10 Bands That Changed Rock And Roll
Rock's Mount Rushmore.
Every so often, any genre can feel stagnated after a while. I mean, you can only play the same type of song over and over again before you started looking for something else to grab onto. While it might be hard to move yourself forward, it becomes easier when you have the titans of music leading the way.
As long as rock and roll has been alive, there have been those handful of bands that have steered us towards the next chapter of music. Whether it was the style of music they performed or their innovations behind the scenes, these were the defining moments for the genre that made everyone rethink what they were doing. As opposed to just kicking back on a formula they knew worked, these were the acts they stuck their necks on the line and came out on the other side with some of the greatest music ever recorded.
Hell, sometimes the music doesn't have to be perfect from back to front, but it speaks more to the general ethos of rock and roll. This was not meant to be perfect at first, so it's best to make as much of an impact while you still can. Love them or hate them, the echoes of these bands' songs are still reverberating throughout the rock world.
10. Arctic Monkeys
At the turn of the century, it looked like rock was on the verge of breathing its last breath. I mean, if the best new sounds we could have hoped for were coming from the whiny sounds of pop punk and people trying to relive the '70s all over again, we weren't exactly looking at anything becoming timeless any time soon. Even though rock hadn't been relevant since grunge came and went, Arctic Monkeys recontextualized the way we all looked at bringing music to the masses.
Like most upstart bands, the Monkeys already got their start on their indie label, but it wasn't until their fans started to share their music on a little website called MySpace that things really started to pick up. Before iTunes became the cultural juggernaut that it is today, this was one of the first post-Napster success stories that launched a band into the mainstream.
All of a sudden, these bunch of kids who were singing about the grimy side of English party life were going from playing on their native boardwalks to becoming one of the mainstays at Glastonbury for years to come. There's probably a reason why the mainstream turned a blind eye to rock, but in Alex Turner's own words, rock is alive and there's nothing you can do about it.