1970s Rock

The Doors

Rock, pioneered in Britain by The Rolling Stones, grew from the UK Rhythm and Blues scene of the 1960s. It featured heavy rhythms, often distorted guitars and a fairly fast speed. Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath produced heavier versions paving the way for Heavy Metal.

Marc Bolan

Glam rock was a highly theatrical style developed in the 1970s by David Bowie and Marc Bolan of the band T-rex, who often wore glamorous costumes and heavy make up and through this achieved a controversial androgynous look.

The songs were short with catchy hooks and melodies and an emphasis on a rock 'n roll sound.

Disco and Funk

1970s onward

The Bee Gees

Disco: the most popular dance style of the 1970's, disco developed from the Motown sound. Good examples are: Musique, Chic, The Village People and Donna Summer. Disco was at its peak on the release of the film Saturday Night Fever whose soundtrack featured The Bee Gees. Steady bass drum beats were a feature of disco music. Disco is still very popular and can be heard in many night clubs around the world.

Earth, Wind and Fire

Funk: often associated with Disco, Funk music featured Horn (brass) sections, syncopated rhythms and vocal group harmonies. Earth Wind and Fire, Oddysey, Parliment, Funkadelic and The Brothers Johnson were some bands playing in this style.

Reggae and Dub Reggae

1970s onward

Bob Marley

Reggae began in 1968 with the release of 'Do the Reggay' by Toots and the Maytals. Later Bob Marley took the 'Ska' music of the shantytowns in Kingston, Jamaica, slowed the tempo and introduced a much heavier bass whilst retaining the strong upbeat, his name became synonymous with Reggae.

Dub reggae was developed by Jamaican 'deejays' who began to rap over the instrumental B-sides of Reggae singles to make a new, Dub version of the song. Dub reggae in turn evolved into Reggae deejay or Dancehall music.

In the 1990's this style evolved further with Electro dub reggae which had a synthesised bass line, and was a big hit on the London club scene.

Pop and Synth pop

1970s onward

Abba

Pop in this context means middle of the road music - not too challenging and appealing to many different tastes.The Carpenters and Abba are examples of pop bands.

Synth pop is characterised by the use of synthesisers (brought out by Moog in 1970) to bend the sound. Tangerine Dream was an early synth band, but the most influential exponents of synth pop were the German band Kraftwerk who used powerful 'industrial' sounds: Autobahn (1974) was one of their many hits.

Depeche Mode

Synth continued in the late 1970s with Gary Numan and David Bowie, and into the 1980s with bands like Depeche Mode, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, New Order and Visage.

Heavy Metal and 1980s Rock

Late 1970s onward

Thin Lizzy

Heavy Metal was highly amplified form of electronic rock with a hard beat, distorted guitar and frequent long instrumental solos. Bands such as Motorhead, AC/DC, Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy and many others played in this style.

Thrash metal and Death Metal take this music even further, with a harder and faster playing style. Megadeth and Metallica are examples.

1980s Rock

U2 © PA News

This was a development of 1970s rock music with elaborate guitar solos and a heavy beat. Examples are U2, The Police, Bryan Adams, Bruce Springsteen and Guns'n Roses.

Punk

Late 1970s onward

Punk music was raw, abrasive and fast. Distorted guitars were played wildly and the lyrics were often designed to shock.

The Sex Pistols © PA News

British punk was represented by The Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Buzzcocks - New York punk by Blondie, The Ramones and Talking Heads.

Recent years have seen a revival of American punk with bands such as Blink 182 and Green Day.

New Romantic

1980s

Duran Duran © PA News

This music developed from synth pop and featured synthesisers and drum machines. New Romantic bands such as Adam Ant, Teardrop Explodes, ABC, Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran had a huge following in the early 1980's.

This has a very polished pop sound and bands often wore glamorous clothes and make-up.

Rap

1980s onward

Rap uses the spoken word as a rhythmic instrument. Rap DJs often use scratching and back spinning on vinyl discs to create the sound style for the vocalist to rap over.

Its roots are in the toasting of Jamaican DJs who spoke over rhythm and blues records, and in New York black street culture - where it went together with graffiti art,Hip-Hop and Break Dancing (so called because of the break-beats or short rhythmic phrases mixed together by 1970s DJs).

Public Enemy © Retna Pictures Ltd.

It was often a highly political style whose lyrics could include very controversial statements. Public Enemy rapped about black social issues, making political statements about black rights, racism and police brutality.

N.W.A. also rapped about contentious topics, and started Gangster Rap.

The music crossed over to a much larger - indeed world-wide - audience with the band Run-DMC whose records were a hit with white audiences as well as black.

Techno and House

Mid 1980s onward

Techno was a specific form of dance music - influenced by both Disco music and Dub - developed by DJs in the dance clubs of Detroit. It featured samples or cuts from tracks, loops and digital effects produced on synthesisers and computers - together with driving, repetitive drum-and-bass lines.

House music (named from the Warehouse club in Chicago) was developed by DJs out of Disco and Dub in the early 1980s. UK House hits of the late 1980s included 'Love Can't Turn Around' and 'Jack Your Body'. Records like this made stars of the DJs and engineers who produced and played the music.

A later spin-off was Acid House, which featured a wobbly baseline and trance-like sound and was very influential in the UK Rave scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Techno band Orbital

From the 1990s onwards electronic dance music spawned numerous variants including Techno Trance, Goa Trance, Dub, Hardcore and Gabba.

In the mid 1990s a different dance music form, Jungle became popular, this grew around the London club scene, and is influenced by Techno, Hip-hop and Ragga. It is now known as Drum and Bass and features a fast tumbling beat and an emphasis on the drum and bass sounds, a good example is music by Goldie or Roni Size.

Grunge

1990s

Grunge was a hard-sounding rock-based music pioneered by American bands mostly based in Seattle in the north-west United States: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Mudhoney, former metal-rocker Soundgarden, and Temple of the Dog.

Kurt Cobain

Grunge was a reaction against American soft rock by a disillusioned and bored 'Generation X'. Its lyrics often dealt with difficult issues such as drugs and mental illness.

When Nirvana's front-man Kurt Cobain committed suicide in 1994 he was quickly elevated to cult status.

Brit pop

1990s

Oasis

Brit Pop arrived in the early 1990s in part as a reaction to the dominance of American Grunge bands. It was usually guitar-and-drum based rock, sometimes with orchestral backing. Though varying in musical style, bands such as Blur, Oasis and Pulp were all labelled Brit Pop.

Brit Pop is an eclectic sound drawing on many musical styles of the previous 40 years - especially the music of The Beatles, Mod bands of the 60s like The Who, Rocker bands like The Rolling Stones, and Punk bands like The Sex Pistols .

As with The Stones and The Beatles, some Brit Pop bands achieved success in America and emerged as 'superstars'.

Boy/Girl bands

1990s onward

Take That

These are highly 'produced' bands carefully designed to appeal to a specific, usually young-teenage audience. Sometimes they are actually put together to a formula by music producers (something first done with The Monkees as early as the 1960s).

Examples from the 1990s include Take That, The Spice Girls and Boyzone

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