History of Rock and Roll Part III

In this continuation, we will discuss the rock music of the '80s and '90s. At this point in time there were many new amazing bands and new genres, but rock had somewhat reached a pinnacle. With an increasingly bloated sound in the 80s, the 90s ushered in a new renaissance for rock music.

While the legendary superstars of the decade before continued to reign, newer bands such as AC/DC and The Police were reaching their height of fame. AC/DC's album Back in Black ushered in a peak of success for the band, creating some of rock's most memorable riffs:

The punk scene was at an all time high as well, with bands such as Black Flag and The Dead Kennedys paving the way. They were not the first wave of punk rockers, such as Iggy Pop and The Sex Pistols in the '70s, but this time period could be seen as a golden age for punk rock. The creation of punk rock was both in rebellion of politics and of the current mainstream rock music that was being produced.

The '80s are notorious for sometimes having an "over-produced" sound, with heavy reverb and compression, giving to our ears a sometimes "cheesy" quality. Hair metal bands such as Motley Crue, Def Leppard, Poison and Bon Jovi capitalized on good looks, outrageous fashion and simple music with catchy choruses.

On this Def Leppard track notice the highly overdubbed (doubled) sound of the guitars, along with massive reverb (echo) placed on the drums. While the chorus is catchy, it is nothing of the rock music we've experienced in past decades:

With this type of sound being churned out at factory pace by record companies, both new bands and audience members were growing tired of the same manufactured sound. This ushered in the grunge era of the '90s, particularly with a band called Nirvana. Grunge was somewhat like punk rock in attitude and lyrical content. One defining factor of grunge is that it was usually slower and "heavier" than other genres of rock, relying on lots of distortion.

This Nirvana track contains a lot of distortion, but it sounds different than it's '80s hair metal predecessors. The lyrics are also much more cynical, and is not necessarily meant to be a catchy pop song:

Other great grunge bands to check out are The Smashing Pumpkins, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden.