10 Rock Bands That Invented Their Own Genre
4. The Velvet Underground
Back in the '60s, any of the more underground artists of rock were just that...underground. There was no such thing as left of the dial at the time, and bands that didn't have that kind of star power weren't really going to see the top of the charts any time soon. Rock was about to grow up though, and the Velvet Underground were determined to do whatever the hell they wanted on record.
With Lou Reed at the helm, everyone one of the Velvets' records had the mission to challenge the audience, like the abrasive sounds of White Light White Heat or flirting with folk rock and straight up noise on their debut with Nico. While it's easy to just call an album like this artsy by design, this is the kind of attitude that most indie rock artists thrive on today, almost taking pleasure in throwing caution to the wind and doing whatever you want to do.
Across their 4 studio albums, the Velvet Underground took their sound into as many far off places as they could, casually setting the stage for even other offshoot genres like punk or alternative rock in the process. Whereas the Beatles may have had their wild years, everything the Velvets tackled seems like a risk unto itself. And it takes a special kind of artist to have the mindset of 'I don't know if this is going to work, but I find it kind of beautiful and no one's going to stop me.'