Rock 'N' Roll

Overview

Rock 'n' roll is a form of popular music that originated in the American South in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The genre combines elements of other American musical styles—including blues, country, gospel, R&B, Tin Pan Alley, and jazz.

Jackie Brenston's "Rocket 88" is now widely considered the genre's starting point, particularly for its use of distorted electric guitar, a defining feature that would shape the genre for decades. By the 1960s, rock 'n' roll was a part of the American mainstream and was spreading outside the country, too.

In the decades to follow, rock music continued evolving and splintering into various styles and subgenres—including funk, punk, glam, new wave, metal, goth, and indie—and influenced other iconoclastic pop forms like dance and hip-hop. While rock 'n' roll was once denigrated as unserious pop culture, it's now considered serious literature, with its own critics, historians, and even a Nobel laureate.

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