art rock

The tradition & historical record

Art rock is rock music that aims to distinguish the genre from popular entertainment, with the term typically being applied as the middle ground between mainstream and experimental rock. Art rock primarily draws influences from the wider art world and academia; which includes contemporary art, art music, avant-garde art, experimental music, avant-garde music, alongside classical music and jazz. The term is sometimes deployed interchangeably with "progressive rock" and to refer to some experimental rock acts. Critics have defined art rock as a "rejection" of rock music intended solely for the purpose of popular entertainment or dancing. The term was closely associated with a specific period beginning over 1966 and 1967. Its usage waned after the late-1970s while elements of the style were infused into various popular music genres through the 1990s. ¹

In the academic perspective of music critics, such as those for The New York Times, high art and pop music had increasingly engaged with each other throughout the second half of the 20th century. Historically, the term has been used to describe at least two related, but distinct, types of rock music. One usage refers to groups who rejected psychedelia and the hippie counterculture in favour of a modernist, avant-garde approach defined by the Velvet Underground. Essayist Ellen Willis compared these two types: ¹

From the early sixties... there was a counter-tradition in rock and roll that had much more in common with high art—in particular avant-garde art—than the ballyhooed art-rock synthesis [progressive rock]; it involved more or less consciously using the basic formal canons of rock and roll as material (much as pop artists used mass art in general) and refining, elaborating, playing off that material to produce... rockand-roll art. While art rock was implicitly based on the claim that rock and roll was or could be as worthy as more established art forms, rock-and-roll art came out of an obsessive commitment to the language of rock and roll and an equally obsessive disdain for those who rejected that language or wanted it watered down, made easier... the new wave has inherited the counter-tradition. Art rock frequently intertwines with "serious music". Critic John Rockwell described the term as referring to wide-ranging and eclectic tendencies in rock music. The Encyclopedia Britannica states that "art rock" was frequently applied to strains of experimental rock music, including work by Laurie Anderson, David Bowie, Brian Eno, the Velvet Underground, and Frank Zappa. ¹

The earliest figure of art rock has been assumed to be record producer and songwriter Phil Spector, who became known as an auteur for his Wall of Sound productions that aspired to a "classical grandiosity". According to biographer Richard Williams, Spector transformed rock music from a performing art into an art that could only exist in the recording studio, which "paved the way for art rock". The Beach Boys' leader Brian Wilson is cited by biographer Peter Ames Carlin as the forerunner of "a new kind of art-rock that would combine the transcendent possibilities of art with the mainstream accessibility of pop music". Critic Stephen Holden says that mid-1960s recordings by the Beatles, Spector and Wilson are often identified as marking the start of art pop, which preceded the "bombastic, classically inflected" art rock that started in the late 1960s. Writing in 1972, music journalist Nat Freedland of Billboard magazine, stated "during the golden period of the mid '60s, Bob Dylan and the Beatles led the way to an expansion of rock into an area of art songs with a beat". Many of the top British groups during the 1960s and 1970s – including members of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who, 10cc, the Move, the Yardbirds and Pink Floyd – came to music via art school. This institution differed from its US counterpart in terms of having a less industry-applicable syllabus and in its focus on furthering eccentric talent. By the mid-1960s, several of these acts espoused an approach based on art and originality, where previously they had been absorbed solely in authentic interpretation of US-derived musical styles, such as rock 'n' roll and R&B. ¹

The December 1965 release of the Beatles' Rubber Soul has been regarded as signifying a watershed for the form of the pop album. The album garnered recognition for the Beatles as artists from the American mainstream press due to the use of unconventional studio techniques and instruments which were not popular in rock music at the time. Writing in 1968, Gene Sculatti of Jazz & Pop recognised Rubber Soul as "the definitive 'rock as art' album" and "the necessary prototype" that major artists such as the Rolling Stones (with Aftermath) and the Beach Boys had felt compelled to follow. According to Bandcamp Daily, the record was "one of the premier art rock albums". ¹

The period when rock music became most closely aligned with the contemporary art world began in 1966 and continued until the mid-1970s. Academic Michael Johnson associates "the first documented moments of ascension in rock music" to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (May 1966). Biographer David Leaf wrote that the album heralded art rock, while Cue magazine described the Beach Boys as having been "among the vanguard" with regard to art rock, among many other aspects relating to the counterculture through late 1967. Jacqueline Edmondson's 2013 encyclopaedia Music in American Life states that, although it was preceded by earlier examples, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention's debut album Freak Out! (June 1966) came to be seen as "the first successful incorporation of art music in a pop context". ¹

English band Roxy Music have been credited as "art rock pioneers". British newspaper The Economist labeled Roxy Music "the best art-rock band since the Beatles". Adding that, "They are, quite simply, the greatest art-rock group Britain has produced this side of the Beatles." Enthusiasm for usage of the term in music criticism and journalism waned in the mid-1970s. From then to the 1990s, art rock was infused within various popular music genres. Encyclopædia Britannica states that its genre's tendencies were continued by some British and American hard rock and pop rock artists, and that Brian Eno's late 1970s and early 1980s collaborations with David Bowie and Talking Heads are exemplary of "the successful infusion of art rock tendencies into other popular music genres". Bowie and Eno collaborated on a series of consecutive albums called the "Berlin Trilogy", characterised as an "art rock trifecta" by Consequence of Sound, who noted that at the time of their release, "The experimental records weren't connecting with audiences on the scale Bowie was used to... ¹

During the 1980s, Talk Talk was described as "art-rock pioneers" by the Quietus. At the time, many of the original art rock artists of the 1970s had abandoned their experimental sound. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Art rock”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

art rock is subgenre of rock music, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 16 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²