Hard Rock
Hard rock is a loud, aggressive form of rock built on distorted electric guitar riffs, heavy drums and powerful vocals.
It grew out of blues rock, garage rock and psychedelic rock in the mid-to-late 1960s in Britain and the United States. Songs are riff-driven, usually with a guitar solo and a shouted or high, forceful lead vocal. It is heavier than standard rock but keeps more blues feel and swing than heavy metal, which split off from it in the 1970s.
Artists it is known for: Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Deep Purple, Guns N' Roses.
- Family
- Rock
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A genre
- From
- United Kingdom and United States, mid-1960s
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 16%
About 13,000 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have hard rock among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Hard Rock artists
Metallica
Alice In Chains
Guns N' Roses
AC/DC
Pantera
Led Zeppelin
Black Sabbath
Stone Temple Pilots
Megadeth
Soundgarden
The hard rock artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.
Sources
The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.