Portal:Rock music

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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 with extended artistic elements, glam rock, highlighting 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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Marilyn Manson performing in 2017.
Marilyn Manson is an American rock band formed by namesake lead singer Marilyn Manson and guitarist Daisy Berkowitz in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1989. Originally named Marilyn Manson & the Spooky Kids, they gained a local cult following in South Florida in the early 1990s with their theatrical live performances. In 1993, they were the first act signed to Trent Reznor's Nothing Records label. Until 1996, the name of each member was created by combining the first name of a female sex symbol and the last name of a serial killerfor example, Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson. Their lineup has changed between many of their album releases; the eponymous lead singer is the only remaining original member.

In the past, band members dressed in outlandish makeup and costumes, and engaged in intentionally shocking behavior both onstage and off. Their lyrics often received criticism for their anti-religious sentiment and references to sex, violence and drugs, while their live performances were frequently called offensive and obscene. On several occasions, protests and petitions led to the group being blocked from performing, with at least three US states passing legislation banning the group from performing at state-owned venues. They released a number of platinum-selling albums, including Antichrist Superstar (1996) and Mechanical Animals (1998). These albums, along with their highly stylized music videos and worldwide touring, brought public recognition to Marilyn Manson. In 1999, news media, infamously, falsely blamed the band for influencing the perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre.

As this controversy began to wane throughout the 2000s, so did the band's mainstream popularity. Despite this, Jon Wiederhorn of MTV, in June 2003, referred to Marilyn Manson as "the only true artist today". Marilyn Manson is widely regarded as being one of the most iconic and controversial figures in rock music, with the band and its lead singer influencing numerous other groups and musicians, both in metal-associated acts and also in wider popular culture. VH1 ranked Marilyn Manson as the seventy-eighth best rock band on their 100 Great Artists of Hard Rock. They were inducted into the Kerrang! Hall of Fame in 2000, and have been nominated for four Grammy Awards. In the U.S., the band has seen ten of its releases debut in the top ten, including two number-one albums. Marilyn Manson have sold in excess of 50 million records worldwide. (Full article...)

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Frank Zappa performing live at Ekeberghallen in Oslo, Norway, 1977.
Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American musician, composer, and bandleader. His work is characterized by nonconformity, free-form improvisation, sound experimentation, musical virtuosity and satire of American culture. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works; he also produced almost all of the 60-plus albums that he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. Zappa also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. He is considered one of the most innovative and stylistically diverse musicians of his generation.

As a mostly self-taught composer and performer, Zappa had diverse musical influences that led him to create music that was sometimes difficult to categorize. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for 20th-century classical modernism, African-American rhythm and blues, and doo-wop music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands, later switching to electric guitar. His debut studio album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out! (1966), combined satirical songs in seemingly conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. He continued this eclectic and experimental approach whether the fundamental format was rock, jazz, or classical.

Zappa's output is unified by a conceptual continuity he termed "Project/Object", with numerous musical phrases, ideas, and characters reappearing across his albums. His lyrics reflected his iconoclastic views of established social and political processes, structures and movements, often humorously so, and he has been described as the "godfather" of comedy rock. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship. Unlike many other rock musicians of his generation, he disapproved of recreational drug use, but supported decriminalization and regulation.

Zappa was a highly productive and prolific artist with a controversial critical standing; supporters of his music admired its compositional complexity, while detractors found it lacking emotional depth. He had greater commercial success outside the US, particularly in Europe. Though he worked as an independent artist, Zappa mostly relied on distribution agreements he had negotiated with the major record labels. He remains a major influence on musicians and composers. His many honors include his posthumous 1995 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the 1997 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. (Full article...)

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Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), often referred to simply as Arthur, is the seventh studio album by the English rock band the Kinks, released on 10 October 1969. It was the first Kinks album to feature bassist John Dalton, who replaced Pete Quaife. Kinks frontman Ray Davies constructed the concept album as the soundtrack to a Granada Television play and developed the storyline with novelist Julian Mitchell; the television programme was never produced. The rough plot revolved around Arthur Morgan, a carpet-layer, who was based on Ray and guitarist Dave Davies' brother-in-law Arthur Anning. A stereo version was released internationally with a mono version being released in the UK, but not in the US.

The album was met with poor sales but nearly unanimous acclaim, especially among the American music press. Although Arthur and its first two singles, "Drivin'" and "Shangri-La", failed to chart in the UK, the Kinks returned to the Billboard charts after a two-year absence with "Victoria", the lead single in the US, peaking at number 62. The album itself reached number 105 on the Billboard Top LPs chart, their highest position for three years. Arthur paved the way for the further success of the Kinks' 1970 comeback album Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One. (Full article...)

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"A Day in the Life" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles that was released as the final track of their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Credited to Lennon–McCartney, the opening and closing sections of the song were mainly written by John Lennon, with Paul McCartney primarily contributing the song's middle section. All four Beatles played a role in shaping the final arrangement of the song.

Lennon's lyrics were mainly inspired by contemporary newspaper articles, including a report on the death of Guinness heir Tara Browne. The recording includes two passages of orchestral glissandos that were partly improvised in the avant-garde style. In the song's middle segment, McCartney recalls his younger years, which included riding the bus, smoking, and going to class. Following the second crescendo, the song ends with one of the most famous chords in music history, played on several keyboards, that sustains for over forty seconds.

A reputed drug reference in the line "I'd love to turn you on" resulted in the song initially being banned from broadcast by the BBC. Jeff Beck, Barry Gibb, the Fall and Phish are among the artists who have covered the song. The song inspired the creation of the Deep Note, the audio trademark for the THX film company. It remains one of the most influential and celebrated songs in popular music history, appearing on many lists of the greatest songs of all time, and being commonly appraised as the Beatles' finest song. (Full article...)

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Credit: Carlos Delgado CC-BY-SA

Steve Morse of Deep Purple performing at Músicos en la naturaleza 2013 in Hoyos del Espino, Ávila, Spain.

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Hard rock or heavy rock is a heavier subgenre of rock music typified by aggressive vocals and distorted electric guitars. Hard rock began in the mid-1960s with the garage, psychedelic and blues rock movements. Some of the earliest hard rock music was produced by the Kinks, the Who, the Rolling Stones, Cream, Vanilla Fudge, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In the late 1960s, bands such as Blue Cheer, the Jeff Beck Group, Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin, Golden Earring, Steppenwolf, and Deep Purple also produced hard rock.

The genre developed into a major form of popular music in the 1970s, with the Who, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple being joined by Black Sabbath, Aerosmith, Kiss, Queen, AC/DC, Thin Lizzy and Van Halen. During the 1980s, some hard rock bands moved away from their hard rock roots and more towards pop rock. Established bands made a comeback in the mid-1980s and hard rock reached a commercial peak in the 1980s with glam metal bands such as Mötley Crüe, Bon Jovi and Def Leppard as well as the rawer sounds of Guns N' Roses which followed with great success in the later part of that decade. (Full article...)

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Californication is the seventh studio album by U.S. rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers, released on June 8, 1999, on Warner Bros. Records. It was produced by Rick Rubin. Along with Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Californication is one of the band’s best-selling albums.

Californication marked the return of guitarist John Frusciante, who'd previously appeared on Mother's Milk and Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and shifted the band's style. The lyrics incorporated the sexual innuendos already associated with the band, but added themes including death, suicide, California, drugs, globalization and travel. (Full article...)

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