made hard rock and heavy metal albums, was inspired by big band music when he made The Songs for the One?
- ... 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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Alternative rock (also known as alternative music, alt-rock or simply alternative) is a category of rock music that evolved from the independent music underground of the 1970s. Alternative rock acts achieved mainstream success in the 1990s with the likes of the grunge, shoegaze, and Britpop subgenres in the United States and United Kingdom, respectively. During this period, many record labels were looking for "alternatives", as many corporate rock, hard rock, and glam metal acts from the 1980s were beginning to grow stale throughout the music industry. The emergence of Generation X as a cultural force in the 1990s also contributed greatly to the rise of alternative rock. (Full article...)
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Title TK is the third studio album by American alternative rock band the Breeders, released on May 20 and 21, 2002 by 4AD in the United Kingdom and Elektra Records in the United States, and on May 10 by P-Vine Records in Japan. The album—whose name means "title to come" in journalistic shorthand—generated three singles: "Off You", "Huffer", and "Son of Three". Title TK reached the top 100 in France, Germany, the UK, and Australia, and number 130 in the US.
Following multiple changes in personnel after the release of Last Splash (1993), singer and songwriter Kim Deal was the only remaining constant member of the Breeders by 1996. The next year, she returned to the studio in an attempt to record a follow-up album, but her behavior—including drug use and demanding expectations—alienated many of the musicians and engineers with whom she worked. (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 59 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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