Portal:Rock music
The Rock Music Portal
Rock is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles from the mid-1960s, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the blues and rhythm and blues genres of African-American music and from country music. Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock has centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar, drums, and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a 4
4 time signature using a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock was the most popular genre of music in the U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s to the 2010s.
Rock musicians in the mid-1960s began to advance the album ahead of the single as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, with the Beatles at the forefront of this development. Their contributions lent the genre a cultural legitimacy in the mainstream and initiated a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. By the late 1960s "classic rock" period, a number of distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, southern rock, raga rock, and jazz rock, which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock, influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene. New genres that emerged included progressive rock, which extended artistic elements, and glam rock, which highlighted showmanship and visual style. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques. Punk was an influence in the 1980s on new wave, post-punk and eventually alternative rock.
From the 1990s, alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop, and indie rock. Further fusion subgenres have since emerged, including pop-punk, electronic rock, rap rock, and rap metal. Some movements were conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including the garage rock/post-punk revival in the 2000s. Since the 2010s, rock has lost its position as the pre-eminent popular music genre in world culture, but remains commercially successful. The increased influence of hip-hop and electronic dance music can be seen in rock music, notably in the techno-pop scene of the early 2010s and the pop-punk-hip-hop revival of the 2020s. (Full article...)
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The film was arranged by U2 management to showcase the band's live act and to promote them to American audiences. It depicts the band's performance at Red Rocks on a rain-soaked evening. The concert was almost cancelled because of the inclement weather, but the band had invested in the filming with Island Records and concert promoter Barry Fey and wished to proceed with the gig. The rain and the torch-lit atmosphere of the surroundings made U2's performance dramatic. Segments of U2 Live at Red Rocks were shown in regular rotation on MTV, and were also broadcast on other television networks.
Critics praised the concert and the video, and it subsequently became a best-seller. The video, along with Under a Blood Red Sky, helped establish U2's reputation as remarkable live performers and boosted Red Rocks' stature as a live venue. A remastered edition of U2 Live at Red Rocks was released on DVD in September 2008 with previously unreleased tracks, coinciding with a remastered edition of Under a Blood Red Sky. Rolling Stone selected the film's performance of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" as one of the "50 Moments that Changed the History of Rock and Roll". (Full article...)
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After her divorce from Sonny Bono in 1975, Cher released the successful disco album Take Me Home (1979). Her music career revival in the late 1980s saw the releases of rock-inflected albums Cher (1987), Heart of Stone (1989), and Love Hurts (1991), all of which yielded hit singles such as "I Found Someone", "If I Could Turn Back Time", and "Save Up All Your Tears". Cher reached a new commercial peak in 1998 with the dance-pop album Believe, which featured pioneering use of Auto-Tune to distort her vocals, known as the "Cher effect". The title track became the number-one song of 1999 in the US and the best-selling single of all time by a female artist in the UK. She continued to make music, with the albums Closer to the Truth (2013) and Dancing Queen (2018) both debuting at number three on the Billboard 200 and becoming her highest-charting solo albums in the US.
Cher became a television personality in the 1970s with her CBS shows The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, watched by over 30 million viewers weekly during its three-year run, and the namesake Cher. In 1982, she made her Broadway debut in the play Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and starred in its film adaptation. Cher subsequently garnered critical acclaim for her performances in films such as Silkwood (1983), Mask (1985), and Moonstruck (1987), the last of which won her the Academy Award for Best Actress. She contributed to the soundtrack for her next film, Mermaids (1990), which spawned the UK number-one single "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)", and made her directorial debut with a segment in the abortion-themed anthology If These Walls Could Talk (1996). During the 2010s, Cher landed starring roles in the films Burlesque (2010) and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018).
Having sold 100 million records, Cher is one of the world's best-selling music artists. Her accolades include a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, a Cannes Film Festival award, the Billboard Icon Award, and awards from the Kennedy Center Honors and the Council of Fashion Designers of America. She is the only solo artist to date to have a number-one single on a Billboard chart in seven consecutive decades, from the 1960s to the 2020s. Her 2002–2005 Living Proof: The Farewell Tour became the highest-grossing concert tour by a female artist ever at the time, earning $250 million. Aside from music and acting, she is noted for her trendsetting, elaborate outfits, political views, social media presence, philanthropic endeavors, and social activism, including LGBT rights and HIV/AIDS prevention. (Full article...)
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Come to the Well is the fifth studio album by American contemporary Christian band Casting Crowns, released on October 18, 2011, through Beach Street and Reunion Records. The album, which has a predominantly pop rock and rock sound, was based on the Biblical story of the woman at the well. In writing the album, lead vocalist Mark Hall collaborated with songwriters Steven Curtis Chapman, Matthew West, and Tom Douglas. The album received mostly positive reviews from critics, many of whom praised the album's songwriting, and received the award for Top Christian Album at the 2012 Billboard Music Awards.
Although it was projected to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 by music industry analysts, Come to the Well debuted at number two on the chart and number one on the Christian Albums chart with first-week sales of 99,000 units. It also debuted on the Canadian Albums Chart at number sixty-nine and appeared at number eight on the New Zealand Albums Chart in 2012 following the band's appearance at the 2012 Parachute Music Festival. The album has sold over 779,000 copies and has received a Gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The album's lead single, "Courageous", peaked at number one on the Billboard Christian Songs chart and at number four on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart. (Full article...)
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"Visions of Johanna" is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan on his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde. Several critics have acclaimed "Visions of Johanna" as one of Dylan's highest achievements in writing, praising the allusiveness and subtlety of the language. Rolling Stone included "Visions of Johanna" on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 1999, Sir Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, listed it as the greatest song lyric ever written.
Dylan first recorded the song in New York City in November 1965, under the working title of "Freeze Out", but was dissatisfied with the results. When the Blonde on Blonde recording sessions moved to Nashville in February 1966, Dylan attempted the composition again with different musicians, and decided to release this performance. All of the alternate versions of the song have been officially released, but some only on a limited edition collectors set: many of them are November 1965 or later 1966 studio outtakes, and two others are live performances from his 1966 world tour.
Numerous artists have recorded cover versions of the song, including the Grateful Dead, Cat Power, Marianne Faithfull, Chris Smither, and Robyn Hitchcock. (Full article...)
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Mike Dirnt, singer and bassist of Green Day, stands on the Centerstage during Rock im Park ("Rock in the Park") Festival 2013.
Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... 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?
- ... that Greg Cooper based the character of suffragist Kate Sheppard in punk-rock musical That Bloody Woman on Bette Midler in concert in Cleveland?
- ... that raw material waste from the West influenced a generation of rock music in China?
- ... that when rock musician Warren Zevon received a terminal diagnosis of lung cancer, he learned to "enjoy every sandwich"?
- ... that the Diaspora Yeshiva Band infused rock and bluegrass with Jewish lyrics, creating a music style it called "Hasidic rock" or "Country and Eastern"?
- ... that heavy metal band Judas Priest took their name from Bob Dylan's song "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest"?
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Viking metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music characterized by a lyrical and thematic focus on Norse mythology, Norse paganism, and the Viking Age. Viking metal is quite diverse as a musical style, to the point where some consider it more a cross-genre term than a genre, but it is typically seen as black metal with influences from Nordic folk music. Common traits include a slow-paced and heavy riffing style, anthemic choruses, use of both sung and harsh vocals, a reliance on folk instrumentation, and often the use of keyboards for atmospheric effect. (Full article...)
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"This Charming Man" is a song by the English rock band the Smiths, written by guitarist Johnny Marr and singer Morrissey. Released as the group's second single in October 1983 on the independent record label Rough Trade, it is defined by Marr's jangle pop guitar riff and Morrissey's characteristically morose lyrics, which revolve around the recurrent Smiths themes of sexual ambiguity and lust. A different version, from the John Peel Show on BBC Radio 1, was included on the compilation album Hatful of Hollow in 1984.
Feeling detached from the early 1980s mainstream gay culture, Morrissey wrote "This Charming Man" to evoke an older, more coded and self-aware underground scene. The singer said of the song's lyrics: "I really like the idea of the male voice being quite vulnerable, of it being taken and slightly manipulated, rather than there being always this heavy machismo thing that just bores everybody." (Full article...)More did you know...
- ... that David Bowie's first gig as lead singer was at the Green Man, Blackheath?
- ... that Carlton le Willows Academy alumni include cricketer Mark Footitt, Air Supply singer/guitarist Graham Russell, and balloonist Janet Folkes?
- ... that the video for Marilyn Manson's soft-rock ballad "Running to the Edge of the World" was widely condemned for its depiction of violence against women?
- ... that Susan Beschta was a punk rocker and federal judge?
- ... that the FM Non-Duplication Rule adopted by the FCC 59 years ago led to the creation of the album-oriented and classic rock radio formats?
- ... that The Elvis Dead, a retelling of Evil Dead II in the style of Elvis Presley, features songs such as "Standing in a State of Shock", "I've Been Possessed", and "Wrapped Up in Vines"?
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