Rock-Pop Music

 

 

ABOUT Pop Rock Music

Pop rock (also typeset as pop/rock) is rock music with a greater emphasis on professional songwriting and recording craft, and less emphasis on attitude. Originating in the late 1950s as an alternative to normal rock and roll, early pop rock was influenced by the beat, arrangements, and original style of rock and roll (and sometimes doo-wop It may be viewed as a distinct genre field rather than music that overlaps with pop and rock The detractors of pop rock often deride it as a slick, commercial product and less authentic than rock music.

Much pop and rock music has been very similar in sound, instrumentation and even lyrical content. The terms "pop rock" and "power pop" have been used to describe more commercially successful music that uses elements from, or the form of, rock music. Writer Johan Fornas views pop/rock as "one single, continuous genre field", rather than distinct categories. To the authors Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman, it is defined as an "upbeat variety of rock music" represented by artists and bands such as: Andy Kim, the Bells, Paul McCartney, Lighthouse, and Peter Frampton.

The term pop has been used since the early twentieth century to refer to popular music in general, but from the mid-1950s it began to be used for a distinct genre, aimed at a youth market, often characterized as a softer alternative to rock and roll.In the aftermath of the British Invasion, from about 1967, it was increasingly used in opposition to the term rock music, to describe a form that was more commercial, ephemeral and accessible.

As of the 2010s, "guitar pop rock" and "indie rock" are roughly synonymous terms."Jangle" is a noun-adjective that music critics often use in reference to guitar pop with a bright mood.

Critic Philip Auslander argues that the distinction between pop and rock is more pronounced in the US than in the UK. He claims that in the US, pop has roots in white crooners such as Perry Como, whereas rock is rooted in African-American music influenced by forms such as rock and roll. Auslander points out that the concept of pop rock, which blends pop and rock, is at odds with the typical conception of pop and rock as opposites. Auslander and several other scholars, such as Simon Frith and Grossberg, argue that pop music is often depicted as an inauthentic, cynical, "slickly commercial", and formulaic form of entertainment. In contrast, rock music is often heralded as an authentic, sincere, and anti-commercial form of music, which emphasizes songwriting by the singers and bands, instrumental virtuosity, and a "real connection with the audience".

Simon Frith's analysis of the history of popular music from the 1950s to the 1980s has been criticized by B. J. Moore-Gilbert, who argues that Frith and other scholars have over-emphasized the role of rock in the history of popular music by naming every new genre using the "rock" suffix. Thus when a folk-oriented style of music developed in the 1960s, Frith termed it "folk rock", and the pop-infused styles of the 1970s were called "pop rock". Moore-Gilbert claims that this approach unfairly puts rock at the apex and makes every other influence become an add-on to the central core of rock.

In Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau discussed the term "pop-rock" in the context of popular music's fragmentation along stylistic lines in the 1970s; he regarded "pop-rock" as a "monolith" that "straddled" all burgeoning movements and subgenres in the popular and semipopular music marketplace at the time, including singer-songwriter music, art rock, heavy metal, boogie, country rock, jazz fusion, funk, disco, urban contemporary, and new wave, but not punk rock.

 

Classic rock is a US radio format which developed from the album-oriented rock (AOR) format in the early 1980s. In the United States, the classic rock format comprises rock music ranging generally from the mid-1960s through the 1980s, primarily focusing on commercially successful blues rock and hard rock popularized in the 1970s AOR format.The radio format became increasingly popular with the baby boomer demographic by the end of the 1990s.

Although classic rock has mostly appealed to adult listeners, music associated with this format received more exposure with younger listeners with the presence of the Internet and digital downloading.Some classic rock stations also play a limited number of current releases which are stylistically consistent with the station's sound, or by heritage acts that are still active and producing new music.

Conceptually, classic rock has been analyzed by academics as an effort by critics, media, and music establishments to canonize rock music and commodify 1960s Western culture for audiences living in a post-baby boomer economy. The music predominantly selected for the format has been identified as commercially successful songs by white male acts from the Anglosphere, expressing values of Romanticism, self-aggrandizement, and politically undemanding ideologies. It has been associated with the album era (1960s–2000s), particularly the period's early pop/rock music.

The classic rock format evolved from AOR radio stations that were attempting to appeal to an older audience by including familiar songs of the past with current hits.In 1980, AOR radio station M105 in Cleveland began billing itself as "Cleveland's Classic Rock", playing a mix of rock music from the mid-1960s to the present. Similarly, WMET called itself "Chicago's Classic Rock" in 1981.In 1982, radio consultant Lee Abrams developed the "Timeless Rock" format which combined contemporary AOR with rock hits from the 1960s and 1970s.

KRBE, an AM station in Houston, was an early classic rock radio station. In 1983 program director Paul Christy designed a format which played only early album rock, from the 1960s and early 1970s, without current music or any titles from the pop or dance side of Top 40 ,Another AM station airing classic rock, beginning in 1983, was KRQX in Dallas-Fort Worth. KRQX was co-owned with an album rock station, 97.9 KZEW. Management saw the benefit in the FM station appealing to younger rock fans and the AM station appealing a bit older. The ratings of both stations could be added together to appeal to advertisers. Classic rock soon became the widely used descriptor for the format and became the commonly used term among the general public for early album rock music.

In the mid-1980s, the format's widespread proliferation came on the heels of Jacobs Media's (Fred Jacobs) success at WCXR, in Washington, D.C., and Edinborough Rand's (Gary Guthrie) success at WZLX in Boston. Between Guthrie and Jacobs, they converted more than 40 major market radio stations to their individual brand of classic rock over the next several years.

Billboard magazine's Kim Freeman posits that "while classic rock's origins can be traced back earlier, 1986 is generally cited as the year of its birth".By 1986, the success of the format resulted in oldies accounting for 60–80% of the music played on album rock stations. Although it began as a niche format spun off from AOR, by 2001 classic rock had surpassed album rock in market share nationally.

During the mid-1980s, the classic rock format was mainly tailored to the adult male demographic ages 25–34, which remained its largest demographic through the mid-1990s. As the format's audience aged, its demographics skewed toward older age groups. By 2006, the 35–44 age group was the format's largest audience and by 2014 the 45–54 year-old demographic was the largest.

Typically, classic rock stations play rock songs from the mid-1960s through the 1980s and began adding 1990s music in the early 2010s. Most recently there has been a "newer classic rock" under the slogan of the next generation of classic rock. Stations such as WLLZ in Detroit, WBOS in Boston and WXZX in Columbus play music focusing more on harder edge classic rock from the 1980s to the 2000s.There has been a recent revival in the older fashions of classic rock in the early 2000s. Back in the prime of classic rock radio during the 1970s and 1980s, when it was mainstream, and radio was the main form of accessing the music, classic rock soared in to every individual's ear. Classic rock will not overtake the current style of hip-hop/pop, but teenagers specifically are set to introduce the contents of classic rock into their rotation of music.The peak of classic rock in the 1980s had its downfall in the 1990s and has risen back to streaming platforms and internet sources.

Some of the bands that dominated classic rock radio in the past included, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin,and Jimi Hendrix.The songs of the Rolling Stones, particularly from the 1970s, have become staples of classic rock radio."(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (1965), "Under My Thumb" (1966),"Paint It, Black" (1966),and "Miss You" (1978) are among their most popular selections, with Complex calling the latter "an eternal mainstay on classic-rock radio".

A 2006 Rolling Stone article noted that teens were surprisingly interested in classic rock and speculated that the interest in the older bands might be related to the absence of any new, dominant sounds in rock music since the advent of grunge.

Since 2017 an increasing number of new, and largely British, bands playing music sharing the characteristics of classic rock and appealing to both older and younger fans of such music has increasingly been recognised as a New Wave of Classic Rock (NWOCR). This has particularly been driven by a dedicated NWOCR Facebook group. Examples of well-known bands recognised as part of this movement include Greta Van Fleet and The Struts.A compilation album featuring many NWOCR bands and promoted by fans, rather than a record company, is planned to be released in July 2021
Classic-rock radio programmers largely play "tried and proven" hit songs from the past based on their "high listener recognition and identification", says media academic Roy Shuker, who also identifies white male rock acts from the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper-era through the end of the 1970s as the focus of their playlists.As Catherine Strong observes, classic rock songs are generally performed by white male acts from either the United States or the United Kingdom, "have a four-four time, very rarely exceed the time limit of four minutes, were composed by the musicians themselves, are sung in English, played by a 'classical' rock formation (drums, bass, guitar, keyboard instruments) and were released on a major label after 1964." Classic rock has also been associated with the album era (1960s–2000s), by writers Bob Lefsetz and Matthew Restall, who says the term is a relabeling of the "virtuoso pop/rock" from the era's early decades.

Hard rock or heavy rock is a loosely defined subgenre of rock music typified by a heavy use of aggressive vocals, distorted electric guitars, bass guitar, and drums, sometimes accompanied with keyboards. It began in the mid-1960s with the garage, psychedelic and blues rock movements. Some of the earliest hard rock music was produced by the Kinks, the Who, the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In the late 1960s, bands such as the Jeff Beck Group, Iron Butterfly, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Golden Earring, Steppenwolf and Deep Purple also produced hard rock.

The genre developed into a major form of popular music in the 1970s, with the Who, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple being joined by Aerosmith, Kiss, Queen, AC/DC and Van Halen. During the 1980s, some hard rock bands moved away from their hard rock roots and more towards pop rock. Established bands made a comeback in the mid-1980s and hard rock reached a commercial peak in the 1980s, with glam metal bands such as Bon Jovi and Def Leppard and the rawer sounds of Guns N' Roses which followed with great success in the later part of that decade.

Hard rock began losing popularity with the commercial success of R&B, hip-hop, urban pop, grunge and later Britpop in the 1990s. Despite this, many post-grunge bands adopted a hard rock sound and the 2000s saw a renewed interest in established bands, attempts at a revival, and new hard-rock bands that emerged from the garage rock and post-punk revival scenes. Out of this movement came garage rock bands like The White Stripes, the Strokes, Interpol and later the Black Keys. In the 2000s, only a few hard-rock bands from the 1970s and 1980s managed to sustain highly successful recording careers.

Hard rock is a form of loud, aggressive rock music. The electric guitar is often emphasised, used with distortion and other effects, both as a rhythm instrument using repetitive riffs with a varying degree of complexity, and as a solo lead instrument.Drumming characteristically focuses on driving rhythms, strong bass drum and a backbeat on snare, sometimes using cymbals for emphasis. The bass guitar works in conjunction with the drums, occasionally playing riffs, but usually providing a backing for the rhythm and lead guitars. Vocals are often growling, raspy, or involve screaming or wailing, sometimes in a high range, or even falsetto voice.

In the late 1960s, the term heavy metal was used interchangeably with hard rock, but gradually began to be used to describe music played with even more volume and intensity.While hard rock maintained a bluesy rock and roll identity, including some swing in the back beat and riffs that tended to outline chord progressions in their hooks, heavy metal's riffs often functioned as stand-alone melodies and had no swing in them. In the 1980s heavy metal developed a number of subgenres, often termed extreme metal, some of which were influenced by hardcore punk, and which further differentiated the two styles. Despite this differentiation, hard rock and heavy metal have existed side by side, with bands frequently standing on the boundary of, or crossing between, the genres.
The roots of hard rock can be traced back to the mid to late 1950s, particularly electric blues, which laid the foundations for key elements such as a rough declamatory vocal style, heavy guitar riffs, string-bending blues-scale guitar solos, strong beat, thick riff-laden texture, and posturing performances.Electric blues guitarists began experimenting with hard rock elements such as driving rhythms, distorted guitar solos and power chords in the 1950s, evident in the work of Memphis blues guitarists such as Joe Hill Louis, Willie Johnson, and particularly Pat Hare,who captured a "grittier, nastier, more ferocious electric guitar sound" on records such as James Cotton's "Cotton Crop Blues" (1954). Other antecedents include Link Wray's instrumental "Rumble" in 1958,and the surf rock instrumentals of Dick Dale, such as "Let's Go Trippin'" (1961) and "Misirlou" (1962).

In the 1960s, American and British blues and rock bands began to modify rock and roll by adding harder sounds, heavier guitar riffs, bombastic drumming, and louder vocals, from electric blues.Early forms of hard rock can be heard in the work of Chicago blues musicians Elmore James, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf,the Kingsmen's version of "Louie Louie" (1963) which made it a garage rock standard, and the songs of rhythm and blues influenced British Invasion acts,including "You Really Got Me" by the Kinks (1964), "My Generation" by the Who (1965), "Shapes of Things" (1966) by the Yardbirds, "Inside Looking Out" (1966) by the Animals, "Twist and Shout" by The Beatles, and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (1965) by the Rolling Stones. From the late 1960s, it became common to divide mainstream rock music that emerged from psychedelia into soft and hard rock. Soft rock was often derived from folk rock, using acoustic instruments and putting more emphasis on melody and harmonies.^] In contrast, hard rock was most often derived from blues rock and was played louder and with more intensity.

Blues rock acts that pioneered the sound included Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and the Jeff Beck Group ,Cream, in songs like "I Feel Free" (1966) combined blues rock with pop and psychedelia, particularly in the riffs and guitar solos of Eric Clapton. Cream's best known-song, "Sunshine of Your Love" (1967), is sometimes considered to be the culmination of the British adaptation of blues into rock and a direct precursor of Led Zepplin's style of hard rock and heavy metal Jimi Hendrix produced a form of blues-influenced psychedelic rock, which combined elements of jazz, blues and rock and roll.From 1967 Jeff Beck brought lead guitar to new heights of technical virtuosity and moved blues rock in the direction of heavy rock with his band, the Jeff Beck Group. Dave Davies of the Kinks, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, Pete Townshend of the Who, Hendrix, Clapton and Beck all pioneered the use of new guitar effects like phasing, feedback and distortion. The Beatles began producing songs in the new hard rock style beginning with their 1968 double album The Beatles (also known as the "White Album") and, with the track "Helter Skelter", attempted to create a greater level of noise than the Who.Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic has referred to the "proto-metal roar" of "Helter Skelter",while Ian MacDonald called it "ridiculous, with McCartney shrieking weedily against a massively tape-echoed backdrop of out-of-tune thrashing".

Groups that emerged from the American psychedelic scene about the same time included Iron Butterfly, MC5, Blue Cheer and Vanilla Fudge. San Francisco band Blue Cheer released a crude and distorted cover of Eddie Cochran's classic "Summertime Blues", from their 1968 debut album Vincebus Eruptum, that outlined much of the later hard rock and heavy metal sound. The same month, Steppenwolf released its self-titled debut album, including "Born to Be Wild", which contained the first lyrical reference to heavy metal and helped popularise the style when it was used in the film Easy Rider (1969). Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968), with its 17-minute-long title track, using organs and with a lengthy drum solo, also prefigured later elements of the sound.

By the end of the decade a distinct genre of hard rock was emerging with bands like Led Zeppelin, who mixed the music of early rock bands with a more hard-edged form of blues rock and acid rock on their first two albums Led Zeppelin (1969) and Led Zeppelin II (1969), and Deep Purple, who began as a progressive rock group in 1968 but achieved their commercial breakthrough with their fourth and distinctively heavier album, Deep Purple in Rock (1970). Also significant was Black Sabbath's Paranoid (1970), which combined guitar riffs with dissonance and more explicit references to the occult and elements of Gothic horror. All three of these bands have been seen as pivotal in the development of heavy metal, but where metal further accentuated the intensity of the music, with bands like Judas Priest following Sabbath's lead into territory that was often "darker and more menacing", hard rock tended to continue to remain the more exuberant, good-time music

 

Survivals and revivals (2000s)

A few hard rock bands from the 1970s and 1980s managed to sustain highly successful recording careers. Bon Jovi were still able to achieve a commercial hit with "It's My Life" from their double platinum-certified album Crush (2000).and AC/DC released the platinum-certified Stiff Upper Lip (2000)^[123] Aerosmith released a platinum album, Just Push Play (2001), which saw the band foray further into pop with the hit "Jaded", and a blues cover album, Honkin' on Bobo. Heart achieved their first hit album since the early 90s with Red Velvet Car in 2010,becoming the first female-led hard rock band to earn Top 10 albums spanning five decades. There were reunions and subsequent tours from Van Halen (with Hagar in 2004 and then Roth in 2007), The Who (delayed in 2002 by the death of bassist John Entwistle until 2006)and Black Sabbath (with Osbourne 1997–2006 and Dio 2006–2010) and even a one-off performance by Led Zeppelin (2007), renewing the interest in previous eras. Additionally, hard rock supergroups, such as Audioslave (with former members of Rage Against the Machine and Soundgarden) and Velvet Revolver (with former members of Guns N' Roses, punk band Wasted Youth and Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland), emerged and experienced some success. However, these bands were short-lived, ending in 2007 and 2008, respectively.The long-awaited Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy was finally released in 2008, but only went platinum and failed to come close to the success of the band's late 1980s and early 1990s material. More successfully, AC/DC released the double platinum-certified Black Ice (2008).Bon Jovi continued to enjoy success, branching into country music with "Who Says You Can't Go Home", and the rock/country album Lost Highway (2007). In 2009, Bon Jovi released The Circle, which marked a return to their hard rock sound.

The term "retro-metal" has been applied to such bands as Texas based the Sword, California's High on Fire, Sweden's Witchcraft and Australia's Wolfmother. Wolfmother's self-titled 2005 debut album combined elements of the sounds of Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin.Fellow Australians Airbourne's début album Runnin' Wild (2007) followed in the hard riffing tradition of AC/DC.England's the Darkness' Permission to Land (2003), described as an "eerily realistic simulation of '80s metal and '70s glam",went quintuple platinum in the UK. The follow-up, One Way Ticket to Hell... and Back (2005) was also a hit, but the band broke up in 2006. Los Angeles band Steel Panther managed to gain a following by sending up 80s glam metal. A more serious attempt to revive glam metal was made by bands of the sleaze metal movement in Sweden, including Vains of Jenna, Hardcore Superstar and Crashdïet.

Although Foo Fighters continued to be one of the most successful rock acts, with albums like In Your Honor (2005), many of the first wave of post-grunge bands began to fade in popularity. Acts like Creed, Staind, Puddle of Mudd and Nickelback took the genre into the 2000s with considerable commercial success, abandoning most of the angst and anger of the original movement for more conventional anthems, narratives and romantic songs. They were followed in this vein by new acts including Shinedown and Seether. Acts with more conventional hard rock sounds included Andrew W.K., Beautiful Creatures and Buckcherry, whose breakthrough album 15 (2006) went platinum and spawned the single "Sorry" (2007).These were joined by bands with hard rock leanings that emerged in the mid-2000s from the garage rock, Southern Rock, or post punk revival, including Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Kings of Leon, and Queens of the Stone Age from the US, Three Days Grace from Canada, Jet from Australia and The Datsuns from New Zealand. In 2009 Them Crooked Vultures, a supergroup that brought together Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl, Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme and Led Zeppelin bass player John Paul Jones attracted attention as a live act and released a self-titled debut album that was a hit the US and UK.

The opening years of the 1980s saw a number of changes in personnel and direction of established hard rock acts, including the deaths of Bon Scott, the lead singer of AC/DC, and John Bonham, drummer with Led Zeppelin. Whereas Zeppelin broke up almost immediately afterwards, AC/DC pressed on, recording the album Back in Black (1980) with their new lead singer, Brian Johnson. It became the fifth-highest-selling album of all time in the US and the second-highest-selling album in the world. Black Sabbath had split with original singer Ozzy Osbourne in 1979 and replaced him with Ronnie James Dio, formerly of Rainbow, giving the band a new sound and a period of creativity and popularity beginning with Heaven and Hell (1980). Osbourne embarked on a solo career with Blizzard of Ozz (1980), featuring American guitarist Randy Rhoads.Some bands, such as Queen, moved away from their hard rock roots and more towards pop rock,while others, including Rush with Moving Pictures (1981), began to return to a hard rock sound.The creation of thrash metal, which mixed heavy metal with elements of hardcore punk from about 1982, particularly by Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth and Slayer, helped to create extreme metal and further remove the style from hard rock, although a number of these bands or their members would continue to record some songs closer to a hard rock sound. Kiss moved away from their hard rock roots toward pop metal: firstly removing their makeup in 1983 for their Lick It Up album, and then adopting the visual and sound of glam metal for their 1984 release, Animalize, both of which marked a return to commercial success. Pat Benatar was one of the first women to achieve commercial success in hard rock.

Often categorised with the new wave of British heavy metal, in 1981 Def Leppard released their second album High 'n' Dry, mixing glam-rock with heavy metal, and helping to define the sound of hard rock for the decade. The follow-up Pyromania (1983) was a big hit and the singles "Photograph", "Rock of Ages" and "Foolin'", helped by the emergence of MTV, were successful.^[80] It was widely emulated, particularly by the emerging Californian glam metal scene. This was followed by US acts like Mötley Crüe, with their albums Too Fast for Love (1981) and Shout at the Devil (1983) and, as the style grew, the arrival of bands such as Ratt, White Lion,Twisted Sister and Quiet Riot. Quiet Riot's album Metal Health (1983) was the first glam metal album, and arguably the first heavy metal album of any kind, to reach number one in the Billboard music charts and helped open the doors for mainstream success by subsequent bands.

Established bands made something of a comeback in the mid-1980s. After an 8-year separation, Deep Purple returned with the classic Machine Head line-up to produce Perfect Strangers (1984) which was a platinum-seller in the US.After somewhat slower sales of its fourth album, Fair Warning, Van Halen rebounded with Diver Down in 1982, then reached their commercial pinnacle with 1984. Heart, after floundering during the first half of the decade, made a comeback with their eponymous ninth studio album which contained four hit singles.The new medium of video channels was used with considerable success by bands formed in previous decades. Among the first were ZZ Top, who mixed hard-edged blues rock with new wave music to produce a series of highly successful singles, beginning with "Gimme All Your Lovin'" (1983), which helped their albums Eliminator (1983) and Afterburner (1985) achieve diamond and multi-platinum status respectivelyOthers found renewed success in the singles charts with power ballads, including REO Speedwagon with "Keep on Loving You" (1980) and "Can't Fight This Feeling" (1984), Journey with "Don't Stop Believin'" (1981) and "Open Arms" (1982), Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is",Scorpions' "Still Loving You" (both from 1984), Heart's "What About Love" (1985) and Boston's "Amanda" (1986).

Bon Jovi's third album, Slippery When Wet (1986), mixed hard rock with a pop sensitivity selling 12 million copies in the US while becoming the first hard rock album to spawn three hit singles.The album has been credited with widening the audiences for the genre, particularly by appealing to women as well as the traditional male dominated audience, and opening the door to MTV and commercial success for other bands at the end of the decade. The anthemic The Final Countdown (1986) by Swedish group Europe was an international hit.This era also saw more glam-infused American hard rock bands come to the forefront, with both Poison and Cinderella releasing their multi-platinum début albums in 1986.Van Halen released 5150 (1986), their first album with Sammy Hagar on lead vocals sold over 6 million copies. By the second half of the decade, hard rock had become the most reliable form of commercial popular music in the United States

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