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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...)

General images - load new batch

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

Image 1Chuck Berry in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 2Led Zeppelin live at Chicago Stadium, January 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 3Foo Fighters performing an acoustic show in 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 4Bill Haley and his Comets performing in the 1954 Universal International film Round Up of Rhythm (from Rock and roll)
Image 5Big Joe Turner and Pete Johnson's record "Roll 'Em Pete" is regarded as a precursor to rock and roll. (from Rock and roll)
Image 6Little Richard in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 7Baker, Bruce and Clapton of Cream, whose blues rock improvisation was a major factor in the development of the genre (from Hard rock)
Image 8The Who on stage in 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 9Wolfmother, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 10Poison, seen here in 2008, were among the most successful acts of the 1980s glam metal era. (from Hard rock)
Image 11Rush on stage in Milan, Italy, 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 12Buddy Holly and his band, the Crickets (from Rock and roll)
Image 13Aerosmith performing at Quilmes Rock in Buenos Aires, Argentina on April 15, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 14Original member Izzy Stradlin' on stage with Guns N' Roses in 2006 (from Hard rock)
Image 15Golden Earring receives a gold record in 1970. (from Hard rock)
Image 16Drum notation for a backbeat (from Hard rock)
Image 17Kiss onstage in Boston in 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 18Sign commemorating the role of Alan Freed and Cleveland, Ohio, in the origins of rock and roll (from Rock and roll)
Image 19Nirvana were at the forefront of the 1990s grunge era. (from Hard rock)
Image 20Tommy Steele, one of the first British rock and rollers, performing in Stockholm in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 21"There's No Romance in Rock and Roll" made the cover of True Life Romance in 1956. (from Rock and roll)
Image 22Elvis Presley in a promotion shot for Jailhouse Rock in 1957 (from Rock and roll)

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The Dakota, Lennon's residence and the location of the killing.

On the evening of 8 December 1980, the English musician John Lennon, formerly of the Beatles, was shot and fatally wounded in the archway of the Dakota, his residence in New York City. The killer, Mark David Chapman, was an American Beatles fan who was jealous and enraged by Lennon's lifestyle, alongside his 1966 comment that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus". Chapman said he was inspired by the fictional character Holden Caulfield from J. D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye, a "phony-killer" who loathes hypocrisy.

Chapman planned the killing over several months and waited for Lennon at the Dakota on the morning of 8 December. Early in the evening, Chapman met Lennon, who signed his copy of the album Double Fantasy and subsequently left for a recording session at the Record Plant. Later that night, Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, returned to the Dakota. As Lennon and Ono approached the entrance of the building, Chapman fired five hollow-point bullets from a .38 special revolver, four of which hit Lennon in the back. Lennon was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital in a police car, where he was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:15 p.m. at age 40. Chapman remained at the scene reading The Catcher in the Rye until he was arrested by the police. It was later discovered that Chapman considered Lennon's friend David Bowie a target.

A worldwide outpouring of grief ensued; crowds gathered at Roosevelt Hospital and in front of the Dakota, and at least three Beatles fans died by suicide. The day following the murder, Lennon was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. In lieu of a funeral, Ono requested ten minutes of silence around the world. Chapman pleaded guilty to murdering Lennon and was given a sentence of twenty-years-to-life imprisonment. He has been denied parole thirteen times since he became eligible in 2000. (Full article...)

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Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often considered to be one of the greatest songwriters in history, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his 60-year career. He rose to prominence in the 1960s, when his songs "Blowin' in the Wind" (1963) and "The Times They Are a-Changin'" (1964) became anthems for the civil rights and antiwar movements. Initially modeling his style on Woody Guthrie's folk songs, Robert Johnson's blues, and what he called the "architectural forms" of Hank Williams's country songs, Dylan added increasingly sophisticated lyrical techniques to the folk music of the early 1960s, infusing it "with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry". His lyrics incorporated political, social, and philosophical influences, defying pop music conventions and appealing to the decade's burgeoning counterculture.

Dylan was born and raised in St. Louis County, Minnesota. Following his self-titled debut album of traditional folk songs in 1962, he made his breakthrough with The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan the next year. The album featured "Blowin' in the Wind" and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" which, like many of his early songs, adapted the tunes and phrasing of older folk songs. He released the politically charged The Times They Are a-Changin' and the more lyrically abstract and introspective Another Side of Bob Dylan in 1964. In 1965 and 1966, Dylan drew controversy among folk purists when he adopted electrically amplified rock instrumentation, and in the space of 15 months recorded three of the most influential rock albums of the 1960s: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited (both 1965) and Blonde on Blonde (1966). When Dylan made his move from acoustic folk and blues music to rock, the mix became more complex. His six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" (1965) expanded commercial and creative boundaries in popular music.

In July 1966, a motorcycle accident led to Dylan's withdrawal from touring. During this period, he recorded a large body of songs with members of the Band, who had previously backed him on tour. These recordings were later released as The Basement Tapes in 1975. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dylan explored country music and rural themes on John Wesley Harding (1967), Nashville Skyline (1969) and New Morning (1970). In 1975, he released Blood on the Tracks, which many saw as a return to form. In the late 1970s, he became a born-again Christian and released three albums of contemporary gospel music before returning to his more familiar rock-based idiom in the early 1980s. Dylan's Time Out of Mind (1997) marked the beginning of a career renaissance. He has released five critically acclaimed albums of original material since, most recently Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020). He also recorded a trilogy of albums covering the Great American Songbook, especially songs sung by Frank Sinatra, and an album smoothing his early rock material into a mellower Americana sensibility, Shadow Kingdom (2023). Dylan has toured continuously since the late 1980s on what has become known as the Never Ending Tour.

Since 1994, Dylan has published nine books of paintings and drawings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries. He has sold more than 145 million records, making him one of the best-selling musicians ever. He has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, ten Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award. Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2008, the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded him a special citation for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power." In 2016, Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." (Full article...)

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Smiley Smile is the 12th studio album by the American rock band the Beach Boys, released on September 18, 1967. Conceived as a simpler and more relaxed version of their unfinished Smile album, Smiley Smile is distinguished for its homespun arrangements, "stoned" aesthetic, and lo-fi production. Critics and fans generally received the album and its lead single, "Heroes and Villains", with confusion and disappointment. The album reached number 9 on UK record charts, but sold poorly in the U.S., peaking at number 41—the band's lowest chart placement to that point.

Following principal songwriter Brian Wilson's declaration that most of the original Smile tapes would be abandoned, the majority of the recording sessions lasted for six weeks at his makeshift home studio using radio broadcasting equipment, a detuned piano, electronic bass, melodica, found objects for percussion, and a Baldwin theater organ. The unconventional recording process juxtaposed an experimental party-like atmosphere with short pieces of music edited together in a disjointed manner, combining the engineering methods of "Good Vibrations" (1966) with the loose feeling of Beach Boys' Party! (1965). Despite leading these sessions, Wilson deliberately credited the album's production to the group collectively for the first time.

From late 1966 to mid-1967, Smile had been repeatedly delayed while the Beach Boys were subject to a considerable level of media hype proclaiming Wilson to be a "genius". After settling payment disputes with Capitol Records, Smiley Smile was distributed in collaboration with Brother Records, the band's new self-owned record company. A second single, "Gettin' Hungry", was credited to Wilson and Mike Love and failed to chart. Smile was left incomplete as the band immediately moved onto the recording of Lei'd in Hawaii, an unfinished live album featuring performances in the style of Smiley Smile, and Wild Honey, released in December 1967.

Smiley Smile has since become a critical and cult favorite, influencing the development of the lo-fi, ambient, and bedroom pop genres. It is often regarded as one of the finest chill-out albums for having positive effects on listeners experiencing an LSD comedown, a usage adopted by at least one drug clinic. In 1974, it was ranked number 64 in NME's list of the greatest albums of all time. Outtakes and session highlights from the album were included on the compilations The Smile Sessions (2011) and 1967 – Sunshine Tomorrow (2017). (Full article...)

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"The World Is Not Enough" is the theme song for the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough, performed by American rock band Garbage. The song was written by composer David Arnold (who also scored the film) and lyricist Don Black, previously responsible for four other Bond songs, and was produced by Garbage and Arnold. "The World Is Not Enough" was composed in the style of the series' title songs, in contrast with the post-modern production and genre-hopping of Garbage's first two albums. The group recorded most of "The World Is Not Enough" while touring Europe in support of their album Version 2.0, telephoning Arnold as he recorded the orchestral backing in London before travelling to England. Garbage later finished recording and mixing the song at Armoury Studios in Canada. The lyrics reflect the film's plot (told from the viewpoint of antagonist Elektra King), with themes of world domination and seduction.

The song and its accompanying soundtrack were released internationally by Radioactive Records when the film premiered worldwide at the end of November 1999. "The World Is Not Enough" was praised by reviewers; it reached the top 40 of ten singles charts and the top 10 of four. It was included on the James Bond compilation The Best of Bond... James Bond and Garbage's greatest hits album, Absolute Garbage. (Full article...)

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Credit: Ines Zgonc

Watercolour portrait of David Bowie by Ines Zgonc.

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Did you know (auto-generated)

... that Desulfovibrio vulgaris can remove toxic heavy metals from the environment?
... 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 Dutch radio and TV presenter Hanneke Kappen presented the second Dutch radio show dedicated to heavy metal music?
... 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 when rock musician Warren Zevon received a terminal diagnosis of lung cancer, he learned to "enjoy every sandwich"?
... that the British rock musician Hannah Grae went viral online with an anti-sexual harassment parody of Aqua's "Barbie Girl"?

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Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog) is a broad genre of rock music that primarily developed in the United Kingdom through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. Initially termed "progressive pop", the style was an emergence of psychedelic bands who abandoned standard pop traditions in favour of instrumentation and compositional techniques more frequently associated with jazz, folk, or classical music. Additional elements contributed to its "progressive" label: lyrics were more poetic, technology was harnessed for new sounds, music approached the condition of "art", and the studio, rather than the stage, became the focus of musical activity, which often involved creating music for listening rather than dancing. (Full article...)