Rock Music

Rock

Rock is a widely popular and vast genre that gathers together a wide range of different styles. Its origins can be traced to US recordings in the late 1940s that combined major elements from Jump-Blues and Swing, with increased prominence given to the role of the electric guitar drawn from Chicago Blues. Even though the term "rock" was originally used by some Blues performers in the late 1930s to describe the bawdier version of their music with faster tempo songs, it went largely unrecorded until the late 1940s.

Rock in its original form was a song-based type of music that typically used a verse-chorus structure with a backbeat rhythm and the electric guitar at the forefront of the music being heavier and/or faster than its predecessor genres. The structure and sound of rock is based around a prominent electric guitar sound with a bass guitar and drums providing its rhythm (although electric guitars can also sometimes contribute, usually referred to as rhythm guitars in this context). However, rock musicians have experimented with this base structure from the beginning so any two different rock bands may not sound anything alike or even have similar structures. Rock music from its inception has symbolized the counter-culture and served as a vehicle for rebellion and protest, although the proliferation of the genre has diluted this characteristic's importance as a core aspect.

Rock originated in the southern United States and became popular in the 1950s through its two original forms Rock & Roll and Rockabilly. Rock & roll was used to describe black musicians such as Little Richard and Chuck Berry who played Rhythm & Blues at a faster tempo and incorporated new technical innovations such as the electric guitar, amplifier and microphone. Rockabilly was used to describe young Western Swing performers who incorporated fast-paced rhythm and blues with Country influences. This term tended to be applied to white musicians like Carl Perkins and was popularized by the early recordings of Elvis Presley. This type of music started to decline in popularity in the late 1950s and early 1960s as Pop gained wider prominence, although the development of subgenres such as Surf Rock and Garage Rock retained the public's interest and general relevance of the genre.

Rock music in the United Kingdom evolved from blues via Skiffle, a genre derived from Jazz and Folk. In the 1960s, the so-called "British Invasion" of UK bands such as The Rolling Stones and The Beatles helped revive mainstream interest in the genre and cement it in the popular culture on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. These bands tended to recreate elements of American blues and rock & roll and fuse them with music popular in the UK, including Beat Music and Mod, which generated a cross-influence between the US and the UK and led to a boom in popularity.

During the 1960s, rock music expanded beyond its traditional roots and started to incorporate more and more unconventional aspects such as different guitar effects and distortion, diverse instrumentation, and general experimentation. As rock became commercialized, Pop Rock developed as a more accessible and radio-friendly version. The 1960s also saw the development of Folk Rock, which was widely used in protests around the world, and which subsequently led to the creation of the hallucinogenic drug-influenced Psychedelic Rock. Progressive Rock was also formed in the 1960s and involved the use of other instruments such as keyboards, as well as generally more complex and experimental songwriting.

In the 1970s, Hard Rock, a garage rock and blues rock influenced subgenre with more aggressive vocals and more pronounced guitar distortion came into prominence. Hard rock laid the foundations for Metal, which turned up the intensity further and would later evolve into many diverse subgenres. The theatrical and campy Glam Rock was developed in the early 1970s and saw immense popularity in the first half of the decade. Punk Rock took off in the mid-1970s and focused on an aggressive, hard-edged, and stripped down sound as well as counter-culture aesthetics. The Punk scene influenced both the mainstream and the underground in the 1980s and gave rise to New Wave, Post-Punk, and eventually, Alternative Rock and Indie Rock whose various forms would become mainstays in subsequent decades.

In the decades since its inception, rock has continued to evolve, splinter, and crossover with other genres: various diverse subgenres have reached both underground and mainstream popularity and various regional scenes have been developed. Rock has remained a commercial force and has continued to influence and define popular culture in countries across the world.

Acoustic Rock

Acoustic rock is essentially Rock music with acoustic instrumentation, as opposed to the electric instrumentation typical of the genre.

Afro-Rock

Afro-rock is the term used to describe Rock music made with West African influences, as opposed to just rock music done in Africa. Emerging in the early 1970s and fading by the early 1980s, scenes in Nigeria and Ghana were the most significant to the development of the genre.

As with other parts of the world, rock music in Africa started out influenced by early rock musicians such as Elvis Presley, The Beatles or Chuck Berry. This early African rock, performed mainly by student bands, was still lacking strong African influences and was more of a simple representation of Western rock. The turn of the 1960s/1970s can be considered something of a turning point, where bands (Super Eagles from Gambia, Psychedelic Aliens from Ghana and Afro-Collection from Nigeria) went from merely copying the Western pop acts, to increasingly writing their own songs and creating their own styles, incorporating a heavy amount of fuzz and wah-wah guitar together with organ-heavy lines and percussion-driven rhythms. Influences were drawn from the assertive black pride expressed in Soul music, Fela Kuti's Afrobeat, James Brown's Funk and the Psychedelic Rock of Jimi Hendrix, Cream and especially Santana with their Latin Rock style. The main event which paved the way for afro-rock's early development in Ghana was the 1971 Soul to Soul concert. Although more soul-oriented, organizers also invited Santana to perform. It was said that although Santana had only one black member, it was the most "afro-sounding" music played that night. The way in which Santana fused Latin percussion with electric guitars and organs had a huge influence on Ghana's musicians.

Some claim afro-rock in Nigeria started after Ginger Baker moved to Nigeria in 1970. His 1971 jam session with future Nigerian rock musician Joni Haastrup together with him opening a 16-track studio in Ikeja, Lagos (the first of its kind in West Africa) are considered pivotal in the creation of the movement. Also of crucial importance was producer Odion Iruoje, who worked for EMI Nigeria. Sent to London to witness the recording of Abbey Road, he came back to Nigeria to scout for new bands. Instead of just playing straight English/American rock, he encouraged the bands to incorporate local Jùjú and other Yoruba Music traditions, hence Nigerian afro-rock bands such as Blo and Ofege creating a unique sound.

Although not in Africa, the United Kingdom can also be considered as having an important afro-rock scene, made up of the African immigrants living there. The sound of British afro-rock bands such as Osibisa can be easily distinguishable from their African counterparts as being far less "heavy" and sometimes more jazzy.

Alternative Dance

Alternative dance describes artists that, while rooted firmly in Alternative Rock and Indie Rock, heavily integrate aspects of Electronic music into their songs, such as synthesizers and rhythms taken from Electronic Dance Music.

Alternative dance developed in the early 1980s with New Order's mixing of Synthpop and Electro-Disco influence with a Post-Punk foundation. The band began to integrate Acid House into their music in the latter half of the decade, and their influence in the Manchester area gave rise to the Baggy / Madchester scene in the late '80s.

Alternative dance was also used to describe acts outside of Manchester in the late 1980s and early '90s, including Primal Scream, Jesus Jones, and Saint Etienne.

Alternative Rock

(also known as Alt Rock)

Alternative rock is a style of Rock music that generally consists of typically Pop Rock-based song structures performed with a less commercial, more underground sensibility. It has roots in the independent music scenes of the United States and Britain in the 1980s.

Early alt rock bands such as R.E.M. and Violent Femmes combined Punk Rock and Post-Punk influences with Folk Rock, creating a new melodic rock sound in the process. The style remained in the underground for many years and, aside from occasional exceptions like R.E.M. and The Cure, met with little commercial success; indeed, the use of the word "alternative" in its name indicated that it was something outside the mainstream of rock music. However, the runaway success of Nirvana in 1991 changed this and catapulted alternative rock to the forefront of popular music.

Beginning in the late '80s and early '90s, an outgrowth of this style known as Indie Rock developed, largely through the music of Pixies and, later, Pavement. This genre is generally "looser" in style and less bound by traditional methods of song structure and production than alternative rock.

Andean Rock

(also known as Rock Andino)

At the end of the 1960s and beginning of 1970s, a style of South American rock music was incorporated with elements from Andean music, as the use of traditional instruments, harmonies or the fusion of indigenous imaginary features with urban topics, especially in Peru, Chile and Argentina, as an answer to the Latin Rock movement. El Polen, Los Jaivas and Arco Iris were the pioneers of the genre, and it evolved with Progressive Rock influences. It influenced the standards of contemporary Andean urban music.

Andalusian Rock

A style of Progressive Rock that emerged from the mid 1970s in Spain which utilizes primarily Flamenco and often Symphonic Prog elements. Triana was a pioneer of the genre, although there were several precedents, some '60s songs as "Válgame la Macarena" by Los Cheyenes or "Flamenco" and "A mí con esas" by Los Brincos, but especially with Smash, the first band to incorporate a flamenco singer (Manuel Molina) to a rock band. However, the Andalusian rock focuses more on the fusion of genres, as the melody and instrumental section. Al-Andalus culture became also a big influence in their music, alongside lyrics, themes and artworks.

AOR

(Adult-Oriented Rock)

AOR (Adult Oriented Rock) is a sub-genre of Rock that emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s as an amalgamation of Hard Rock, Pop Rock and Progressive Rock. It is characterized by a rich, layered sound, slick production and a heavy reliance on commercial melodic hooks, which led to its huge popularity in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Adult-oriented rock is commonly conflated with but distinguished from the US "album-oriented rock" FM radio format, also called AOR, which played not only adult-oriented rock but also album tracks and "deep cuts" from a variety of other rock genres.

AOR songs are almost always synthesizer and electric guitar-driven and very often include harmonized vocals. The catchy choruses combined with relatively short song lengths make AOR a very radio friendly genre. The songs are more melodic than straight-ahead, regular hard rock, but harder edged than most pop rock.

Some of the earliest (and also the most well known) AOR bands include names like Asia, Boston, Foreigner, Journey, Survivor and Toto, with songs such as Boston's "More Than a Feeling" and Toto's "Africa" becoming hugely popular radio staples (the latter showcasing the lighter side of the style more akin to Soft Rock).

Although AOR experienced a decline in popularity in the 1990s, there was an underground resurgence in the 2000s with acts such as Brother Firetribe and Place Vendome.

Art Rock

The term art rock has been employed to describe several works of Rock music developed right after the 1960s Psychedelic Rock explosion. Following on the heels of this phenomenon, art rock has been the result of musicians developing an interest towards a handful of forms of music out of the boundaries of rock and, in general terms, making an attempt to break away as much as possible from the constrains imposed by Rock & Roll (or from the roots of rock itself, which, in turn, inspired genres like Blues Rock, Country Rock or U.S. Folk Rock). A non-musical factor that could explain this development is the conscious transition that certain rock (and non-rock) artists made from singles-based music towards a bigger development of the album as a cohesive lyrical and thematic whole (an important step towards the popularization of the so-called concept album) as shown by the 1966–1967 set of examples like Pet Sounds, Freak Out!, The Who Sell Out or Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (which can be counted as forerunners of later art rock).

The Velvet Underground & Nico, which interpolated raw Garage Rock and psychedelia with lengthy Modern Classical-inspired drone and noise passages, unorthodox guitar tunings with heavy use of feedback, and subject matter generally centered around stark lyrical topics (all tied in with elaborate pop art-inspired imagery and live performances) is considered by critics and fans as the starting point of art rock. This template of limit-breaching rock music, concept-oriented LPs and complex live performances would be the basis for many artists during the 70s that added various influences to this archetype, including Jazz, Western Classical Music, Funk, avant-garde and early Electronic and Ambient music (and even instrumentation typical of some of these styles). Examples of art rock musicians during this stage include Roxy Music (along with the solo careers of Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera, as well as the Roxy-related 801), Pink Floyd, Station to Station/Berlin trilogy-era David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Barclay James Harvest, Steve Harley/Cockney Rebel and ex-Velvet Underground members Lou Reed and John Cale.

Ever since its beginnings, art rock has shared connections, musical ties and even presents apparent overlaps with Experimental Rock and Progressive Rock (eventually also bearing a relationship with styles like Art Pop, Glam Rock, Krautrock and Jazz-Rock). While art rock strives to find a level of complexity similar to the one present in these two affiliated genres, it generally features a mix of rock music that tends to follow certain Pop-based structures or patterns along with the aforementioned set of eclectic influences and certain degree of complexity and conceptuality, in contrast to the more classical/jazz-mimicking or inspired patterns of prog suites, or the more radical and angular experimental rock.

After the Punk Rock explosion of the second half of the 1970s, art rock dissolved, during the following decades, into other forms of rock music, including (but not limited to): Post-Punk, New Wave, Art Punk, and Post-Hardcore. The 1990s and 2000s would then see a series of newer bands taking inspiration from the musical and conceptual leanings of 60s/70s art rock acts (along with other influences) and as such, groups like late-90s/early-00s Radiohead, The Mars Volta, TV on the Radio, dEUS, Auktyon, and The Mollusk-era Ween have been commonly credited with reviving popular interest in the genre into the new millennium.

Avant-Prog

Avant-prog is a subgenre of Progressive Rock that emerged around the late 1960s and early 1970s. While progressive rock bands infuse Rock with elements from more traditional forms of Western Classical Music and Jazz, avant-prog artists draw more inspiration from Modern Classical and Avant-Garde Jazz, as well as the unorthodox instrumentation and techniques of Experimental Rock. The music is highly complex and densely arranged, sometimes involving a certain degree of improvisation but for the most part carefully composed (although many bands have recorded entirely improvised pieces as well). Avant-prog tends to be more abstract in nature than other styles of progressive rock, and as such many artists make exclusively instrumental music. If there are vocals they're often wordless, or in certain cases sung in a language invented by the artist. This is particularly common for vocal pieces in the Zeuhl subgenre.

Frank Zappa's work with the Mothers of Invention could arguably be considered the earliest example of avant-prog. The genre rose to prominence through Henry Cow and the Rock in Opposition movement, involving bands such as Univers Zéro and Samla Mammas Manna. Avant-prog never gained any real mainstream recognition, but the genre has remained active and popular in underground circles.

See also the Genres/Definitions of Avant-Garde Music

Baggy / Madchester

Madchester is a phenomenon associated with the independent music scene of Manchester, England, during the late 1980s and early 1990s. This style is known for incorporating elements such as Funk, Neo-Psychedelia, Indie Pop, Acid House and Jangle Pop, among others, to the Alternative Dance sound pioneered by the Mancunian band New Order. The Haçienda nightclub, co-founded by New Order and Tony Wilson, became an important hub for the development and rise to prominence of Madchester bands such as The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets and The Charlatans. Rave culture and the influence of drugs, especially MDMA, have become associated with this scene.

Baggy, which shared similar influences and general sound with this scene, has become synonymous with Madchester while also including bands that weren't part of the Manchester music scene, such as The Soup Dragons, EMF and early Blur. The genre is named as such due to the fashion of this scene, which heavily featured baggy jeans and brightly coloured tops in a throwback to the 1960s.

While Baggy/Madchester would eventually suffer a decline of commercial success and critical acclaim, the style and its popularity played an important role as a precursor for the rise of the mid-1990s Britpop genre.

Beat

Evolving from Rock & Roll and emerging out of the late-1950s Skiffle revival, beat music was one of the most popular styles of music in the UK in the early 1960s. Beat groups characteristically had simple guitar-dominated line-ups and melody lines, with vocal harmonies, primal instrumental interplay and traditional popular song structures.

The most prominent form originated in Liverpool as Merseybeat, with The Beatles, Gerry and The Pacemakers and The Searchers exemplifying this clean, melodic, bouncy sound. The terms 'beat music' (or 'British beat') and 'Merseybeat' have even seemingly been used interchangeably at times, though beat groups were by no means limited to the Mersey sound. The Dave Clark Five pioneered the 'Tottenham sound'; Manchester-based groups The Hollies and Herman's Hermits adopted a sound that was half Sunshine Pop, half merseybeat; heavier, rawer beat styles played by groups such as The Spencer Davis Group, The Kinks, The Who, Yardbirds and The Pretty Things were more entrenched in their rock & roll roots, whilst often incorporating styles of British Rhythm & Blues and the emerging Garage Rock sound. Beat music in turn heavily influenced the American boom of both garage rock and Folk Rock in the mid-to-late 1960s. With the emergence of the Mod scene, Freakbeat evolved around 1964-5 as a distinctly fuzzy, frantic, effects-heavy beat style adopted by bands such as The Who and The Creation.

The genre had a heavily global influence, instigating the first 'British Invasion' in the USA and consequently around the world. A whole host of artists from different countries and cultures adopted similar sounds and performed famous beat singles, for example, The Easybeats and Billy Adams in Australia; Los Bravos and Los Brincos in Spain; The Vanguards and The Beatniks in Norway; the Brazilian Jovem Guarda movement; and a portion of Françoise Hardy material circa 1966. The heavily-Beatles influenced Group Sounds scene emerged as a huge export in Japan, whilst Q65 and The Motions are prime examples of Nederbeat, a style that spawned in The Netherlands. In the UK, Beat music declined in popularity around 1967 with the emergence of various Psychedelic Rock and Progressive Rock styles.

Blues Rock

Blues Rock is Rock that relies on the chords/scales and instrumental improvisation of Blues. The genre started in the 1960s. Artists like Yardbirds, Cream, and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers in the UK and The Allman Brothers Band, Canned Heat, and Johnny Winter in the US eventually brought the sound widespread popularity.

Boogie Rock

Boogie Rock is a distinctively Southern-influenced style of American Blues Rock that emphasizes a straightforward groove-oriented sound, rather than the instrumental experimentation found in the more progressive and psychedelic Blues Rock bands. Boogie Rock reached its apex in the 1970s.

British Rhythm & Blues

British rhythm & blues is a style infusing Rock and R&B music that was hugely popular in the UK between 1963 and 1966. It initially developed around the turn of the decade from the closely-related British Blues movement, which saw Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated and other London-based live bands seeking to emulate the sounds of 1950s electric Chicago Bluesmen Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. R&B bands attempted to combine the purer, more intrinsically "Blues" sound of British blues with the rawer primal energy of Rock & Roll and African American Rhythm & Blues singers such as Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, showcasing a gritty, syncopated sound with a guitar-heavy mix, sometimes with wailing harmonica and organ accompaniment.

Alongside Beat Music, rhythm & blues was the dominant force in rock music in the UK during the mid-1960s, with early material by The Rolling Stones, The Spencer Davis Group, The Animals, Yardbirds and The Pretty Things consistently high in the charts. Many musicians originated from Skiffle and British trad Jazz clubs in the late 1950s, and on top of self-penned material, R&B bands commonly covered blues and rock & roll songs from the previous decades, such as The Rolling Stones' debut single, the 1963 Chuck Berry cover "Come On", The Animals' 1964 cover of the traditional "The House of the Rising Sun" and Them's 1964 cover of the blues standard "Baby Please Don't Go" (first copyrighted by Big Joe Williams).

British rhythm & blues was a direct influence on the mid-1960s Mod scene, providing early beginnings for The Who and Small Faces, and, together with British blues, helped pave the way for Blues Rock. The style was an integral part of the 'British Invasion' in the USA, influencing mid-to-late 1960s Garage Rock, as well as Pop Rock as a whole.

Britpop

Britpop is a subset of Alternative Rock that developed in the United Kingdom during the early 1990s. It has been commonly perceived as a reaction not only to the angst-ridden American Grunge movement but also to the ethereal, noisy Shoegaze style that found some success during the early '90s in the UK. Britpop marked a return to a more traditional Rock music structure, characterized by guitar-driven melodies, catchy Pop-based hooks and a commercial-friendly sound, while also displaying the influence of a wide range of styles that had been popularized by earlier British artists, such as Beat Music, Psychedelic Pop, Mod and Garage Rock from the 1960s (primary focal points being The Beatles, The Kinks and The Who); Glam Rock, Punk Rock and New Wave from the 1970s; and Jangle Pop from the 1980s. Other common musical characteristics include heavily-reverbed lead guitar (influenced by shoegaze, but designed to inject more of an 'anthemic' quality), breezy strummed acoustic guitar, simple chord sequences, accompanying string arrangements, bounding piano parts and jaunty, singalong melodies. The popularity of the Baggy / Madchester scenes in the late 1980s and early 1990s would serve as an important precursor to the genre, though Britpop tended to lack Alternative Dance rhythms. Additionally, in both lyrics and image, Britpop artists were emphatic in displaying elements of the life and culture of the British working and middle classes, a feature that notably limited its commercial appeal in the USA.

Bands like Oasis, Pulp, Blur, Supergrass, Suede, Dodgy and Cast were responsible for developing and popularizing Britpop during the mid-1990s. The genre would experience a steady commercial and critical decline from 1997 onward, largely related to the long-term poor reception of Oasis's third album, Be Here Now and Blur's decision to move away from their Britpop-oriented sound. The attention of the British press and audience thus began to focus on acts like Radiohead and The Verve, which had been less successful during Britpop's peak of popularity. Nevertheless, newer bands formed during the late 1990s and early 2000s such as Coldplay, Starsailor and Travis, were heavily influenced by the Britpop sound while having less British-oriented lyrical themes and an altogether softer, more introspective style.

Brutal Prog

First coined by Weasel Walter of the band The Flying Luttenbachers, Brutal Prog describes a diverse array of artists working within the Progressive Rock and Avant-Prog idioms. Brutal Prog combines the intensity and sonic dissonance of genres like Hardcore Punk, Noise Rock, No Wave, and Free Jazz with the complexity and adventurousness of Progressive Rock, Avant-Prog, and Math Rock.

Though the genre has its precursors (such as the highly influential group Ruins), its peak of popularity occurred in the early 2000s with bands like Upsilon Acrux, Hella, Zs, Ahleuchatistas, Yowie, and Grand Ulena.

Weasel Walter's own ugEXPLODE, as well as Skin Graft Records, Cuneiform Records and Tzadik, featured numerous Brutal Prog bands.

C86

(also known as C-86, Anorak Pop, Shambling)

C86 is a loose term covering an array of 1980s British Indie Pop groups rooted in Jangle Pop, with a more ramshackle sound that also pulled from Post-Punk and, in the latter half of the decade, Noise Pop. The term arose from the 1986 NME compilation cassette of the same name, C86, whose name in turn was a play on its year of release and the length labelling of blank cassettes - a nod to these groups' DIY attitude. This cassette featured artists like The Pastels, The Wedding Present, and Half Man Half Biscuit, who would go on to define the C86 sound (insofar as there was one) as the press began to use the term to refer to similar bands. Another term, "shambling", was coined by DJ John Peel in reference to the often simplistic lyrics and music of C86 artists, and their overlap with Twee Pop.

Though it was a fairly short period in the British indie scene, C86 would leave its mark as involved artists moved onto different sounds in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with The Soup Dragons and Primal Scream shifting their focus towards the new Baggy / Madchester sound and the connected Alternative Dance, and two members of McCarthy going on to found the experimental French-British group Stereolab.

Canterbury Scene/Sound

The Canterbury scene is a term used to describe a type of music that emerged from (but is not limited to) the city of Canterbury, Kent, in the last years of the 1960s. The musical links binding this scene's bands together are rather loose, and some consider that the term "Canterbury scene" only describes the counter-culture that emerged at this time in this area of England. Nevertheless, some recurrent patterns can easily be shown in the music. The Canterbury sound is strongly based in Jazz-Rock / Jazz Fusion, while blending the main elements of Psychedelic Rock. Despite their complex improvisations and avant-garde style, early acts on the scene music did not stray too far from including Pop hooks. Contrary to the (real or supposed) seriousness of the jazz-influenced Canterbury sound, lyrics are often light, comical, absurdist, incongruous or even meaningless.

The first shots were fired by a limited group of musicians that formed several bands with overlapping lineups. For example, Robert Wyatt played for Soft Machine and Matching Mole, Daevid Allen played for Gong and Soft Machine, Dave Sinclair played for Caravan, Hatfield and the North and Matching Mole, etc. Another example is The Wilde Flowers, a foundational act in which most of the members of Soft Machine and Caravan played at the beginning of their careers. At the turn of the decade the initially obscure scene became a musical influence even outside of the UK. Bands adopting Canterbury sound can be then found, for example, in France – where Gong was formed – with Moving Gelatine Plates or Travelling, in Belgium with Cos, in Netherlands with Supersister, in Italy with Picchio dal Pozzo and D.F.A., in the USA with Master Cylinder, and even in Japan with Mr. Sirius.

Christian Rock

Christian rock is Rock music incorporating Christian lyrics, with topics such as faith, metaphysics or biblical characters.

Comedy Rock

Comedy Rock is roughly defined as a mix of Rock or any of its sub-genres with elements of Comedy such as Satire and Musical Parody, as well as concepts of Novelty music. Frank Zappa, known for his regular usage of satirical references to certain aspects and trends of popular culture, is considered as one of the progenitors of the genre. While the style has developed a mostly cult following during its existence, some artists have achieved a moderate or sometimes even high level of mainstream popularity, including The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Flight of the Conchords, The Dead Milkmen, Tenacious D and Spinal Tap.

Country Rock

Country rock is an combination of contemporary Rock music with a more traditional American style of Country. The basic foundation of country rock is acoustic rhythm guitars with electric lead guitar work, pedal steel guitar, harmonica, snare-active drumming, close harmony vocals, falsetto notes and distinctive country rhythms.

The genre is partly a reaction to the Nashville Sound, which had been perceived as dated and slick and fell out of fashion with the young audience. The genre originated in the mid-1960s and was spearheaded by Gram Parsons, Buffalo Springfield and Bob Dylan.

The genre has some similarities to Folk Rock which many popular country rock musicians also played, including The Byrds and Neil Young. During the 1980s, country rock fused with Punk Rock to form Cowpunk.

Alt-Country is influenced by country rock, with artists such as Uncle Tupelo, Magnolia Electric Co. and The Jayhawks.

Deutschrock

Deutschrock is a German-language genre of Rock. It's not semantically identical with "German rock music" and describes a variety of rock music in Germany, identified by German lyrics, stories about everyday life in Germany, dealing with German identity (including prejudices, culture, but also the younger history of Germany) wrapped in upbeat songs, anthemic ballads and a strong focus on the personality of the lead singer who sets value on an easily recognizable voice. Other musical elements include brass and keyboard sections and pop-oriented songcraft. The term is often used to separate more conventional German rock from the experimental Krautrock genre.

The genre includes diverse artists such as the Proto-Punk-associated band Ton Steine Scherben, eccentric performers such as Nina Hagen, the Austrian Wolfgang Ambros, regional bands like BAP, Puhdys (from the GDR) and more Pop Rock-influenced acts like Peter Maffay and Pur who all have German rock tradition in common. Deutschrock artists are considered important for the development of German-language rock itself and influenced other German-language genres such as Neue Deutsche Welle.

In its heyday, the stereotypical Deutschrock musician embodied a dedicated 1970s Western German everyman image and often portrayed themselves as 'cool' and simple people. Through this mass appeal, some Deutschrock artists achieved iconic status in their homeland. Udo Lindenberg, Marius Müller-Westernhagen and Rio Reiser are considered an important part of German pop culture.

Dunedin Sound

Dunedin sound describes a unique offshoot of Indie Rock that emerged in Dunedin, New Zealand in the early 1980s and is generally thought to have tapered off in the mid-1990s. Though the bands that are classified under the Dunedin sound umbrella are disparate, there are distinctive features of the genre that permeate various artists' work. It is exemplified by murky, lo-fi production, obfuscated vocals, jangly guitar and free, unfocused drumming, developing in parallel and overlapping with Lo-Fi / Slacker Rock and Jangle Pop.

Dunedin sound is analogous to Detroit Techno in that elements of the sound mimic, or at least represent, the geographical place in which it was created. Here, the lo-fi and unpolished production recall Dunedin's sparse surroundings, its unassuming populace and the New Zealand culture's do-it-yourself attitude.

Major proponents of the genre include the bands 3Ds, The Chills, The Clean and Tall Dwarfs. It is commonly associated with the record label Flying Nun Records. Many indie musicians have cited the genre as an influence, notably Pavement, R.E.M. and Yo La Tengo.

Emo-Pop

Emo-pop is a style of music that had its origins in the Midwest Emo movement of the 1990s. Taking cues from artists such as The Get Up Kids, The Promise Ring, and Jimmy Eat World (Bleed American in particular), emo-pop took the sentimental crooning of Emo and crafted it into a sound with more mainstream appeal. As a result, the songs are more pop-oriented than those of earlier movements associated with emo, utilizing such elements as high production values, reliance on hooks, simple structures, and high-pitched melodies and singing. The simplistic and youthful nature of Pop Punk also played a huge role in crafting the sound of emo-pop. In addition, the genre distances itself from the hardcore-based Emocore movement of the 1980s, both musically and philosophically. Lyrics tend to be confessional in nature, often delving into topics such as heartbreak and love.

The genre achieved mainstream success in the early 2000s with the release of such albums as Tell All Your Friends and The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most. Since then, several artists associated with the genre have gone on to release platinum-certified albums, including Fall Out Boy and The All-American Rejects. Emo-pop reached its commercial peak in the mid-2000s, with many artists being prominently featured on MTV, but the genre has since declined in popularity. Other popular artists commonly associated with the genre include Saves the Day, Something Corporate, and Senses Fail.

Experimental Rock

(also known as Avant Rock)

Experimental Rock is a term applied to music which, while essentially falling under the category of rock music, abandons generic trappings of the genre and experiments with rhythm, dissonance, instrumentation, noise, electronics, studio manipulation and other factors not commonly associated with rock 'n roll. Some of the earliest artists which could fall under the term Experimental Rock include Monks, The Mothers of Invention, The Velvet Underground, Fifty Foot Hose, Nico, Captain Beefheart, Silver Apples and others.

See also the Genres/Definitions of Avant-Garde Music

Folk Rock

While in a broad sense Folk Rock can refer to any mix between Rock and Folk music, the term has been commonly applied to Rock-based music that has a strong influence from certain aspects of Folk, such as its acoustic-based instrumentation and relatively simple musical arrangements. As such, Folk Rock started developing as a genre during the 1960s, and can be considered as a derivation of the Contemporary Folk expressions in the United States.

The style was arguably pioneered by releases such as The Beau Brummels' "Laugh, Laugh" and Bob Dylan's "Mixed Up Confusion" singles. However, two events have commonly been described as catalysts for the development of the Folk Rock movement: the success of the Folk-inflicted, chiming sound of The Byrds and the decision by Dylan (considered a key figure of the American Contemporary Folk movement during the early 1960s) to include electric instrumentation and a backing band in most of his recordings and performances during the mid-60s. Other prominent North American Folk Rock musicians during this era include The Band, Buffalo Springfield, The Leaves, Crosby, Stills & Nash and Tim Buckley. Folk Rock was also influential to the sound of Psychedelic Rock bands like Love and Jefferson Airplane. In the United Kingdom, figures such as Van Morrison and Cat Stevens, associated with the Singer/Songwriter genre, would also become connected with the movement. A British Folk Rock style, which mixed Rock and elements of British Folk, would also emerge, represented by bands such as Fairport Convention, The Pentangle and Steeleye Span.

Folk Rock also shared close ties with Folk Pop; artists such as Simon & Garfunkel and Donovan have been considered part of both styles. The genre would also serve as precursor to similarly-minded movements that had their basis in both Rock (such as Country Rock, Roots Rock and Folk Punk) and Folk (exemplified by Psychedelic Folk). Folk Rock has also produced regional variations like Anatolian Rock, Celtic Rock and Nordic Folk Rock.

Freakbeat

Freakbeat is a genre of Rock music closely related to the Mod scene of the 1960s. Freakbeat bands took elements of British Rhythm & Blues, Beat Music and Pop Rock and mixed it with the studio effects of Psychedelia - fuzztones, flanging, chorus - to create a type of music often seen as a British relative of American Garage Rock and Psychedelic Rock.

While most of the groups who exemplified the sound of Freakbeat music were obscure, British artists, such as The Creation, The Sorrows and Les Fleur de Lys, it is also sometimes applied to acts who had greater success, such as The Who, as well as bands from other, usually European countries, such as Germany's The Boots and France's 5 Gentlemen.

Funk Rock

Funk rock is a fusion of Rock and Funk that emerged in the early 1970s. The genre is characterized by the emphasis of funk groove over a rock basis. It was pioneered by Jimi Hendrix's live album Band of Gypsys and Funkadelic's early work. Other prominent acts in the genre include Red Hot Chili Peppers, Prince and Primus.

With the increasing popularity of funk music in the 1970s, rock artists such as David Bowie started to add funk elements to their music. Funk also had a profound impact in Post-Punk and Dance-Punk.

In late 1980s and early 1990s, a Metal-oriented fusion of the genre, dubbed as Funk Metal, gained popularity within the Alternative Metal movement as well.

Garage Rock

After Rock & Roll saw a relative decline in popularity during the early 1960s, new acts that had this genre as their main template as well as influences such as Surf Rock, Rhythm & Blues, British Beat Music and early Pop Rock would emerge. Their musical approach was distinguished for being relatively raw and energetic, generally employing simple, fuzzbox-distorted guitar melodies and many times even shouting or screaming. Since many of these groups featured rather untrained musicians, aimed for an amateurish approach to their music and/or tended to practice in their garages, the style has been retroactively dubbed as Garage Rock. Notable exponents of the genre during the 60s include Paul Revere & The Raiders, The Kingsmen, The Trashmen, Los Saicos, The Sonics, The Standells, Them, The Knickerbockers, The Seeds, Monks and The Troggs, as well as Psychedelic Rock bands such as The 13th Floor Elevators and The Electric Prunes.

Garage Rock has been considered as one of the most important precursors and influences to the Punk Rock explosion of the second half of the 1970s and the genre is strongly related to the so-called Proto-Punk phenomenon that predicted the style. While Garage Rock would suffer a decline of popularity during the last years of the 60s, bands from the Detroit Rock scene, including The Stooges and MC5 would continue with the legacy of the genre, playing an even more hard-edged and aggressive style than earlier artists did. This would also contribute not only to the development of Punk, but also of Hard Rock. The 1972 release of the first Nuggets compilation has also been credited for a continued popular interest in the genre.

After the appearance of Punk Rock and its subsequent derivative genres, Garage Rock gained newer followers, to the extent that it paved the way for a second wave of the genre, now commonly know as a so-called Garage Rock Revival. This was an underground music movement related to bands such as DMZ, The Chesterfield Kings, The Fleshtones, Lyres and The Milkshakes that garnered a mostly cult following in its heyday. Furthermore, a Garage Punk fusion style, mixing aspects of both Garage and Punk Rock, has been developed since the late 1970s, sharing close ties with the newer Garage Rock sound.

In the early 2000s, several Alternative Rock-associated bands became commercially successful. Since the likes of The White Stripes, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Hives, The (International) Noise Conspiracy, The Von Bondies and The Libertines were influenced by certain aspects of Garage Rock and/or had a certain consistency with the original sound, the media eventually re-christened this new movement as a new "Garage Rock Revival". However, many purists have opposed to this use of the term, and while the popular usage of Garage Rock Revival to refer to these bands has stuck, the subject of whether most of these acts can be considered as part of the genre or not has been highly debatable.

Garage Rock Revival

Garage rock revival was a movement in the 1980s that recaptured the raucous spirit of 1960s garage rock. Key bands in this genre include DMZ, The Fuzztones and Lyres. The scene was never particularly commercially successful, but it gained a strong underground following.

Primarily led by The Strokes, The Hives, The Vines and The White Stripes, the early 2000s saw an explosion in Garage Rock influenced indie rock bands. These so-called 'garage rock revival' bands included other influences into the sound, such as Post-Punk, New Wave and Punk Rock. This revival was far more popular than the 80s revival and the original genre. This popularity helped the genre become a significant force in guitar music throughout the decade, with artists such as Kings of Leon, Arctic Monkeys and The Libertines all being influenced.

Glam Rock

(also known as Glitter Rock)

Glam Rock is a movement that appeared (and had its greatest degree of popularity) during the first half of the 1970s in the United Kingdom. Musically, it originally took elements of Rock & Roll and Blues Rock (something that would make it closely associated with Hard Rock and Proto-Punk) that were incorporated into catchy Pop Rock melodies (a feature which contrasts to the complexity of the nascent Progressive Rock movement, with which Glam Rock shared a Psychedelic Rock background inherited from the 60s), as well as featuring compositions with lush piano arrangements and instrumentation that fit with the antics of their performers. The music was usually accompanied with a strong sense of theatricality in lyrics, performances, delivery and fashion, an aspect that would also be explored by Art Rock artists that would come to be associated with the movement.

The 1970–72 string of releases by David Bowie and T. Rex are credited with inventing and establishing Glam Rock as a major force in the British music scene, which would pave the way for the success of similarly-minded artists such as Sweet, Slade, Roxy Music, Mott the Hoople, Gary Glitter and Mud. While the genre did not share the same level of attention in the United States, there were some American Glam Rock musicians that garnered recognition (mostly in the UK), such as Alice Cooper, New York Dolls, Sparks and Transformer-era Lou Reed.

By the arrival of Punk Rock, Glam Rock had already lost its commercial appeal, with some of its representative artists having made the transition into other forms of Rock music. The style would nevertheless remain influential for the development of other genres such as the Post-Punk movement of Gothic Rock, the New Romantic style, Glam Metal and the Japanese Visual kei.

Grebo

Grebo is a term coined by the music newspapers Melody Maker and NME and refers to a short-lived musical style and subculture centered around the English Midlands in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The musically diverse bands in this genre shared a cultural mindset and approach to music-making: distilling (or perhaps re-appropriating) everything around them into a generalized sound reflecting the British zeitgeist at a time of great societal change.

Much like the Baggy / Madchester groups in the north of England who mixed several seemingly disaparate musical elements with Alternative Dance, grebo musicians such as Pop Will Eat Itself, Jesus Jones and Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine (the latter two were actually from London, but identified with the grebo subculture) did the same, mixing genres such as Noise Pop, Hip Hop, Indie Pop, Industrial Rock, Plunderphonics, and Punk Rock. The resulting sound was a raw, futuristic, sample-heavy form of alternative dance with a grungy guitar sound that signaled the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the Information Age, a topic which appeared commonly in their lyrics.

Group Sounds

(also known as GS)

Group sounds was a wave of Japanese bands in the mid-to-late 1960s who began performing a style of Beat Music primarily in English, inspired by the growing popularity in Japan of foreign groups like The Beatles and The Ventures. The contemporaneous Eleki scene of Surf Rock in the country was also a large influence, with its pioneer, the 寺内タケシ [Takeshi Terauchi]-led Blue Jeans, being also among the first Japanese beat artists. The 1965 single "フリフリ" ("Furi furi") by The Spiders has been heralded as the true beginning of the movement, along with The Beatles' 1966 concerts at Budokan in Tokyo. The scene would spawn dozens of bands from 1967 to 1969, with some of the most popular including Blue Comets, The Tigers, and Ox. All-female groups would also crop up, the most prominent of which was Pinky Chicks.

Many of these groups at the tail end of the movement would bring in strong influences from Psychedelic Pop and Baroque Pop, inspired by their British and American counterparts. However, by the early 1970s, the movement had mostly dissipated and group sounds bands either disbanded or reconfigured into new groups playing new styles. The movement would be succeeded by rock groups like Folk Rock band はっぴいえんど [Happy End] (who, unlike most group sounds artists, performed primarily in the Japanese language) and Psychedelic Rock band Flower Travellin' Band, who had roots in the group sounds scene.

In the late 1980s, a resurgence of interest in the group sounds style led to a new wave of underground acts in Tokyo that were christened "neo-GS". This GS also stood for "garage sounds", as groups in this wave like ザ・ ファントムギフト [The Phantomgift], The Strikes, and The Collectors also brought in the more raucous attitude of Garage Rock. Many of these groups also accentuated the psychedelic rock aspects of the original wave and, like the similar Mod Revival, brought in some Punk Rock influence (particularly Garage Punk). Although the neo-GS movement was short-lived, fading out in the early 1990s, its influence would be felt on the Japanese indie scene in the following decade through garage groups like The 5.6.7.8's and The Pebbles. In addition, foundational Shibuya-kei artists like Original Love and Yasuharu Konishi of Pizzicato Five would get their starts with or assisting neo-GS groups The Red Curtain and Hippy Hippy Shakes, respectively.

Grunge

Grunge is a genre of Rock music which emerged from the mid-1980s Seattle scene, fusing elements of Heavy Metal, Hard Rock, Alternative Rock, and Punk Rock. Musically, grunge is generally characterized by loud, distorted, "sludgy" electric guitars, angsty, introspective lyrics, and raspy vocals.

In March of 1986, a defining compilation entitled Deep Six was released, which featured songs from notable grunge and grunge-associated acts such as Green River, Soundgarden, and Melvins. A similar compilation entitled Sub Pop 100 was released in July of the same year by Sub Pop Records, who would go on to release a number of albums by notable grunge acts.

In the early 1990s, grunge experienced a commercial breakthrough with Nirvana's Nevermind and Pearl Jam's Ten. The success of these bands, in addition to the success of Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Stone Temple Pilots, boosted the popularity of alternative rock and made grunge the most popular form of rock in the early-to-mid 1990s.

However, led by the suicide of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in 1994, grunge experienced a substantial decline in popularity during the mid-to-late 1990s. Nevertheless, grunge continued to have a notable impact on rock music, most notably with the emergence of Post-Grunge.

Hamburger Schule

(also known as Hamburg School)

The Hamburger Schule emerged in the late 1980s and reached its peak in the early 1990s. It combines traditions of the Neue Deutsche Welle based on Grunge with Pop-hooks and elements of Indie Rock and Punk Rock.

The term was first used by the German editor Thomas Groß in the journal "Taz" in 1992 and was intentionally named similar to the Frankfurter Schule because of the song contents, which had never been like that in Germany before. (The Frankfurter Schule was a group of German philosophers and academics based at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt). Lyrics are usually in German and are intellectually demanding, often with connections to topics of leftish social criticism. The commercial climax of the Hamburger Schule came in the mid 1990's with Hamburg-based bands like Die Sterne, Blumfeld and Tocotronic.

Hard Rock

Hard rock is a subgenre of Rock music rooted in 1960s Blues Rock and Psychedelic Rock (especially its Acid Rock subgenre) music. Hard rock music always features distorted guitars and virtually always uses power chords, and frequently includes blues rock-inspired song structures and chord progressions. Flashy guitar solos are common, and vocals are typically sung in an aggressive manner.

Hard rock was pioneered in the late 1960s by British artists such as The Who, Cream, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple, who were connected to the British Blues scene, as well as American artists such as Steppenwolf, Blue Cheer, and Grand Funk Railroad. The genre saw considerable commercial success in the 1970s, when artists including the USA’s Aerosmith and Scotland’s Nazareth imbued their heavy rock numbers with a more melodic sensibility and radio-ready production. The late 1970s saw the appearance of AOR, a commercialized derivative of hard rock. The music of AOR’s hit-makers such as Boston, Foreigner, and Styx was characterized by slick production, prolific balladeering, and Pop sensibility.

Heavy Metal is one of hard rock's most enduring and significant offshoots. In contrast to standard hard rock, heavy metal typically strays from Blues-based riffs and song structures, and is often darker in tone and composition. In the 1970s, heavy metal was championed by Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, who were joined in the following decade by NWOBHM artists Saxon and Iron Maiden.

Hard rock’s commercial peak came in the 1980s, when the subgenre known as Glam Metal emerged. Glam metal (sometimes derisively known as “hair metal”) bands like Quiet Riot, Poison, and later Whitesnake appropriated the showmanship and pop sensibility of bands like AC/DC, Van Halen and early Mötley Crüe to cross over to a pop audience that would not otherwise listen to hard rock. While glam metal lost popularity in the early 1990s, the genre is still mimicked to this day by bands such as Buckcherry.

Starting in the early 1990s, many rock listeners set aside traditional hard rock music in favor of Alternative Rock music and its subgenres. Glam metal’s extravagant guitar solos and showmanship became firmly unfashionable, though some bands continued to find commercial success playing hard rock, such as Pearl Jam and Foo Fighters.

Hard rock returned to chart prominence for the last time in the 2000s. In the new millennium, the genre found chart success with hit singles like Click Click Boom and Cold Hard Bitch. The Darkness and Queens of the Stone Age played 1970s-style hard rock for a nostalgic audience, while Audioslave, Shinedown, and Alter Bridge all found commercial success by fusing hard rock with Post-Grunge music.

Hard rock continues to be popular with rock listeners to this day, though the genre no longer finds its chart success of yesteryear. Bands such as Greta Van Fleet continue to play hard rock music for the genre’s niche.

Heartland Rock

A popular Singer/Songwriter-based form of Rock that borrows elements from Country Rock, Contemporary Folk, Folk Rock, Rhythm & Blues and mainstream-appealing 1960s Pop Rock elements (especially its often bombastic production, reminscent of Phil Spector). The instrumentation primarily stems from its Roots Rock-tradition and all sorts of Americana, its (often narrative) lyrical content deals with the problems and other life circumstances of the American "everyman" and blue-collar workers.

The genre originated during the early 1970s and is usually associated with the Midwest of the United States of America. The major artists include Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, Bob Seger and John Mellencamp who all gained considerable commercial success.

Indie Rock

Indie rock is a term used to describe a wide variety of acts. It is a highly debated term in that it originated by describing a band's label backing (independent as versus major), but now is used to describe any number of bands and their particular sounds regardless of which label carries them.

In respect to the sound, indie rock is related to earlier Alternative Rock in that there is often a disregard for traditionally mainstream qualities with bands expanding upon the core of Rock music by using non-standard instrumentation and vocals, unconventional song structures, vast differences in sound on the same record, or whatever else they fancy from not being limited to needing a radio-friendly appeal. Due to the incredible variety of acts, however, indie rock is an inherently vague term with few or no musical qualities indisputably linking the majority of bands together.

The term indie rock is derived from independent record labels that typically carry these acts, such as Matador, 4AD Records, and Factory Records.

Indorock

Indorock is a genre originating in the 1950s in the Netherlands. It was instrumental Rock & Roll, a fusion of Indonesian and Western music and predecessor of the Nederbeat. The band members were often Indo (Dutch-Indonesian) musicians, repatriated to the Netherlands. Some of the most important influential bands were The Tielman Brothers, The Javalins, The Crazy Rockers and The Blue Diamonds.

Jam Band

This style arose in the US of the late 1960s, with The Grateful Dead usually considered the touchstone. The primary outlet for a jam band is in the live performance setting, during which many of their songs include a lengthy instrumental passage with a large amount of improvisation (a 'jam'). Jam bands combine elements from diverse styles under the Rock umbrella, and often cross genres to incorporate Funk, Jazz, Country and/or Blues passages. A common practice for jam bands is to allow, and even encourage, the recording of their concerts for sharing among the community. Notable modern day jam bands include Phish, Gov't Mule, and Widespread Panic.

Jangle Pop

Jangle Pop is a Rock music sub-genre with roots in the Post-Punk explosion of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Influenced by 1960s Folk Rock artists like The Byrds as well as the Power Pop of groups like Big Star, Jangle Pop is characterized for merging the sound of chiming, "jangly" guitars and Pop-oriented melodies with a somewhat rawer musical approach and production values. The genre found its greatest critical and mainstream popularity in the mid-1980s, with bands like The Smiths, R.E.M. and Felt.

The Californian Paisley Underground movement, which emerged during the mid-1980s, is considered a derivation of this style, while also incorporating Psychedelic Rock influences.

Jazz-Rock

Jazz-Rock is a form of rock music strongly influenced by Jazz in terms of its structure and/or instrumentation. Its origins can be traced back to the late 1960s, where artists such as Soft Machine and Frank Zappa created extended, improvisational jams which favoured (but were not limited to) traditional rock instruments. Jazz-Rock can also refer to less experimental forms of rock incorporating the sound and style of jazz within a pop-song structure (Chicago, Steely Dan).

Jovem Guarda

Jovem guarda was a movement that influenced the Brazilian youth, from the music to the clothing. It was based on a TV show with the same name and, like the Beatlemania, helped to define the 1960s in Brazil. The sound is clearly influenced by Merseybeat and Rockabilly and most of the lyrics talk about relationships and aspects of that time, including often being associated with the 'twist' dance. The movement started to fade around 1969 and was almost over a few months after the TV show was dissolved.

Latin Rock

Latin rock is the fusion of Rock music, often Psychedelic Rock, with Latin American rhythms, especially Afro-Latin genres. Latin rock puts an emphasis on percussion, making the style quite danceable through psychedelic influences (mainly acid guitars and organ). It was developed during the early 1970s throughout the Americas after Santana exploded into the rock scene.

North American Latin rock was mainly played by the Californian Latino community (although New York also had a fair amount of bands) which incorporated some identifiable elements, related specially to Chicano culture. By the second half of the 1970's most bands had disbanded and others moved to more Latin Soul/Latin Funk sounds.

In Latin America the genre was much more sparse (as opposed to the California-concentrated scene in the North), with bands all over the continent. The main groups from Latin America were Black Sugar from Peru, Peace and Love from Mexico, Génesis from Colombia, Spiteri from Venezuela, Panal from Chile and Bwana from Nicaragua.

Lo-Fi / Slacker Rock

Lo-fi emerged during the advent of the American underground scene in the 1980s as a raw, noisy style of Indie Rock. Its name stems from its use of low-fidelity production and recording equipment, giving it an unclean and distinctly ramshackle sound.

Developing alongside early-to-mid 1980s Alternative Rock/Indie Pop genres Twee Pop, Jangle Pop, Noise Pop and the New Zealand Dunedin Sound, lo-fi artists take inspiration from the sparsely produced, DIY-ethics exhibited in these styles with a strong emphasis placed on technically inferior/sloppy-sounding recording and musicianship. This is either intentional with the idea to lend the music a certain rough charm or simply due to being performed by underground artists with a lack of facilities and/or equipment (typically making use of 4-track Tascam recorders), money and musical training.

After the early foundation set by acts such as Beat Happening and Tall Dwarfs in the 1980s, lo-fi reached its golden period in the 1990s, a decade with which the music is most readily identified. Preceded by Dinosaur Jr., the term 'slacker rock' arose to describe lo-fi bands such as Pavement, Guided by Voices, Sebadoh, Neutral Milk Hotel and Sparklehorse, referring to the laid back, seemingly blasé attitude displayed in the vocal delivery, guitarwork and/or lyrics. Lo-fi and slacker rock artists provided a disjointed contrast between raw, dissonant guitar lines and catchy melodies reminiscent of Power Pop and other general Pop Rock motifs (comparable to noise pop's marriage between waves of distortion and hook-friendly pop tunes).

Countless underground and unsigned bands continue to practice the style, whilst successful artists in the 2010s such as Courtney Barnett and Yuck have been influenced by and adopted elements of 1990s slacker rock into their sound.

Manila Sound

Manila sound is a style of Pop Rock that began in the early 1970s in Manila, Philippines. It is generally sung in Tagalog or Taglish (Tagalog with English mixed) and is Soft Rock-based with noticeable roots of Kundiman, a traditional type of Filipino folk love song.

Math Rock

Math rock is a genre that developed in the late 1980s to early 1990s via the influence of bands such as Slint, Drive Like Jehu and Shellac who added to the already established sounds of Noise Rock and Post-Hardcore a sense of rhythmic variety and complexity that was claimed by many critics to sound almost mathematical, eventually being coined "math rock". It became a large influence on some underground movements in the US and became a common instrumental style of certain genres including many bands of the Midwest Emo and Indie Rock scene.

By the dawn of the 21st century the sound of math rock was even more riff focused. Emphasised by polyrhythmic and winding yet consonant guitar riffs with the bass often used as a counter melody, vocals were usually used as a secondary instrument to the guitar or not at all. The genre took further influences from Jazz-Rock and Post-Rock often sounding both accessible and experimental with the dissonance of earlier math rock groups being far less dominant. Modern math rock groups include Don Caballero, Hella, 65daysofstatic and Tera Melos. Some modern groups have also acquired mainstream success whilst using math rock influences. These bands include Battles, Minus the Bear and Foals that further show math rock's gradual divergence from the underground.

Merseybeat

(also known as Mersey Sound)

Merseybeat is a light, highly melodic style of Beat Music popular in the UK during the early 1960s, named due to the abundance of bands from Liverpool beside the River Mersey. Merseybeat groups characteristically had simple guitar-dominated line-ups, with close vocal harmonies and catchy tunes. The resulting sound is chirpy, bouncy and simplistic, drawing influences from Rock & Roll, British Rhythm & Blues and late 1950s/early 1960s singles by acts such as Buddy Holly & The Crickets and Cliff Richard & The Shadows. The release of The Beatles' "Love Me Do" in October 1962 is an important focal point for the huge popularity of the sound between 1963 and 1965 in the UK (and the early first 'British Invasion' in the USA), with bands such as Gerry and The Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer With The Dakotas, The Searchers, The Merseybeats and The Fourmost achieving consistent success in the hit parade.

The most popular line-up comprised of lead, rhythm and bass guitars with drums. It is typified by the synchronization of the bass guitar (usually playing only the root and fifth notes of the chords) and the bass drum. Unlike in rock & roll, Merseybeat groups often incorporate two and three-part harmonies, and even those with a separate lead singer will often sing both verses and choruses in close harmony; the Liverpool accent also has a major role in the distinctive overall sound, although Merseybeat can theoretically be made outside of the area. Although there are instrumental breaks, the focus is on the presentation of the song rather than instrumental prowess.

Midwest Emo

(also known as Indie Emo)

Midwest emo emerged as a style of Emo in the mid-1990s. Its advent is usually credited to Sunny Day Real Estate, who combined elements of their native Seattle, WA's Indie Rock scene with the Post-Hardcore music propagated by Washington, D.C.-based Dischord Records. The music tends toward alternating loud and soft dynamics; off-key, strained or "whiny" vocals with little screaming; and "twinkly" arpeggiated guitar parts. Other prominent artists in this genre include Mineral, The Promise Ring and Texas Is the Reason. Artists such as The Get Up Kids and Jimmy Eat World, whose earlier output can be described as Midwest emo, helped to lay the foundation for what would become Emo-Pop.

The genre's name stems from its high prevalence in cities such as Chicago, Madison, Kansas City and Cleveland, but the style is in no way limited to the Midwest, as exemplified by Sunny Day Real Estate and Texas is the Reason.

Mod

Mod music was created during the decade of the 1960s as part of the eponymous youth subculture. The term "mod" was initially used in the late 1950s to describe young British people who were either musicians or fans of the period's popular Jazz styles, but then was acquired through its popular use on 1960s Europe for people who were following various trends, such as original tailor-made clothing, American top 40 music and motorized bikes (mostly scooters and motorcycles). Most people who were following the mod trends listened to genres such as Rock & Roll, Rhythm & Blues and Rockabilly. The raising popularity of the scene began to attract the attention of rock music fans, thus mod music started to generate in 1964 as a clash between both cultures.

The style of most music was either British Rhythm & Blues, Beat Music, Garage Rock, Pop or Freakbeat oriented in nature, with the lyrics and fashion styles being the most central point of the overall musical scene. Bands like The Who, Small Faces and The Rolling Stones were the major exponents of the style, and other chart-ranking rock bands from the country including The Kinks became to start making songs related to the culture as well. Starting during the verge of the late 1960s, the mod scene was starting to draw elements from the American hippie movement and Psychedelic Rock.

The culture then started to be less apparent due to England's rising commercialization and spread of the hippie culture, that led mod bands to change their styles of music, a notorious example being the case of The Who, which then became famous exponents of British Hard Rock. As a result, the Mod subculture was mostly popular in the United Kingdom and western/northern Europe, but also in parts of the USA as well. In the late 1970s a revival of the subculture along with its musical style, being called as Mod Revival, was brought thanks to bands like The Jam, who were influenced by the more contemporary sounds of New Wave, Punk Rock and Pub Rock. Its mainstream popularity was short and lasted until the 1980s, but it kept on staying at a low level of popularity even in current times.

Mod Revival

Like the original Mod fashion trend in the 1960s, mod revival was more about style than about music. Nonetheless, a distinct mod revival musical genre did exist as part of the late 1970s and early 1980s revival of the fashion trend. Like its predecessor, it took cues from Rhythm & Blues in terms of a strong beat and a stripped down rhythm, though both mod and mod revival are clearly more closely tied to British Rock than American R&B.

Unlike its predecessor, mod revival has a considerable Punk Rock influence and has some overlap with the concurrent Pub Rock and 2 Tone genres, all of which came to prominence in the early days of New Wave in the UK, with less crossover success in the US.

The Jam cast a long shadow over every other mod revival band. The Prisoners and The Times are two of the notable early 1980s mod revival bands, though neither came anywhere near the popular or critical success of The Jam.

Nederbeat

Nederbeat was the Dutch answer to the UK Beat Music boom of the 1960s. The scene adopted its own distinct sound and resulted in world-wide hits for Shocking Blue, George Baker Selection and Golden Earrings.

Neo-Prog

Neo-Prog is a synthesiser-driven style of Progressive Rock that emerged in the early 1980s in the United Kingdom. Fish-era Marillion and IQ are considered to be the defining bands of the genre.

Neo-prog took off in 1983 with bands taking strong influence from the Symphonic Prog sounds of Genesis, Yes and Camel, but replacing the Hammond organ and Mellotron-heavy sounds of symphonic prog with a focus on synthesisers and keyboards. The synthesisers are often the driving force in neo-prog, with the guitar regularly playing high-pitched and atmospheric lines as opposed to the riff-driven tendency of symphonic prog. Genesis' Wind & Wuthering is an influence for the guitars, and is considered by some to be the first neo-prog record. Neo-prog bands also have more Pop-oriented melodies than other forms of progressive rock, while still keeping the complex instrumentation. This saw some significant radio play and fame for some bands, with Marillion charting 11 top 40 singles during the time Fish was their vocalist.

Although the original scene died in the late '80s with Fish leaving Marillion and Peter Nicholls leaving IQ, the genre continued an underground following with bands like Pendragon, Arena and Galahad at the forefront, and creating some smaller scenes, like the '90s Polish scene of Abraxas, Collage and Quidam. Although Marillion moved further away from neo-prog, IQ continued to make albums in the style, and gained a further cult following after Peter Nicholls returned to the band.

Noise Pop

Noise pop is a style of Alternative Rock that arose in the mid-1980s as some British Jangle Pop, Twee Pop, and Post-Punk groups started to use more distortion. An early landmark album for the genre was The Jesus and Mary Chain's 1985 album Psychocandy, defining the style's blend of poppier Rock songwriting and melodies with the crisp, noisy timbres of overdriven guitars and occasional use of guitar feedback. Noise pop's combination of sunny, simple, often Girl Group-esque melodies (hence the 'pop') with waves of distortion sets it apart from the rawer, less melodic, often haphazard sounds of Noise Rock. The vocals in noise pop also tend to be hazier, dreamier and altogether more melodic and harmonic than in noise rock.

The sound would be one influence on the rise of Shoegaze a few years later, with pioneering groups like My Bloody Valentine blending the distortion of noise pop with the sleepy, reverb-drenched elements of Dream Pop. American groups like The Flaming Lips (and Dinosaur Jr. who dabbled in the genre) would incorporate some of the more raucous, experimental elements of noise rock into their take on the style, even as they kept within the more accessible bounds of noise pop.

In the 1990s, the genre would have a significant influence on and overlap with Indie Rock and particularly the ramshackle, distorted sound of Lo-Fi / Slacker Rock, embodied by groups like Pavement and Yo La Tengo. In the 2000s and beyond, revivals of Garage Rock, shoegaze and twee pop saw acts such as The Raveonettes, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Best Coast release their own, often self-consciously retro, takes on the noise pop sound.

Noise Rock

Noise rock is a genre that encompasses a wide range of bands and artists that favor dissonance, wild feedback, and extreme distortion in the context of Rock music. Unlike Noise, noise rock usually retains the song structures and coherence of conventional rock music.

While the style was predicted in the late 1960s and early 1970s by bands such as the The Velvet Underground, Monks, The Stooges and Les Rallizes dénudés, noise rock came to its own in the 1980s, following the advent of Punk Rock and Post-Punk. The No Wave movement was another important early influence. Pioneering bands include Sonic Youth, The Birthday Party, The Butthole Surfers, Flipper and Swans.

Paisley Underground

Paisley underground was a phenomenon centered in the mid-1980s, which saw a small group of Los Angeles based bands turn to the sounds of the 1960s filtered through more modern musical styles. With Psychedelia as its base, degrees of Jangle Pop and Folk Rock were used by originators such as The Dream Syndicate, Game Theory and Rain Parade to create a short-lived but critically popular bridge between psychedelia and the more lasting alternative pop styles of today.

Piano Rock

Piano Rock is a style of rock music that is based around the piano, as opposed to most traditional rock music, which is based around the guitar. In fact some artists, such as Keane, eschew guitars completely.

Piano Rock has been a popular style since the 1970s, beginning with artists such as Elton John and Billy Joel, and it has continued to be so to this day, with the likes of Keane, Ben Folds, and Tori Amos.

Pop Rock

Pop rock is a fusion genre used to describe standard verse-chorus Pop music that can also be categorized under Rock for its use of guitars, drums, and propulsive rhythms. The genre manifested at the tail end of the 1950s as a more radio-friendly alternative to Rock & Roll and R&B, consisting mainly of white performers such as Roy Orbison and Del Shannon. Over the next decade, pop and rock continued to mix together and create new subgenres like Vocal Surf and Beat Music. In the 1970s, pop rock became both rougher (Power Pop) and smoother (Soft Rock); in the 1980s–90s, it fused with some Alternative Rock to make Jangle Pop and Britpop. Today, pop rock remains an active, wide-ranging genre with much crossover between other pop styles.

Post-Grunge

Post-grunge is a derivative of Grunge that emerged in the mid-1990s with bands such as Live, Bush, and Foo Fighters. Although it adopted the vocal style, angsty lyrics, and "dirty" guitar sound of grunge, the songwriting placed more emphasis on pop hooks and conventional song structures. It became one of the leading popular music genres from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, particularly following the death of Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain in 1994. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the genre reached its peak in popularity with the rise of such bands as Creed and Nickelback.

Post-Punk Revival

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, indie rock bands started to incorporate musical and other aesthetical elements (such as fashion and mood) of Post-Punk into their appearance and sound. Usually The Strokes are credited as the pivotal point between the original post-punk styles (Talking Heads, Gang of Four, Joy Division and Television are frequently cited influences) and the post-punk revival. The genre is often set in relation to Garage Rock Revival as they originated around the same time in New York City.

The relatively coherent sound of the post-punk revival picks up characteristic elements from post-punk bands: emphasis on melodic basslines, a dominant 'live' drum sound, occasional use of synthesizers and often elaborated, interlocking guitar work. It differs from post-punk as the acts usually make use of clean, modern production instead of maintaining the do-it-yourself ethics of post-punk and experimental tendencies are virtually nonexistent, which separates the revival from original post-punk. The revival added the gloomier sound of post-punk to pop-oriented indie rock. Due to the pop elements and influences from New Wave as well, the Post-Punk revival is occasionally labeled New Wave revival.

Unlike original post-punk, the revival drew considerable commercial appeal, seen in the success of bands such as Interpol, Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party and more new-wave influenced bands such as The Killers. After reaching a commercial peak around 2005, the revival notably flattened and merged into indie rock and mainstream rock music.

Post-Rock

Post-rock is a term popularized by music critic Simon Reynolds. In Reynolds' words, it refers to "using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbre and textures rather than riffs and power chords."

A succinct description of the genre's sound is difficult because of the diverse influences bands in the post-rock scene employ, but one can generally say that it derives primarily from a mix of Ambient, Space Rock, Experimental Rock, Krautrock, and styles on the "wall-of-sound" end of the Alternative Rock spectrum, such as Shoegaze. Some post-rock bands also dabble in Math Rock, Tape Music, Minimalism, and various forms of Jazz, but application of these styles is by no means uniform.

Power Pop

Power pop is a heavier style of Pop Rock that combines strong pop melodies with loud power chords. It is characterized by prominent electric guitars, clear vocals, crisp harmonies, economical arrangements, and an energetic performance. Usually people refer to three different waves of power pop. The first one is from the 1970s and features bands such as Badfinger, Raspberries, Cheap Trick, and Big Star. The second originates from the late 1970s and early 1980s with bands such as The Knack, The Beat and The Romantics. The third one is from the 1990s, which also has some Alternative Rock influences and includes artists such as Matthew Sweet, Weezer, The Posies, and Teenage Fanclub.

The roots of power pop can be traced back to 1967 when the term was coined by The Who's Pete Townshend in reference to their single "Pictures of Lily" and the earlier guitar-driven records of The Beach Boys ("Fun, Fun, Fun / Why Do Fools Fall in Love"). At the same time, The Beatles and The Byrds left their own indelible marks on the genre with songs like "Paperback Writer" and "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better". These bands are generally considered the genre's direct antecedents, with most power pop artists basing their sound on a cross between all four.

In 1970, Badfinger recorded several hit singles that established a template for many power pop groups to follow. By 1972, the genre had received its jumpstart, partly due to the release of Raspberries' Raspberries, Big Star's #1 Record, and Todd Rundgren's Something / Anything. During its emergence, the Raspberries served as a model for many power pop groups, though the genre evolved throughout the decade as it merged with other trends such as Glam Rock, Punk Rock, and New Wave.

The excessive play of the Knack's highly-successful 1979 single "My Sharona" provoked a backlash to power pop, effectively killing the genre's radio presence. During the '80s, power pop became less apparent in the mainstream, but continued to flourish in underground circuits, where it eventually led to the genre's rebirth in the '90s. Bands in this post-revival period often based their sound on a blend between traditional power pop (specifically the style of Big Star) and the new alternative rock. Some, like Jellyfish and Wondermints, continued to emphasize a distinct '60s influence.

Progressive Rock

(also known as Prog)

Progressive rock is a genre that formed primarily in the United Kingdom during the late 1960s. It took Psychedelic Rock's efforts to experiment with elements not commonly associated with Rock and put them center stage while removing any approaches to mind-expansion and hallucinogenic imagery, instead solely focusing on musical innovation and pushing rock music to its limits, fusing genres such as Jazz, Western Classical Music, Folk, Regional Music, and others.

Progressive rock's primary goal was to move rock further away from its Blues and Country origins. This was done largely by classically-trained musicians who became determined to take the rock template and make as unique a sound as possible. Mainstream song structures were eschewed, instead often emulating the structures of classical and jazz music. Songs incorporated exploration of melodies and rhythms, periods of usually rigidly composed instrumentals displaying technical virtuosity, and were often transformative in nature with different sections. Tempo and time signature changes were common, with encouragement of complex time signatures and multiple time signatures could be played concurrently. There was a growing emphasis with timbre to create differing and bombastic moods, and instruments not common to rock were used too, including orchestral, jazz, and early electronic instruments such as the mellotron, hammond organ, and moog synthesizer, these instruments would often compete with the guitar for dominant role or replace it entirely. Themes dealt with fantasy, history, religion, abstract concepts, and science fiction.

Procol Harum, The Moody Blues, and The Nice were among the first rock artists to employ classical-derived instrumentation, inspired by Baroque Pop artists including The Beach Boys, The Beatles, and Richard Harris' single "Mac Arthur Park". Pink Floyd and Soft Machine were direct descendants of the psychedelic rock scene that had jazz-influenced structures that meandered and included sound manipulation. In this miasma of early progressive rock artists which was as diverse as Jethro Tull, Colosseum, and High Tide, two of the most influential albums of the progressive rock canon were created, In the Court of the Crimson King and Uncle Meat which both contributed greatly to prog's worldwide expansion.

By the early 1970s prog had developed into many different scenes and styles. The largest division was Symphonic Prog, where classical emulation in compositional style was most overt, which includes the most well-known groups, including Yes, Genesis, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Another style was the Canterbury Scene, a loosely held together genre which was strongly rooted in Jazz-Rock and Jazz Fusion and emphasized experimentation and surrealism. This group included Caravan and Space Rock pioneers Gong. Another style incorporated Hard Rock tendencies with the complexity of prog, creating a more extreme sound including Rush, Atomic Rooster, Uriah Heep, and Wishbone Ash that would go on to influence Metal's evolution. Running parallel to all these groups were a number of groups who took influence from any number of disparate genres and had no consistent style, including King Crimson, Van der Graaf Generator, and Gentle Giant.

On the other side of the prog spectrum were groups who were just as rooted in Experimental Rock, and these include the radical Krautrock, or Kosmische Musik and Avant-Prog, both diverse and wide-ranging genres who tended to take influence from avant-garde genres such as Modern Classical and Avant-Garde Jazz. Both these genres are similar in that groups under these monikers often had little in common and are branched together only from following certain tendencies. The groups under krautrock range from the Progressive Electronic-inspired sounds of Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, to the psychedelic Amon Düül II, to the highly experimental Can and Faust. Avant-prog groups include the Rock in Opposition movement and Zeuhl, pioneered by Magma, along with many other disparate artists ranging from Frank Zappa to Area.

Progressive rock with its high culture attitudes always generated negative reactions and through the 1970s reactionary genres like Roots Rock and Pub Rock existed as a way for people to avoid the attitude. The genre really started to attract large flak from critics by the mid-1970s, considering it pretentious, pompous, and elitist, and often being given the name "dinosaur rock". This criticism only increased with the explosion of the Punk Rock scene, and this largely spelled the end for prog's golden era. Many of the groups either broke up or switched to a more pop-infused sound to try and stay relevant, this choice often being ill-received by strong followers of prog. With the exception of New Wave-inspired Neo-Prog, prog went mostly underground in the 1980s and has largely stayed that way to this day.

All of progressive rock's styles helped shape many other forms of rock and music overall. A style that existed parallel to prog since its existence was Art Rock, which shared prog's ideas to push rock to its limits, although art rock went about the challenge differently, instead often incorporating avant-garde genres into pop-influenced formats. Many groups existed in both fields including Roxy Music and Supertramp. Prog's large emphasis on musical virtuosity and technicality was supremely influential to Heavy Metal and the two styles are intrinsically connected to one another, with even the early artists like Black Sabbath, Budgie, and early Judas Priest displaying prog tendencies. In the 1980s, groups like Iron Maiden and Mercyful Fate with their twin guitar interplay took the technicality up to eleven and wrote complex songs with classical-inspired structures. These groups would be important to Thrash Metal and Death Metal who were most interested in writing challenging and demanding song structures, and Progressive Metal which was the most overt in converting progressive rock's template into metal, and groups like Opeth straddled the lines of both. Krautrock and avant-prog groups were important in the development of Punk, most clearly in Post-Punk where angular, repetitive tempos and Electronic experimentation were common, and concurrently Industrial music, giving rise to a miasma of late '70s groups, including Public Image Ltd, Pere Ubu, and This Heat. Tangential to the punk scene was the quirky Zolo, which describes a number of bands connected to both prog and new wave. The genre of Math Rock which placed emphasis on irregular time-signatures and odd, geometric songwriting has clear ties to progressive rock and would contribute to the sub-genre of Brutal Prog. Prog's use of unusual for rock timbres would be influential to Post-Rock which in itself is an incredibly diverse genre taking influence from many disparate places.

Proto-Punk

Proto-punk is a fairly vague term used to describe music that either influenced or resembled Punk Rock before the commercial breakthrough of punk in 1976. Common characteristics include provocative attitude, use of noise or abrasiveness, wild, untamed energy and stripped-down simplicity.

Sometimes the line between proto-punk and punk rock is blurred – even artists who belonged to the CBGB punk scene of the early-to-mid 1970s have been labelled proto-punk simply because they predate the commercial breakthrough of Sex Pistols.

Pub Rock

Pub rock is a movement and style of Rock music that developed in the United Kingdom in the early-to-mid-1970s mainly as a reaction to the perceived excess and musical pretension of the Progressive Rock and Glam Rock genres. It emphasizes a stripped-down, back-to-basics style of guitar rock that aimed to bring rock 'n' roll away from stadium venues and back to the pubs and clubs of its early years.

Eggs Over Easy and Brinsley Schwarz were precursors to the pub rock scene and paved the way for the genre musically, leading to the development of artists such as Dr. Feelgood, Graham Parker, and Eddie and the Hot Rods. Pub rock shared close ties with Power Pop, and later on, New Wave, with Ian Dury and Nick Lowe being key artists in this area. Another style, also called pub rock, was developed contemporaneously in Australia, pioneered by bands like Aztecs and Buffalo, but it is stylistically distinct and unrelated to English pub rock. English pub rock was short-lived, but proved to be a catalyst for the English Punk Rock movement in the latter part of the decade. The influence of pub rock still reverberates today in bands like The Hold Steady.

Punk Rock

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Rap Rock

Rap Rock is the fusion of Hip Hop and Rock, often featuring the former’s rhythmic vocal delivery and the latter’s heavy, distorted instrumentation. The genre increased in popularity during the late 1980s, with Run-D.M.C.'s collaboration with Aerosmith on “Walk This Way” proving particularly successful, though it was with the rise of Nu Metal in the 1990s that Rap Rock’s fanbase peaked. This style typically combined certain styles of Alternative Rock with Hip Hop beats, as well as the occasional use of Turntablism, as seen in the music of Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park. Hip Hop’s flirtation with Rock music precedes the common usage of this term, however, with Beastie Boys coming from a Punk Rock background and Public Enemy sampling from Heavy Metal, though both remained more deeply rooted in straightforward Hip Hop than those labelled Rap Rock.

Red Dirt

Hailing from Oklahoma and Texas, Red Dirt music draws principally from Outlaw Country and Southern Rock. That is to say - it typically features bluesy riffs, along with progressive sensibilities drawn from outlaw country in terms of overall structure. Cross Canadian Ragweed is representative of the sub-genre.

Rock & Roll

(also known as Rock 'n' Roll)

Rock & roll is a style of music developed in the US and popularized in the 1950s by artists such as Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bill Haley and His Comets, and Elvis Presley.

When television rose in popularity in the 1940s and 1950s, regional radio stations began broadcasting music directed at more niche audiences, including Rhythm & Blues records (the most influential of which was Alan Freed's broadcasts for WJW Cleveland). As this style was becoming more accessible, the invention of the transistor made radios portable, allowing people to tune in anywhere from their car to the privacy of their bedroom. These factors allowed the developing post-WWII youth culture to listen to and identify with the music of artists such as B.B. King and Ruth Brown. These youths would provide the mass market and a number of key musicians for rock & roll.

Featuring prominent use of 12-bar blues and simple phrase structures, rock & roll incorporates elements of Traditional Pop, Traditional Country, Gospel, and rhythm & blues. The music has a strong sense of rhythm with heavy accented offbeats (as popularized by Earl Palmer on "The Fat Man") and relies on electrically amplified instrumentation. When all these elements are combined, the energetic performances of rhythm & blues meet the pop sensibility of Doo-Wop and Tin Pan Alley songwriting to produce catchy, danceable tunes.

An important stylistic distinction worth making is that of Rockabilly in the development of rock & roll. Rockabilly tends to feature more acoustic instrumentation and lighter drum sections, occasionally removing drums completely. Vocals are also influenced more by the Country Yodeling of Jimmie Rodgers. This contrasts with the New Orleans R&B heavy music of artists such as Lloyd Price and Fats Domino, whose respective hits "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" and "Ain't That a Shame" instead follow the Jump-Blues of Louis Jordan and Piano Blues of Bessie Smith to create piano driven rock & roll that relies heavily on drums and soloing.

By the end of the decade, a chain of events spelled the end for rock & roll. In 1957, Little Richard made an abrupt decision following a near-life threatening plane ride to stop performing secular music and study Theology. Elvis Presley was drafted into military service the next year, leaving the prolific singer unable to work for three years. The two final nails in rock & roll's coffin began in 1959 when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and Jiles Perry Richardson died in a plane crash on February 3rd, a date that's known as 'the Day the Music Died.' That same year, Alan Freed became the target of payola investigations that ruined his reputation as a disc jockey and cost him his job at a flagship radio station.

The rapid succession of these events combined with the aging rock & roll fanbase caused a permanent decline in popularity. In the early 1960s, the maturing rock & rollers began to see the music of their youth as immature, and moved onto the folk revival sound of The Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary; Surf Rock and Soul would rise and temporarily take the spotlight as the music of the youth. When the British Invasion came to America in 1963, bands such as The Beatles brought some renewed interest in rock & roll with Beat Music hits like "Twist & Shout". However, this resurgence was short lived, subsiding soon after with the rise of Garage Rock and Psychedelic Rock.

Rockabilly

Rockabilly started in the mid-50s at the dawn of Rock & Roll with the influential recordings Elvis Presley made for Sun Records. Originally it was Country musicians playing their own version of uptempo Rhythm & Blues music, resulting in this new style. It usually features driving guitars, frantic vocals and slap-back echo in the bass. Rockabilly still has a big following with new artists emerging every year.

Rock Opera

A hybrid of rock and, sometimes, musical theatre stylings with heavily rock-tinged songs combining to tell a coherent story. When staged, they are typically through-sung like an opera or contain very little dialogue.

Rock urbano español

Rock urbano español, locally known simply as "rock urbano", is a scene originating in Spain from the mid to late 1970s when the Spanish language gained dominance in the local rock scene and, moreso, the end of the Francoist dictatorship which now allowed previously censored social issues including protest, marginal living and taboo lyrics being covered.

Back in the 1960s, there was a general disagreement among Spanish rock acts with the language of performance, which commonly alternated between English and Spanish lyrics. Most of the underground Spanish rock bands from the early 1970s performed mainly in English (aside from some notable regional scenes that opted for other Iberian languages such as Catalan, Basque or Galician). This fact led to most of the Psychedelic Rock bands and some of the earliest Hard Rock references of the country to remain as English-language acts. Some of the Spanish-language hard rock pioneers failed in gaining popularity while others would gradually switch from English to Spanish throughout the decade.

The earliest rock urbano acts were formed at the eve of the end of the country dictatorship (and during the transition to democracy) being mostly Progressive Rock and/or hard rock efforts such as Asfalto, Ñu, Topo, Coz or Leño. Along with other scenes that preferred using Spanish as happened with Andalusian Rock, they all were referred as "El rollo"; specially the releases published by Chapa Discos at late 1970s (that were really common to rock urbano).

However the rock urbano scene declined as soon as the 1980s began when many New Wave, Post-Punk and other Pop Rock-based efforts, which rose from the local movement known as "La movida madrileña", hit the mainstream. Rock urbano got overshadowed by the Heavy Metal scene as well. On the other hand, the Punk Rock scene, despite having a few early local pioneers in the late 1970s, peaked in popularity throughout the 1980s. Some rock urbano artists did manage to subsist by adding punk influences to their music; Barricada, Los Suaves and Rosendo being the most well-known artists of this era.

The 1990s saw a revival of the scene with prominent acts like Platero y Tú, Reincidentes or Extremoduro. Adding poetic elements to the lyrics (oftenly in contrast with marginal issues) was the main influence of the decade. The latter punkish and poetic influences have been really attached to the rock urbano bands of the 21st century.

Roots Rock

Roots rock is Rock music that consciously and predominantly incorporates elements of its musical predecessors and original (especially American) roots such as Country, Blues, Rhythm & Blues, Rock & Roll and American Folk Music, but also may include other American traditions such as the latin-tinged Tex-Mex or Cajun Music. It is closely related to other roots-influenced genres such as Country Rock, Southern Rock and the blues-laden Swamp Rock. As an approach blending different traditionally American music idioms with rock music, roots rock also has large overlaps with genres like Alt-Country and Americana.

Although the term itself grew out of a back-to-basics approach to solid rock in the mid-1980s, it is currently used to encompass much earlier bands and movements with similar aims. The most prominent acts of the first phase in the late 1960s were the Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Band, taking cues from Bob Dylan and even influencing British acts like the Rolling Stones on their late 1960s albums. Alongside southern rock and the less traditionalist Heartland Rock, roots rock continued to be influential in the 1970s with Link Wray, Little Feat and Ry Cooder as prominent acts. It faded from public interest somewhat in the late 1970s. The sound of the phase that established the term in the 1980s can be seen as a grittier, more conservative counterweight to the sonically more radical Heavy Metal or the more modernly electronic New Wave. Among the main artists were John Hiatt and Los Lobos. While in the current use Ry Cooder has come to epitomize the historically conscious, eclecticist nature of roots rock with his records of the early 1970s, the term also continues to be used for artists with similar preserving approaches to American music traditions and rock music – an ongoing endeavour that can, for instance, be observed in Bob Dylan’s, Levon Helm’s and some of Neil Young’s albums of the 2000s and 2010s.

Slowcore

(also known as Sadcore)

Slowcore is generally characterized by downbeat melodies, slower tempos and minimalist arrangements. With its roots in the late 1980s, it crystallized as a distinct genre in the early and mid 1990s under the helm of critically acclaimed groups such as Galaxie 500, Codeine, and Red House Painters.

One of the figureheads of the genre, Low, have claimed that their quiet and minimal style came about in part as a rebellion against the loud and aggressive Alternative Rock and Grunge sounds popular in the early 1990s. The band is said to have reacted to noisy and inattentive audiences by turning the volume down.

The genre was arguably shaped by a variety of musical influences that made it distinct from Indie Rock, including the unique Folk Rock tendencies of American Music Club (often considered the earliest example of Slowcore); the minimal, gloomy characteristics of Contemporary Folk luminaries such as Leonard Cohen; the slow, skeletal sounds of Post-Punk found on the likes of The Cure's Faith and Pornography albums; and the shimmering atmospheres and melodies of Dream Pop. In turn, slowcore's influence can be seen in the development of Post-Rock.

It is worth mentioning that slowcore is often considered to be synonymous with the term "sadcore". Although sadcore places a larger emphasis on lyrical content when compared to slowcore (as well as the term being deemed by some to be a loose definition), both terms are used to describe slow-paced styles of Indie Rock that conjure up sombre atmospheres and melancholic imagery.

Soft Rock

Soft rock is a style of light, melodic, radio-friendly Rock music which gained huge commercial success in the 1970s. It employs clean, highly polished production values and arrangements, often led by piano and/or acoustic guitar, aided by bouncy, harmonious bass guitar and with smooth, restrained use of electric guitar. Artists make frequent use of catchy, high-pitched harmonies, simple verse-chorus structures and sentimental lyrics, whilst additional layers of gentle synths and orchestration are not uncommon.

The style took cues from 1960s Folk Pop, Country Rock and Baroque Pop, with artists such as Carole King, Bread and James Taylor initially pioneering the sound. It remained hugely popular throughout the 1970s and early 1980s; Elton John, Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac, Chicago, Christopher Cross, America and Air Supply exemplified soft rock's abundance in the US charts during this period. The sound still retains a moderate degree of popularity, with singer/songwriters such as James Blunt and Jack Johnson adopting the style, whilst the influence is evident in UK bands The Feeling, Coldplay and Keane.

Southern Rock

Southern Rock emerged in the 1960s and early 1970s in the southern states of the USA. The music is primarily influenced by Blues Rock, Hard Rock and Rock & Roll, while also borrowing elements of Country and Folk music. Important Southern Rock artists include The Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Little Feat.

Stereo

Stereo is a Burmese Pop Rock genre which emerged in the mid-1960s. It was named "stereo" after the dual-track tape recorder on which the genre was recorded beginning in 1971, being also a knowing reference to the earlier Mono genre promoted by Burmese state radio. Stereo music began being played by cover bands that covered Anglo-American pop rock hits in Burmese language for student audiences in the capital city of Yangon, a practice known as copy thachin which still persists today. Around 1973, stereo music was fully established as the young upstart Sai Htee Saing and his band The Wild Ones committed to composing their own Burmese pop rock without falling back on covering foreign hits.

The sound of stereo music is rather unified by virtue of the limited equipment in offer to musicians at the time and place, and the fact that all the acts recorded at the same recording studio in Yangon. Stereo songs share a uniform aesthetic of Psychedelia-tinged, mellow textures of low-fidelity guitars and bittersweet melodies.

Sai Htee Saing was soon followed by many peers who often released their own stereo tapes independently, and stereo songs quickly eclipsed the earlier mono genre in popularity through the second half of the 20th century.

Sufi Rock

Sufi rock combines common Sufi instruments such as dhol, tabla, and sitar with the traditional rock band format built around electric and bass guitars and drums. With lyrics and imagery inspired by traditional Sufi poets, Sufi rock bands frequently employ Hindustani Classical Music vocal styles such as Qawwali and Khyal. Sufi rock is primarily sung in the languages of the subcontinent, including Urdu, Punjabi, and Sindhi.

The genre emerged in the early 1990s in Pakistan and, buoyed by the rapid success of pioneers Junoon, became one of the foremost genres in Pakistani popular music. Bands like Fuzön and Mekaal Hasan Band carried its popularity into the new millennium both locally and abroad. The genre remains a mainstay in South Asian pop culture, influencing both popular Urdu Pop Rock artists as well as Bollywood soundtracks.

Surf Rock

Surf music evolved from late 1950s instrumental Rock & Roll in the USA, particularly associated with the surfing culture in Southern California. Artists such as Duane Eddy, Link Wray and UK group The Shadows combined catchy rock & roll rhythms with distinctive 'twangy' lead guitar, laying the early blueprints for Surf Rock. This was soon confirmed by Dick Dale, dubbed 'The King of Surf Guitar', with singles such as "Let's Go Trippin'" and "Miserlou" sparking the genre's explosion. A string of surf-themed hits adopting the sound followed in the early 1960s, including The Surfaris' "Wipeout" and The Lively Ones's "Surf Rider".

The vast majority of this initial style of surf music consisted of short, fast-paced instrumental tracks (and is indeed sometimes retroactively referred to as 'instrumental surf'), emphasising the aforementioned twang of the reverb-drenched electric tremolo guitar melodies. Bands typically performed drum breakdowns as well as making use of Fender guitars, which could produce a wet effect said to emulate the sound of waves. Dale (alongside his backing group the Del-Tones) pioneered both the addition of Middle Eastern and Mexican Music influences and the use of the 'alternate picking' technique in surf music, which involved hitting the guitar strings both upwards and downwards in rapid succession.

By 1963, Vocal Surf had gained huge popularity with the success of The Beach Boys and Jan & Dean, exploding after the former's hits "Surfin' Safari" and especially "Surfin' U.S.A.". This new surf style shifted the emphasis from riff-heavy instrumental breakdowns to harmonised Doo-Wop and falsetto vocals, usually with surf-themed lyrics. Instrumental backing often used piano, saxophones and less twangy, more traditional Chuck Berry-esque rock & roll guitar work. This mix was a crucial part of the development of the 'California sound' during the early-to-mid 1960s. On top of surfboards, sun, sea and girls, many groups began to write surf songs featuring lyrics about cars, leading to the term 'hot rod rock'.

By the mid-1960s, surf music had mostly died out in the USA due to the British Invasion and the rise in popularity of Garage Rock and Psychedelic Rock. Various surf rock-inspired scenes appeared globally during this time, however, including Eleki in Japan, Shadow Music in Thailand and Rautalanka in Finland.

The wave of Punk Rock in the late 1970s and early 1980s brought about new developments in surf music, both in the emergence of the fusion genre Surf Punk and in providing an influence on the development of Skate Punk. Man or Astro-Man? are a practitioner of both surf punk and a 1990s surf rock mini-revival.

The influence of surf has been seen in various soundtracks, both during the craze (the famous guitar lick played by Vic Flick on "The James Bond Theme"); later on in the decade (amongst the melting pot of influences in Ennio Morricone's Spaghetti Western scores); and decades later (the use of numerous surf rock hits in Pulp Fiction).

Swamp Rock

An intermixture of Zydeco, Cajun Music, New Orleans Blues, and Pop under the roof of Rock music. Its origin lies in the Mississippi Delta but it's not necessarily played by artists from this area.

Symphonic Prog

Symphonic Prog is the largest and most well known sub-genre of classic Progressive Rock. It is the term applied to the Prog bands who incorporated classical elements, mostly orchestral, into their music. The elements that are used are generally compositional, mostly manifested as longer form works that often deviate from traditional popular song structures, and/or textural with lush keyboards being used to mimic orchestral sonorities. The most popular of the original Symphonic bands are Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Camel, and early Genesis. The Italian prog scene is also well-known for being specialized in this style (e.g. Premiata Forneria Marconi, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso and Le Orme).

Neo-Prog is closely related to Symphonic Prog, but tends towards less complexity and the use of more popular song structures.

Symphonic Rock

Symphonic rock is a subgenre of Rock that incorporates elements resembling symphonic and orchestral music. Symphonic rock artists generally incorporate large scale symphony orchestras to their music or use synthesisers to reproduce string sections. Some artists may also perform rock compositions based on orchestral music themes.

1960s classical music-inflected pop/rock records, particularly those of The Beach Boys and The Beatles, were particularly instrumental in the emergence of the genre. In contrast to its 1970s Progressive Rock counterpart Symphonic Prog, spearheaded by Yes and Genesis, symphonic rock incorporates its respective influences in a more accessible and standard context. The genre was particularly led by another progressive-affiliated band, Electric Light Orchestra. A close relative indebted to Metal music, dubbed as Symphonic Metal, also gained popularity in the late 1990s.

Tex-Mex

A version of Roots Rock that mixes Rock & Roll, Blues, Country, and several types of Latin American Music music--particularly Tejano.

Twee Pop

Twee pop is one of the earliest styles of Indie Pop, defined by its cute aesthetic combined with an indie/DIY attitude and a musical simplicity often indebted to Punk Rock. The genre originated in the early 1980s as Jangle Pop and Post-Punk groups moved in a more overtly melodic direction, informed by 1960s Pop with particular influence from Girl Groups and the upbeat Bubblegum style. As a result, twee pop songs are short and sweet, combining catchy melodies with innocent, simple lyrics about young love, childhood, and an overall sense of idyllic nostalgia. The genre is also notable among indie scenes for the prominence of female-led and all-female groups, in part due to a shift away from the more masculine aesthetic and culture of punk rock, though boy-girl harmony vocals are common in twee pop as well. "Twee" itself is a British term used to describe that which is overly quaint or cute; it was originally used in a somewhat derogatory manner by music critics, but was later picked up and celebrated as a banner for the movement in the 1990s.

The early twee pop scene in the early 1980s was almost exclusively British, heralded by female-led groups like Dolly Mixture and Trixie's Big Red Motorbike and championed by British DJ John Peel who would record sessions with many artists in the scene. The term would pick up steam around the same time as the emergence of the jangly C86 scene, with groups like The Pastels and Talulah Gosh representing its more twee side. Twee pop would also be a major influence on The Jesus and Mary Chain's saccharine and distorted Noise Pop style. However, twee pop in the UK is perhaps most associated with the influential Sarah Records and associated artists like The Field Mice, Another Sunny Day, and Heavenly that enjoyed some popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Though the twee pop scene in the UK would become less active after that, a few prominent Scottish artists like Belle and Sebastian and Camera Obscura would continue the sound through the 1990s and into the 2000s to commercial and critical success, and European labels like the Spanish Elefant Records would continue to release music by British and European groups in the style. British twee pop groups would also be a major influence on the style of Flipper's Guitar, who established the Shibuya-kei movement in Japan in the early 1990s.

American twee pop, on the other hand, is generally regarded as beginning with the mid-1980s work of Beat Happening on K Records, combining the simplistic British indie pop sound with a DIY attitude and parallels to the Japanese Pop Punk group Shonen Knife (who had their first American release on K, in 1985). In contrast to their jangly British counterparts, American twee pop bands would retain this rawer punk influence as it intermingled with the American Indie Rock scene, with 1990s groups like Tiger Trap, Rocketship, and Tullycraft fully establishing this particular branch of the style. Groups like these, along with like-minded bands in the UK and Canada like Heavenly and Cub, would come to be known as "cuddlecore", a substyle sometimes seen as a more lighthearted and melodic parallel to the Riot Grrrl movement.

Visual kei

Generally speaking, visual kei ("visual style") is a term for a variety of fashion styles that take influence from Gothic Rock, Glam Rock, and Heavy Metal. Flamboyant hair, crossdressing, leather clothing, heavy makeup, elaborate costumes, and either bright or dark colors are common in visual kei bands. The style was founded by bands such as X Japan, Color, and Malice Mizer in the late 1980s and early 1990s. While visual kei remains most popular in its home country of Japan, its popularity has spread worldwide, leading to the creation of non-Japanese visual kei bands such as Seremedy.

There are many sub-types of visual kei, and there are many bands that straddle or blur the lines of different styles. For example, kurofuku kei ("black clothing style") bands like BUCK-TICK have simple black clothing, while oshare kei ("fashion style") groups such as An Cafe have a brighter and more cheery appearance.

Vocal Surf

(also known as Surf Pop)

Vocal surf was created in the early 1960s when Californian Pop Rock recording artists began appropriating the sounds of instrumental Surf Rock, combining surfing- and car-themed lyrics with a style that drew primarily from Doo-Wop and Rock & Roll. Lead electric 'surf guitar' playing is de-emphasized (or removed entirely) in favor of saxophones, vocal harmonies, and Boogie Woogie pianos. Its singers often engage in falsetto or nasal singing exemplified by The Beach Boys, who (along with Jan & Dean) iconized this music which would later be strongly associated with the 'California sound'. Other vocal surf examples include The Honeys, Bruce & Terry, The Rip Chords, and The Fantastic Baggys.

Yacht Rock

(also known as West Coast Sound)

Yacht rock (originally dubbed the West Coast Sound) is a related genre of Soft Rock popular from the mid 1970s to the early 1980s. While soft rock was prevalent in the early 1970s, yacht rock embraced smoother R&B sensibilities in combination with layered vocal harmonies and state-of-the-art production.

Groups such as The Doobie Brothers and the later Crosby, Stills & Nash laid the blueprints of the style. Often derided for its ultra-commercial sound, yacht rock evolved through the 1970s, drawing elements from established "studio" bands such as Toto. Although emerging from the west coast of the USA, international artists such as Little River Band had success with the laid back, "cozy" application of the style. Others associated with yacht rock are Steely Dan, Christopher Cross, and Kenny Loggins.

Zamrock

Zamrock was a genre of Rock music that existed in the 1970s in Zambia, mainly in the Copperbelt region.

In the early 1970s, African pop music was heavily influenced by James Brown's Funk revolution. Zambia, in contrast with most of the other countries, did not limit the Western influences to Funk, and also adopted Psychedelic Rock sounds, mainly through Jimi Hendrix's guitar and the heavy use of wah wah and fuzz. The main bands were Witch and Amanaz.

By the early 1980s Zamrock had disappeared, as most of the psychedelic rock influences had been replaced by Disco and Soul sounds.

Definitions courtesy of rateyourmusic.com

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