Rock
Rock is a broad family of popular music built on electric guitar, bass, drums and a strong backbeat, which grew out of 1950s rock and roll.
Most rock songs use a band line-up of guitars, bass and drums, a steady 4/4 beat and a sung verse and chorus. It took shape in the United States and Britain in the 1960s, drawing on blues, country and rhythm and blues. Today the word covers dozens of styles, from soft rock to punk and metal, so it works more as a heading than as one sound.
Artists it is known for: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin.
- Family
- Rock
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A broad heading
- From
- United States and United Kingdom, 1950s to 1960s
- Also called
- rock music
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 56%
About 46,000 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have rock among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Rock artists
Radiohead
Arctic Monkeys
Linkin Park
Deftones
The Smiths
Nirvana
The Beatles
Fleetwood Mac
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Queen
The 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.