Rock music

Rock music is a genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the 1950s.

Rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature using a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse.

Typically there is a quartet lineup for a rock band comprising lead vocalist, drummer, guitarist and bassist.

Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2006, showing a rock lineup. By flickr user xPassenger,

Rock had its beginnings in the blues, gospel music, and jazz-influenced vocal music popular among African-American audiences after World War II. Most of these kinds of black popular music were given the label rhythm and blues (or R & B) and were played on big-city radio stations. It was the power of radio that spread this music's appeal from black communities to towns throughout all of the United States. The developed into rock and roll, the most popular music of the late 1950s.

Rock developed from rock and roll with the British invasion of the mid 1960s by beat groups like the Beatles, Herman's Hermits and The Rolling Stones.

The Beatles arriving in New York in 1964 at the beginning of the British Invasion

By the late 1960s, a number of distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, psychedelic rock and jazz-rock. New genres that emerged included progressive rock and heavy metal. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock burst on the scene which was an influence in the 1980s on new wave, post-punk, synth pop 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, rap rock, and rap metal.

The Kinks' 1964 hit single "You Really Got Me" is considered the first hard rock recording, Dave Davies came up with the distorted guitar sound by slitting the speaker cone on his amp with a razor blade.

The 1967 American comedy movie The Graduate became one of the first major films to use rock music in its soundtrack, using songs written by Paul Simon (notably, "Mrs Robinson', which became a huge hit).

In 1969 Lillian Roxon wrote the first rock encyclopedia beginning the modern era of music criticism.

Paul McCartney played every instrument on his solo albums McCartney and McCartney II.

The first all-female hard-rock band was formed in 1975 when producer Kim Fowley puts together The Runaways, featuring Joan Jett, future Bangle Michael Steele, Sandy West, Cherie Currie and Lita Ford.

1976 promotional photo of The Runaways 

The Clash's "Rock The Casbah" was written after the banning of rock music in Iran.

The Billy Gibbons/DustyHill/FrankBeard trio has been in place since 1970. That’s enough to make ZZ Top the longest-running group with an unchanged line-up in the entire history of rock music.

It is now estimated more Ramones t-shirts have been sold worldwide than Ramones albums.

Human fetuses react to loud rock music by kicking.