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There are many years you can pin as the year it peaked based on genres.
1987 for hair/pop metal: Bon Jovi is riding off the success of Slippery When Wet the previous year land "Living On A Prayer" on top of the Billboard Hot 100, Aerosmith release Permanent Vacation off the heels of "Walk This Way" by Run DMC, Motley Crue releases Girls Girls Girls, Faster Pussycat debuts with their self-titled record, Def Leppard return huge with Hysteria off the back of "Pour Some Sugar on Me" after their drummer lost his arm, and Guns N Roses destroys the scene with Appetite for Destruction
1993 for grunge and "hard alternative": Pearl Jam had Vs., Nirvana came out with In Utero, The Smashing Pumpkins released Siamese Dream, Alice In Chains had "Rooster" and "What The Hell Have I?" become hits, Stone Temple Pilots had "Plush" and "Creep" released as singles, and Soundgarden were hard at work on 1994's Superunknown.
1995 for Punk: Rancid released Let's Go, Green Day releases their iconic Dookie, The Offspring releases Smash, Bad Religion released Stranger Than Fiction, NOFX releases Punk in Drublic, Woodstock 94 brings Green Day to mainstream prominence during the mud performance, and Blink-182 came out with their first album Cheshire Cat,
1999 for Nu-metal: Korn releases Issues, Limp Bizkit releases Significant Other, Staind released Dysfunction, Rage Agianst the Machine release The Battle of Los Angeles, Slipknot's self-titled debut is released, Make Yourself by Incubus is released, Methods of Mayhem release their self-title debut, and future hit (off "Butterfly") The Gift of Game by Crazy Town is released.
There are many years you can pin as the year it peaked based on genres.
1995 for Punk: Rancid released Let's Go, Green Day releases their iconic Dookie, The Offspring releases Smash, Bad Religion released Stranger Than Fiction, NOFX releases Punk in Drublic, Woodstock 94 brings Green Day to mainstream prominence during the mud performance, and Blink-182 came out with their first album Cheshire Cat,
I thought almost everyone agreed the best years for punk were 1976-80. The original Ramones, Clash, Dead Kennedys, X, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, etc. I'm not a massive fan of any of them, but better than freaking Rancid and Blink 182.
I thought almost everyone agreed the best years for punk were 1976-80. The original Ramones, Clash, Dead Kennedys, X, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, etc. I'm not a massive fan of any of them, but better than freaking Rancid and Blink 182.
I can see that. I was talking more wide audience wise. Musically, many of the classics could trample most of the Offspring and Blink stuff. Rancid and Green Day, depends on which album you pick from. The point is, sadly Ramones, Clash, Kennedys, Pistols or Buzzcocks, were not as mainstream as their 1994 counterparts who were more "pop punk" for argument sake.
The issue is we can say so many eras for so-many rock sub-genres. You can talk about original rockabilly and 50's rock'n'roll, Brit rock in the 60's, 70's hard rock, 70's metal, 70's punk, 80's glam, NWOBHM, 80's hardcore, grunge, 90's punk, nu-metal, metalcore, emo, screamo... That is whether or not you include if you go by popular, critical or fan criteria. Me I look at popular because to me this would be the biggest the year for that scene.
Personally for me, the peak is somewhere from the mid to late 60s up through the late 70s up until the early 80s... And I was born in 1979, so for me this isn't a nostalgia thing...
Going back I find that the albums and bands that came out from the British Invasion to the of Punk/New Wave/Post Punk eras contain the majority of the rock classics I love. And you had the biggest steps for the progression for rock music in that period. You went from earlier rock n' roll and R&B covers to the more complicated and progressive and artistic concept albums, into the heavier beginnings of proto punk and metal all the way up to the more electronic edge of some works of the late 70s(Bowie/Brian Eno/Talking Heads). Yes, there's been good artists since, but I don't find myself going back to the rock I grew up with in the early 90s or much of anything since that time period as much. A few artists in the last decade, but I still probably listen to more rock music from the late 60s and 70s than anything post 1983 or so...
I think as well while you had new movements in rock through the 80s and the 90s, since that period there's been less of anything that really feels new. Everything is based off past styles more and more to the point where they're not just influenced by them, but somewhat trying to copy the style of the era... Once the heavier edge rock music got past early hardcore and thrash metal into heavier death metal/grindcore styles in the 90s--it basically got to a point by the mid-90s where to go any faster and louder would just be pointless... The only new place rock music could really go that by the 2000s was to just to add more from electronic music and hiphop--and if take too much influence from those genres, eventually it stops being rock music and just ends up electronic music or hiphop.
There's good rock music out today, but there's nothing new about a lot of it for the most part. Eventually, rock music will just sort of be like blues or jazz--where it's popular to a niche audience and still popular live, but as a popular music or album form it's going to be a smaller segmented audience...
Rock peak where it started with Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and Little Richard.
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