Overview
During the 1990s and 2000s, rock musicians began mixing and matching genres to create new sounds and styles. In this lesson, we consider several different rock music hybrids. In the first section, we will look at the music of artists who combined rock instrumentation with rapped lyrics. In the second section, we will look at two artists who drew from rock as well as genres including (but not limited to) hip-hop, experimental music, blues, folk, funk, and classical music.
Objectives
- Recall how the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine, and Kid Rock combined the aesthetics of rap and rock in their music
- Recall the eclectic musical styles of Radiohead and Beck in the context of the many different genres they drew upon in their music
Everything but the Kitchen Sink
British band Radiohead is one of the most eclectic and difficult-to-define artists of the last few decades. The band's members include guitarist, pianist, and vocalist Thom Yorke, guitarist and keyboardist Johnny Greenwood, guitarist Ed O'Brien, bassist Colin Greenwood, and drummer Phil Selway.
Radiohead's music deals with themes of loneliness and isolation, and their sound combines electronic effects, avant-garde experiments, contrasting dynamic levels, and textural shifts, yet they also often write songs that are relatively straightforward examples of guitar-driven rock. At times, they employ three lead guitars in their music, a throwback to the country rock of the Allman Brothers Band or Lynyrd Skynyrd. Radiohead's first successful single was 1992's "Creep ♫." "Creep ♫" is a song about obsession, and that theme is echoed in the guitar figure that is repeated throughout the song. Just before each chorus of "Creep ♫," guitarist Greenwood plays three unpitched blasts of guitar noise, which provides a jarring contrast to the subdued atmosphere of the verses.
Radiohead's third album, OK Computer (1997), was heavily influenced by the sounds of Bitches Brew, the 1969 jazz fusion album by Miles Davis. The group also drew inspiration from the studio music of the Beatles, in particular "A Day in the Life ♫," as well as Krautrock and progressive rock. The single "Paranoid Android ♫" eschews traditional forms such as verse-chorus, an emulation of rock songs such as Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody ♫." "Karma Police ♫" refers to the Hindu notion of karma, which hearkens back to the Eastern philosophy that was so important to many musicians in the psychedelic rock movement, including the Beatles and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.
"Karma Police ♫" opens with acoustic guitar and piano, but in the middle of the song, the group adds vocal sounds using an older style of synthesizer, which also suggests progressive rock of the 1970s.
During the 2000s, Radiohead continued to record and release albums that were both commercially successful. Many of these albums differed stylistically from each other as well as from earlier recordings by Radiohead. For example, the music of 2000's Kid A used keyboards, orchestral strings, saxophones, brass, and a 1920s electric keyboard instrument called an Ondes Martenot. The pitches of the Ondes Martenot1920s electric keyboard instrument that can be controlled either with a keyboard or by sliding a metal ring, and the dynamics and the timbre can vary widely; used by Radiohead on the album Kid A (2000) can be controlled either with a keyboard or by sliding a metal ring, and the dynamics and the timbre can vary widely. Radiohead frequently used this instrument during the 2000s, and it can be heard in singles such as "Pyramid Song ♫" (2001). In 2007, Radiohead released In Rainbows online in a pay-what-you-want format: listeners could pay whatever they could afford or wanted to pay (including nothing at all) when they downloaded the group's music. The music of Radiohead sounds at times experimental, at times like progressive rock, and sometimes like straightforward ditties in song form. Their style is consistently and constantly evolving, often defying most existing generic labels.
“Barriers have been broken: rappers are singing, and singers are rapping. You might catch a rapper on a rock song, a pop artist on a hip-hop song - there are so many different things that are going on today. That is the same way in which we live our lives; we're all over the place. I like to try different things.”
