National Recording Registry: Rock

"You know what I hate about rock music? I hate tie-dyed T-shirts." - Kurt Cobain

The Library of Congress does not recognize rock as a genre. I have deemed, somewhat arbitrarily, twenty-five and a half hours of the "pop" recordings to be a separate genre known as rock, including works that might be called punk, new wave, metal, or grunge.

Rock music emerged in the 1950s when White artists, most notably Elvis Presley, began to sing music rather similar to blues or rhythm and blues. During the 1960s, rock music became a major component of pop (and was heavily fused with folk). Artists such as the Beatles experimented with new techniques, such as tape loops and backwards recordings. Jimi Hendrix is often credited with the first deliberate use of electric guitar feedback in music (he even wrote a note to his record label to explain that it was deliberate); the distorted electric guitar has been a staple of the genre ever since.

Rock music would go through phases, such as punk in the 1970s, when it became angry and countercultural, metal in the 1980s, when it became angry and countercultural, and grunge in the 1990s, when it became angry and countercultural. The Registry names a few from each of these, but focuses unusually heavily on rock albums from the late 1960s, including five albums from 1967, and two from '66 and '69 each.