10 Rock Bands That Invented Their Own Genre

From day one, Bob Dylan never wrote to really please any of his audience. As he turned into the Voice of His Generation almost by accident, he never wrote music thinking about what kind of dent it would make in the charts or anything. When you're that good at your craft though, it turns out that the charts will actually come to you.

Being more and more inspired by the rock and roll that he was hearing on the radio, Dylan ended up taking some inspiration from the British Invasion bands by working with a few more electric arrangements in his songs. While Bringing it All Back Home was a turning point, songs like Like a Rolling Stone was a sign that things were about to change, which infuriated Dylan's folk fanbase to no end. This two genres could co-exist, and Dylan became the progenitor of folk rock, with millions of plagiarists coming up in his wake.

You practically can't keep count on some of the imitators either, with everyone from Barry McGuire to the Byrds mining the same folky sound that Dylan was trying on, even covering some of his songs no less. If you were to ask him, Dylan probably doesn't care all that much about the trends that he pioneered or anything. This man is a songwriter first and foremost, and his mission is just to write another good song that registers with people.