Portal:Rock music

The Rock Music Portal

Rock music is a genre of popular music that originated in the United States as "rock and roll" in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of styles from the late 50s to mid-1960s, primarily in the United States and United Kingdom. It has its roots beginning as classic rock and roll, a style that drew from the African-American musical genres of blues and rhythm and blues, as well as from country music. Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz and other styles. Rock is typically centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with an electric bass guitar, drums, and one or more singers.

Usually, rock is song-based music with a ⁴
₄ time signature and using a verse–chorus form; however, the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock was the most popular genre of music in the U.S. and much of the western world from the 1960s up to the 2010s.

Rock musicians in the mid-1960s began to advance the album ahead of the single as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, with the Beatles at the forefront of this development. Their contributions lent the genre a cultural legitimacy in the mainstream and initiated a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. By the late 1960s "classic rock" period, a few distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, southern rock, raga rock, and jazz rock, which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock, influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene. New genres that emerged included progressive rock, which extended artistic elements, heavy metal, which emphasized an aggressive thick sound, and glam rock, which highlighted showmanship and visual style. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques. Punk was an influence in the 1980s on new wave, post-punk and eventually alternative rock. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various rock music-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Sign commemorating the role of Alan Freed and Cleveland, Ohio, in the origins of rock and roll (from Rock and roll)
Image 2Aerosmith performing at Quilmes Rock in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on April 15, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 3Elvis Presley in a promotion shot for Jailhouse Rock in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 4Original member Izzy Stradlin' on stage with Guns N' Roses in 2006 (from Hard rock)
Image 5Buddy Holly and his band, the Crickets (from Rock and roll)
Image 6Nirvana were at the forefront of the 1990s grunge era. (from Hard rock)
Image 7Poison, seen here in 2008, were among the most successful acts of the 1980s glam metal era. (from Hard rock)
Image 8Rush on stage in Milan, Italy, 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 9Bill Haley and his Comets performing in the 1954 Universal International film Round Up of Rhythm (from Rock and roll)
Image 10Johnny Rivers was a key 1960s rock artist known for hits like "Memphis" and his "Go-go" style. (from Rock and roll)
Image 11The transistor radio (1958 Emerson pictured) introduced FM radio and rock and roll music to baby boomer children in American households. (from Rock and roll)
Image 12Chuck Berry in 1958 (from Rock and roll)
Image 13Big Joe Turner and Pete Johnson's record "Roll 'Em Pete" is regarded as a precursor to rock and roll. (from Rock and roll)
Image 14Disc jockey Alan Freed is credited with popularizing the term "rock and roll" and introducing the genre across racial barriers in the 1950s (from Rock and roll)
Image 15Little Richard in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 16Foo Fighters performing an acoustic show in 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 17LaVern Baker was an R&B singer who was influential on rock and roll (from Rock and roll)
Image 18"There's No Romance in Rock and Roll" made the cover of True Life Romance in 1956. (from Rock and roll)
Image 19Drum notation for a backbeat (from Hard rock)
Image 20Baker, Bruce and Clapton of Cream, whose blues rock improvisation was a major factor in the development of the genre (from Hard rock)
Image 21Cliff Richard became an early British rock and roll star with his 1958 hit "Move It". (from Rock and roll)
Image 22Led Zeppelin live at Chicago Stadium, January 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 23Wolfmother, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 24Kiss on stage in Boston in 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 25Tommy Steele, one of the first British rock and rollers, performing in Stockholm in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 26Golden Earring receives a gold record in 1970. (from Hard rock)
Image 27The Who on stage in 1975 (from Hard rock)

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Metallica is an American heavy metal band. It was formed in Los Angeles in 1981 by vocalist/guitarist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich, and has been based in San Francisco for most of its career. The band's fast tempos, instrumentals and aggressive musicianship made them one of the founding "big four" bands of thrash metal, alongside Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer. Metallica's current lineup comprises founding members and primary songwriters Hetfield and Ulrich, longtime lead guitarist Kirk Hammett, and bassist Robert Trujillo. Former members of the band are bassists Ron McGovney, Cliff Burton, and Jason Newsted, and guitarist Dave Mustaine, who formed Megadeth after being fired from Metallica in 1983.

Metallica first found commercial success with the release of its third album, Master of Puppets (1986), which is often cited as one of the best metal albums of all time. The band's next album, ...And Justice for All (1988), gave Metallica its first Grammy Award nomination. Its fifth album, Metallica (1991), was a turning point for the band that saw it transition from its thrash metal roots; the album appealed to a more mainstream audience, achieving substantial commercial success and selling more than 16 million copies in the United States to date, making it the best-selling album of the SoundScan era. After experimenting with different genres and directions in subsequent releases, Metallica returned to its thrash metal roots with its ninth album, Death Magnetic (2008), which drew similar praise to that of the band's earlier albums. The band's eleventh and most recent album, 72 Seasons, was released in 2023.

In 2000, Metallica led the case against the peer-to-peer file sharing service Napster, in which the band and several other artists filed lawsuits against the service for sharing their copyright-protected material without consent, eventually reaching a settlement. Metallica was the subject of the acclaimed 2004 documentary film Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, which documented the troubled production of the band's eighth album, St. Anger (2003), and the internal struggles within the band at the time. In 2009, Metallica was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The band co-wrote the screenplay for and starred alongside Dane DeHaan in the 2013 concert film Metallica: Through the Never, in which the band performed live against a fictional thriller storyline.

Metallica is one of the most commercially successful bands of all time, having sold more than 163 million albums worldwide as of 2023^[update], and is the third-best-selling music artist since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales in 1991, having sold 58 million albums in the United States as of 2017^[update]. The band has released eleven studio albums, four live albums (including two performances with the San Francisco Symphony), twelve video albums, one cover album, two extended plays, 37 singles and 39 music videos. Metallica has won ten Grammy Awards from 26 nominations and had six consecutive studio albums, from Metallica through Hardwired... to Self-Destruct (2016), debut at number one on the Billboard 200. Metallica has been listed as one of the greatest artists of all time by magazines such as Rolling Stone, which ranked the band in 61st place on its list of 100 greatest artists of all time. (Full article...)

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Sir Michael Philip Jagger (born 26 July 1943) is an English musician, songwriter, and film producer known as the lead singer and founder member of the Rolling Stones. Jagger has co-written most of the Stones' songs with lead guitarist Keith Richards; their songwriting partnership is one of the most successful in rock music history. His career has spanned more than six decades, and he has been widely described as one of the most popular and influential front men in the history of rock music. His distinctive voice and energetic live performances, along with Richards's guitar style, have been the Rolling Stones' trademark throughout the band's career. Early in his career, Jagger gained notoriety for his romantic involvements and illicit drug use, and has often been portrayed as a countercultural figure.

Jagger was born and grew up in Dartford. He studied at the London School of Economics before abandoning his studies to focus on his career with the Rolling Stones. In the early 1970s, Jagger starred in the films Performance (1970) and Ned Kelly (1970), to mixed receptions. Beginning in the 1980s, he released a number of solo works, including four albums and the single "Dancing in the Street", a 1985 duet with David Bowie that reached No. 1 in the UK and Australia and was a top-ten hit in other countries.

In the 2000s, Jagger co-founded a film production company, Jagged Films, and produced feature films through the company beginning with the 2001 historical drama Enigma. He was also a member of the supergroup SuperHeavy from 2009 to 2011. Although relationships with his bandmates, particularly Richards, deteriorated during the 1980s, Jagger has always found more success with the Rolling Stones than with his solo and side projects. He was married to Bianca Pérez-Mora Macias from 1971 to 1978, and has had several other relationships; he has eight children with five women.

In 1989, Jagger was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Rolling Stones and, in 2004, into the UK Music Hall of Fame. As a Stones member and as a solo artist, he reached No. 1 on the UK and US singles charts with 13 singles, the top 10 with 32 singles and the top 40 with 70 singles. In 2003, he was knighted for his services to popular music. Jagger is credited with being a trailblazer in pop music and with bringing a style and sex appeal to rock and roll that have been imitated and proven influential with subsequent generations of musicians and entertainers. (Full article...)

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11 is the eleventh studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Bryan Adams. The album was released by Polydor Records on March 17, 2008. 11 was the first release of new Adams material since Colour Me Kubrick in 2005 and the first studio album in four years since Room Service. Adams, Jim Vallance, Eliot Kennedy, Gretchen Peters, Trevor Rabin and Robert John "Mutt" Lange received producing and writing credits. Similar to Adams' previous material, the themes in 11 are mainly based on love, romance, and relationships. 11 received generally mixed reviews from contemporary music critics.

Three songs were released from the album in various forms: "I Thought I'd Seen Everything", "Tonight We Have the Stars" and "She's Got a Way", of which all were released internationally. "I Thought I'd Seen Everything" was the only one to have any lasting effects on the music chart, reaching mostly the Top 50, Top 100 and Top 200 in Europe and Canada. Adams was nominated for a Juno Award in the category "Best Artist" in 2009 for this record.

The album peaked within the top ten in eleven territories worldwide, including Canada (with sales just below 10,000 units in its first week), the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland. 11 charted within the top twenty in three other territories. (Full article...)

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"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by Paul McCartney, credited to Lennon–McCartney, and released in 1967 on the album of the same name. The song appears twice on the album: as the opening track (segueing into "With a Little Help from My Friends"), and as "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)", the penultimate track (segueing into "A Day in the Life"). As the title song, the lyrics introduce the fictional band that performs on the album.

Since its original album release, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" has also been released on various Beatles singles and compilation albums. The song has also been performed by several other artists, including Jimi Hendrix and U2. (Full article...)

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Credit: Takahiro Kyono

Leonard Cohen performing at King's Garden, Odense, Denmark, on 17 August 2013.

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Did you know (auto-generated)

... that Rolling Stone listed Ácido Argentino as the most essential album of Argentine heavy metal?
... that Canadian punk rock musician Talli Osborne had only briefly spoken to the frontman of NOFX before the band wrote a song about her?
... that the heavy metal band Cradle of Filth released a T-shirt that was so offensive that several people were arrested for wearing it?
... that Desulfovibrio vulgaris can remove toxic heavy metals from the environment?
... that the British rock musician Hannah Grae went viral online with an anti-sexual harassment parody of Aqua's "Barbie Girl"?
... that before charting on the UK Albums Chart with Are We There Yet?, the indie rock musician James Marriott had made a career of mocking other YouTubers' music?

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The new wave of British heavy metal (often abbreviated as NWOBHM) was a nationwide musical movement that began in England in the mid-1970s and achieved international attention by the early 1980s. Editor Alan Lewis coined the term for an article by Geoff Barton in a May 1979 issue of the British music newspaper Sounds to describe the emergence of heavy metal bands in the mid-to-late 1970s, as punk rock declined amid the dominance of new wave music. (Full article...)