History of Rock Music

• Rock music originated as rock and roll in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s

• Rock music would develop into a wide range of different styles for the mid 1960s onward in the United Kingdom and the United States

• By the end of the classic rock period of the late 1960s, numerous rock subgenres emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, southern rock, raga rock, and jazz rock, many of which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock

• Progressive rock, glam rock, and heavy metal emerged between the late 1960s and early 1970s

• Punk rock was introduced in the latter half of the 1970s and produced stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques
• Punk rock was an influence in the 1980s on new wave, post-punk, and alternative rock

• In the 1990s, alternative rock became mainstream in the forms of grunge, Britpop, and indie rock

• Further fusion genres have emerged ever since, such as pop punk, electronic rock, rap rock, and rap metal

• Conscious attempts were made to revisit rock's history, including the garage rock/post-punk and techno-pop revivals in the early 2000s

• Rock music's mainstream popularity and cultural relevancy declined in the late 2000s and 2010s, with hip hop surpassing it as the most popular genre in the United States

• Rock music has embodied and served as the vehicle for cultural and social movements, leading to major subcultures including mods and rockers in the United Kingdom and the hippie counterculture that spread out from San Francisco, California in the United States in the 1960s

• 1970s punk culture spawned the goth, punk, and emo subcultures

• Inheriting the folk tradition of the protest song, rock music has been associated with political activism as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex, and drug use, and is often seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism and conformity

Click here to go to the top of the page