Inheriting the folk tradition of the protest song, rock music has been associated with political activism, as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex, and drug use, and is often seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism and conformity.

[34] Soon rock and roll was the major force in American record sales and crooners, such as Eddie Fisher, Perry Como, and Patti Page, who had dominated the previous decade of popular music, found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed.

By 1959, the death of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens in a plane crash, the departure of Elvis for the army, the retirement of Little Richard to become a preacher, prosecutions of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry and the breaking of the payola scandal (which implicated major figures, including Alan Freed, in bribery and corruption in promoting individual acts or songs), gave a sense that the rock and roll era established at that point had come to an end.

[47] Several artists, most prominently Tommy Steele from the UK, found success with covers of major American rock and roll hits before the recordings could spread internationally, often translating them into local languages where appropriate.

[58] The instrumental rock and roll of performers such as Duane Eddy, Link Wray and the Ventures was further developed by Dick Dale, who added distinctive "wet" reverb, rapid alternate picking, and Middle Eastern and Mexican influences.

[70] During the next two years, British acts dominated their own and the US charts with Peter and Gordon, the Animals,[75] Manfred Mann, Petula Clark,[75] Freddie and the Dreamers, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, Herman's Hermits, the Rolling Stones,[76] the Troggs, and Donovan[77] all having one or more number one singles.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, including the controversial track "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", the Rolling Stones responded later that year with Their Satanic Majesties Request,[115] and Pink Floyd debuted with The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

[120] From the mid-1960s, the Left Banke, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys, had pioneered the inclusion of harpsichords, wind, and string sections on their recordings to produce a form of Baroque rock and can be heard in singles like Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" (1967), with its Bach-inspired introduction.

[123] The Pretty Things' SF Sorrow (1968), the Kinks' Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969), and the Who's Tommy (1969) introduced the format of rock operas and opened the door to concept albums, often telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme.

[120] The vibrant Canterbury scene saw acts following Soft Machine from psychedelia, through jazz influences, toward more expansive hard rock, including Caravan, Hatfield and the North, Gong, and National Health.

[127] There was an emphasis on instrumental virtuosity, with Yes showcasing the skills of both guitarist Steve Howe and keyboard player Rick Wakeman, while Emerson, Lake & Palmer were a supergroup who produced some of the genre's most technically demanding work.

[129] Most British bands depended on a relatively small cult following, but a handful, including Pink Floyd, Genesis, and Jethro Tull, managed to produce top ten singles at home and break the American market.

In popular music, embracing the '70s meant both an elitist withdrawal from the messy concert and counterculture scene and a profiteering pursuit of the lowest common denominator in FM radio and album rock.Rock saw greater commodification during this decade, turning into a multibillion-dollar industry and doubling its market while, as Christgau noted, suffering a significant "loss of cultural prestige".

[141] The same movement saw the beginning of the recording careers of Californian solo artists like Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt and Lowell George,[142] and influenced the work of established performers such as the Rolling Stones' Beggar's Banquet (1968) and the Beatles' Let It Be (1970).

Led Zeppelin added elements of fantasy to their riff laden blues-rock, Deep Purple brought in symphonic and medieval interests from their progressive rock phase and Black Sabbath introduced facets of the gothic and modal harmony, helping to produce a "darker" sound.

[171] These elements were taken up by a "second generation" of hard rock and heavy metal bands into the late-1970s, including: Judas Priest, UFO, Motörhead and Rainbow from Britain; Kiss, Ted Nugent, and Blue Öyster Cult from the US; Rush from Canada and Scorpions from Germany, all marking the expansion in popularity of the subgenre.

[180] Led by figures who had initially been identified with punk and New Wave, it was most strongly influenced by acts such as Bob Dylan, the Byrds, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Van Morrison, and the basic rock of 1960s garage and the Rolling Stones.

[181] Exemplified by the commercial success of singer songwriters Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, and Tom Petty, along with less widely known acts such as Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes and Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers, it was partly a reaction to post-industrial urban decline in the East and Mid-West, often dwelling on issues of social disintegration and isolation, beside a form of good-time rock and roll revivalism.

[181] Many heartland rock artists continued to record with critical and commercial success, most notably Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and John Mellencamp, although their output became more personal and experimental, no longer fitting a specific genre.

The Sex Pistols' live TV skirmish with Bill Grundy on 1 December 1976, was the watershed moment in British punk's transformation into a major media phenomenon, even as some stores refused to stock the records and radio airplay was hard to come by.

[208] The second generation of British post-punk bands that broke through in the early 1980s, including the Fall, the Pop Group, the Mekons, Echo and the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes, tended to move away from dark sonic landscapes.

[223] However, with the death of Kurt Cobain and the subsequent break-up of Nirvana in 1994, touring problems for Pearl Jam and the departure of Alice in Chains' lead singer Layne Staley in 1998, the genre began to decline, partly to be overshadowed by Britpop and more commercial sounding post-grunge.

[228] Bands like Creed and Nickelback took post-grunge into the 21st century with considerable commercial success, abandoning most of the angst and anger of the original movement for more conventional anthems, narratives and romantic songs, and were followed in this vein by newer acts including Shinedown, Seether, 3 Doors Down and Puddle of Mudd.

[231] In 1994, Green Day moved to a major label and produced the album Dookie, which found a new, largely teenage, audience and proved a surprise diamond-selling success, leading to a series of hit singles, including two number ones in the US.

[234] A second wave of pop-punk was spearheaded by Blink-182, with their breakthrough album Enema of the State (1999), followed by bands such as Good Charlotte, Simple Plan and Sum 41, who made use of humour in their videos and had a more radio-friendly tone to their music, while retaining the speed, some of the attitude and even the look of 1970s punk.

[240] Space rock looked back to progressive roots, with drone heavy and minimalist acts like Spacemen 3, the two bands created out of its split, Spectrum and Spiritualized, and later groups including Flying Saucer Attack, Godspeed You!

[251] This paved the way for the success of existing bands like 24-7 Spyz and Living Colour, and new acts including Rage Against the Machine and Red Hot Chili Peppers, who all fused rock and hip hop among other influences.

[263][264] Drawn from across the United Kingdom (with several important bands emerging from the north of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), the themes of their music tended to be less parochially centered on British, English and London life and more introspective than had been the case with Britpop at its height.

[295] Ken Partridge of Genius suggested that hip-hop became more popular because it is a more transformative genre and does not need to rely on past sounds, and that there is a direct connection to the stagnation of rock music and changing social attitudes during the 2010s.

[322][323][324][325] Post-punk artists that attained prominence in the 2010s and early-2020s from other countries besides the UK included Parquet Courts, Protomartyr and Geese (United States), Preoccupations (Canada), Iceage (Denmark), and Viagra Boys (Sweden).