Rock - Authenticity, Commercialism, Genres: Madonna can be described as a rock star (and not just a disco performer or teen idol) because she articulated rock culture’s defining paradox: the belief that this music—produced, promoted, and sold by extremely successful and sophisticated multinational corporations—is nonetheless somehow noncommercial. It is noncommercial not in its processes ...
Rock is a form of popular music that emerged in the 1950s and that by the end of the 20th century was the world’s dominant form of popular music. It originated in the United States and spread to other English-speaking countries and across Europe in the 1960s.
Rock - Pioneers, Genres, Legends: For lexicographers and legislators alike, the purpose of definition is to grasp a meaning, to hold it in place, so that people can use a word correctly—for example, to assign a track to its proper radio outlet (rock, pop, country, jazz). The trouble is that the term rock describes an evolving musical practice informed by a variety of nonmusical arguments ...
Rock became the most inclusive of musical genres; if other kinds of music—e.g., classical, jazz, easy listening, country, folk, etc.—are marketed as minority interests, rock defines the musical mainstream. Rock's origins lie in rock and roll, a new form of American popular music in the 1950s that was personified early on by Elvis Presley.
Rock, in geology, naturally occurring and coherent aggregate of one or more minerals. Such aggregates constitute the basic unit of which the solid Earth is composed and typically form recognizable and mappable volumes. The three major classes of rock are igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rock.