Rock Music Styles blends musical commentary into an historical and social framework as it traces the development of rock music from its roots in country and blues to the most contemporary trends. Through well-chosen song examples and easy-to-read listening guides, students will experience firsthand the defining characteristics of rock styles and develop the ability to make connections between the popular music of yesterday and today.

An accessible introduction to the study of popular music, this book takes a schematic approach to a range of popular music genres, and examines them in terms of their antecedents, histories, visual aesthetics and socio-political contexts. At the centre of each chapter is a textual analysis of key examples of the genres concerned: soul, psychedelia, progressive rock, reggae, funk, heavy metal, punk rock, rap, synthpop, indie, jungle. Within this interdisciplinary and genre-based focus, readers will gain insights into the relationships between popular music, cultural history, economics, politics, iconography, production techniques, technology, marketing, and musical structure. Features*Introduces key terms and concepts in the study of popular music*Includes recommended further readings and audio texts at the end of each chapter*Provides a glossary of key theoretical terms for reference.

Rock Music Styles: A History, takes students on a musical journey through the development of rock music from its origins to its most contemporary styles. Charlton uses in-depth summaries and descriptions paired with a historical background to help immerse students in different musical genres. Learning from featured performers throughout the text and exploring important songs in new and revised Listening guides, students will be able to draw connections between musical developments throughout the decades. The eighth edition of Rock Music Styles: A History provides students a deeper understanding and appreciation of rock music styles in the 20th century and beyond.

One of Oprah Daily's 20 Favorite Books of 2021 • Selected as one of Pitchfork's Best Music Books of the Year “One of the best books of its kind in decades.” —The Wall Street Journal An epic achievement and a huge delight, the entire history of popular music over the past fifty years refracted through the big genres that have defined and dominated it: rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance music, and pop Kelefa Sanneh, one of the essential voices of our time on music and culture, has made a deep study of how popular music unites and divides us, charting the way genres become communities. In Major Labels, Sanneh distills a career’s worth of knowledge about music and musicians into a brilliant and omnivorous reckoning with popular music—as an art form (actually, a bunch of art forms), as a cultural and economic force, and as a tool that we use to build our identities. He explains the history of slow jams, the genius of Shania Twain, and why rappers are always getting in trouble. Sanneh shows how these genres have been defined by the tension between mainstream and outsider, between authenticity and phoniness, between good and bad, right and wrong. Throughout, race is a powerful touchstone: just as there have always been Black audiences and white audiences, with more or less overlap depending on the moment, there has been Black music and white music, constantly mixing and separating. Sanneh debunks cherished myths, reappraises beloved heroes, and upends familiar ideas of musical greatness, arguing that sometimes, the best popular music isn’t transcendent. Songs express our grudges as well as our hopes, and they are motivated by greed as well as idealism; music is a powerful tool for human connection, but also for human antagonism. This is a book about the music everyone loves, the music everyone hates, and the decades-long argument over which is which. The opposite of a modest proposal, Major Labels pays in full.

Pop music and rock music are often treated as separate genres but the distinction has always been blurred. Motti Regev argues that pop-rock is best understood as a single musical form defined by the use of electric and electronic instruments, amplification and related techniques. The history of pop-rock extends from the emergence of rock'n'roll in the 1950s to a variety of contemporary fashions and trends – rock, punk, soul, funk, techno, hip hop, indie, metal, pop and many more. This book offers a highly original account of the emergence of pop-rock music as a global phenomenon in which Anglo-American and many other national and ethnic variants interact in complex ways. Pop-rock is analysed as a prime instance of 'aesthetic cosmopolitanism' – that is, the gradual formation, in late modernity, of world culture as a single interconnected entity in which different social groupings around the world increasingly share common ground in their aesthetic perceptions, expressive forms and cultural practices. Drawing on a wide array of examples, this path-breaking book will be of great interest to students and scholars in cultural sociology, media and cultural studies as well as the study of popular music.

This thoroughly revised second edition of Allan Moore's ground-breaking book features new sections on melody, Britpop, authenticity, intertextuality, and an extended discussion of texture. Rock's 'primary text' - its sounds - is the focus of attention here. Allan Moore argues for the development of a musicology particular to rock within the context of the background to the genres, the beat and rhythm and blues styles of the early 1960s, 'progressive' rock and subsequent styles. He also explores the fundamental issue of rock as a medium for self-expression, and the relationship of this to changing musical styles. Rock: The Primary Text remains innovative in its exploration of an aesthetics of rock.

A fascinating exploration of the relationship between American culture and music as defined by musicians, scholars, and critics from around the world.

A stimulating and penetrating study of rock music, from rock 'n' roll to the present day.

British Rock Modernism, 1967-1977 explains how the definitive British rock performers of this epoch aimed, not at the youthful rebellion for which they are legendary, but at a highly self-conscious project of commenting on the business in which they were engaged. They did so by ironically appropriating the traditional forms of Victorian music hall. Faulk focuses on the mid to late 1960s, when British rock bands who had already achieved commercial prominence began to aspire to aesthetic distinction. The book discusses recordings such as the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour album, the Kinks' The Village Green Preservation Society, and the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, and television films such as the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour and the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus that defined rock's early high art moment. Faulk argues that these 'texts' disclose the primary strategies by which British rock groups, mostly comprised of young working and lower middle-class men, made their bid for aesthetic merit by sampling music hall sounds. The result was a symbolically charged form whose main purpose was to unsettle the hierarchy that set traditional popular culture above the new medium. Rock groups engaged with the music of the past in order both to demonstrate the comparative vitality of the new form and signify rock's new art status, compared to earlier British pop music. The book historicizes punk rock as a later development of earlier British rock, rather than a rupture. Unlike earlier groups, the Sex Pistols did not appropriate music hall form in an ironic way, but the band and their manager Malcolm McLaren were obsessed with the meaning of the past for the present in a distinctly modernist fashion.

From Elvis and the Beatles to Ray Charles and The Ramones, includes bios, historical context, extensive playlists, and rocking activities for the whole family!

In this concise and engaging analysis of rock music, music theorist Ken Stephenson explores the features that make this internationally popular music distinct from earlier music styles. The author offers a guided tour of rock music from the 1950s to the present, emphasizing the theoretical underpinnings of the style and, for the first time, systematically focusing not on rock music's history or sociology, but on the structural aspects of the music itself. What structures normally happen in rock music? What theoretical systems or models might best explain them? The book addresses these questions and more in chapters devoted to phrase rhythm, scales, key determination, cadences, harmonic palette and succession, and form. Each chapter provides richly detailed analyses of individual rock pieces from groups including Chicago; the Beatles; Emerson, Lake, and Palmer; Kansas; and others. Stephenson shows how rock music is stylistically unique, and he demonstrates how the features that make it distinct have tended to remain constant throughout the past half-century and within most substyles. For music students at the college level and for practicing rock musicians who desire a deeper understanding of their music, this book is an essential resource.

When Jimi Hendrix died, the idea of a black man playing lead guitar in a rock band seemed exotic. Yet ten years earlier, Chuck Berry had stood among the most influential rock and roll performers. Why did rock and roll become white? Jack Hamilton challenges the racial categories that distort standard histories of rock music and the 60s revolution.

Highlights everything needed to learn about rock music.

Now updated with two new chapters and an extraordinary collection of photographs, this second edition of Paul Friedlander's Rock and Roll: A Social History is a smash hit. The social force of rock and roll music leaps off the page as Paul Friedlander provides impressive insights based on hits from Johnny B. Goode to Smells Like Teen Spirit and beyond. In this musical journey, Friedlander offers the melodious strains and hard-edged riffs of Elvis, the Beatles, The Who, Dylan, Clapton, Hendrix, Motown, the San Francisco Beat, Punk, New Wave, rap, metal, 90's grunge, plus file sharing, and much more. The book is written in a refreshing, captivating style that pulls the reader in, offering no less than a complete social and cultural history of rock and roll for students and general audiences alike. Friedlander writes, 'This book chronicles the first forty years of rock/pop music history. Picture the various musical styles as locations on a giant unfolding road map. As you open the map, you travel from place to place, stopping at each chapter to sample the artistry. Don't forget to dress your imagination appropriately for this trip, because each genre is affected by the societal topography and climate that surround it. Enjoy your trip. We promise it will be a good one!'