It is certainly arguable that by the end of the 20th century Rock was the world’s dominant form of popular music. Originating in the United States in the 1950s, it spread to other English-speaking countries and across Europe in the ’60s, and by the ’90s its impact was obvious globally (if in many different local guises). Rock’s commercial importance was by then reflected in the organization of the multinational recording industry, in the sales racks of international record retailers, and in the playlist policies of music radio and television. If other kinds of music—classical, jazz, easy listening, country, folk, etc.—are marketed as minority interests, rock defines the musical mainstream. And so over the last half of the 20th century it became the most inclusive of musical labels—everything can be “rocked”—and in consequence the hardest to define. To answer the question, What is rock?, one first has to understand where it came from and what made it possible. And to understand rock’s cultural significance one has to understand how it works socially as well as musically.

What is rock? » The difficulty of definition
Dictionary definitions of rock are problematic, not least because the term has different resonance in its British and American usages (the latter is broader in compass). There is basic agreement that rock “is a form of music with a strong beat,” but it is difficult to be much more explicit. The Collins Cobuild English Dictionary, based on a vast database of British usage, suggests that “rock is a kind of music with simple tunes and a very strong beat that is played and sung, usually loudly, by a small group of people with electric guitars and drums,” but there are so many exceptions to this description that it is practically useless.

Legislators seeking to define rock for regulatory purposes have not done much better. The Canadian government defined “rock and rock-oriented music” as “characterized by a strong beat, the use of blues forms and the presence of rock instruments such as electric guitar, electric bass, electric organ or electric piano.” This assumes that rock can be marked off from other sorts of music formally, according to its sounds. In practice, though, the distinctions that matter for rock fans and musicians have been ideological. Rock was developed as a term to distinguish certain music-making and listening practices from those associated with pop; what was at issue was less a sound than an attitude. In 1990 British legislators defined pop music as “all kinds of music characterized by a strong rhythmic element and a reliance on electronic amplification for their performance.” This led to strong objections from the music industry that such a definition failed to appreciate the clear sociological difference between pop (“instant singles-based music aimed at teenagers”) and rock (“album-based music for adults”). In pursuit of definitional clarity, the lawmakers misunderstood what made rock music matter.

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