10 Rock Bands That Invented Their Own Genre

You could probably start any argument right here and say that the Beatles invented the entire concept of the rock and roll band. Before you had rock solo artists in the past, until the Fab Four came along and presented four equal stars in the spotlight, which drove teenagers wild in the first half of the '60s. Once they abandoned the road for good, the next few years were about to get a lot more artsy.

Across their entire back catalog, you can see every one of the band members growing as writers, taking their songs into different sonic directions and using different effects at the time to get the sounds that they heard in their head. While countless genres have come from them, the Beatles' ideals for their work were the beginnings of what would be considered art rock these days, as they used the studio as an instrument unto itself.

When you look back on a record like Sgt. Peppers, you can hear them subtly toying with the parameters of what constituted rock on something like A Day in the Life, eventually getting to the point where they were able to make a full fledged medley of songs at the end of their final album Abbey Road. Although the calendar says that we only had the band for a little less than a decade, the body of work that they made in their later years is still miles ahead of the curve compared to what was going on amongst their peers. Some men may have been in it for the thrill of the road, but the Beatles were always interested in just how far they could push their music.