A Brief History of Rock Music

Anyone that knows Smasher will know his love for rock music. This blog post like the previous will be a short history of the development of Rock. Rock was founded in America during the late 1940's and was influenced by a mixture of African American musical styles such as gospel, jump blues just to name a few the genre was also further influenced by country music. Throughout time rock has constantly been evolving and modernising, in turn, it is difficult to put forth one definition of the genre. During the late 1940's the awakening of rock music was a stark contrast to the rather conservative era of America with artists such as Chuck Berry Pioneering the movement. By the 1960's rock had expanded and groups such as the Rolling Stones snowballed rock music into uncharted waters characterised by sexual freedom and youthfulness.

The 1970's was rock's powerhouse and was now the most popular genre of music. During this time there were segment shifts such as Pink Floyd brought to the table psychedelic rock, progressive rock and art rock. Whereas the Sex Pistols and the Clash gave birth to Punk rock.

By the 1980's the popularity of rock had begun to decline and was losing commercial value, however bands inspired by punk rock began to take root with groups such as Depeche Mode and R.E.M, because of this at the end of the 1980's college rock had become a big market this caused rock to take on a new name; alternative rock though publications would tend to use the term modern rock.

From the 1990's onwards alternative rock became the most relevant music choice with bands such as Nirvana being at its forefront. Other bands began to appear that adopted the grunge movement which was a mixture of hard rock and punk, sadly after the suicide of Nirvana's frontman Kurt Cobain, alternative rock started to lose its former appeal. This led to the ignition of rocks re-emergence, bands such as Limp Bizkit bought together rap-rock, fellow groups such as Staind and Puddle of Mudd used this similar blueprint.

Entering into the 21st-century bands such as Linkin Park took reign fusing hip-hop and metal, though as with any music genre rock is constantly evolving and in no doubt will reinvent again.

Sources: ThoughtCo. (2018). Rock Music: Its Origins and History. [online] Available at: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-rock-music-2898293 [Accessed 22 Apr. 2018]. En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Rock and roll. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_roll [Accessed 22 Apr. 2018].