Rock music has its roots in 1950s-era rock and roll and rockabilly. In the late 1960s, rock music was blended with folk music to create folk rock, and with jazz, to create jazz-rock fusion. In the 1970s, rock incorporated influences from soul, funk, and latin music. In the 1970s, rock developed a number of subgenres, such as soft rock, blues rock, heavy metal-style rock, progressive rock, art rock, techno-rock, syth-rock and punk rock. Rock subgenres from the 1980s included hard rock, indie-rock and alternative rock. In the 1990s, rock subgenres included grunge-style rock, Britpop, and Indie rock.

Punk bands, eschewing the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock, created short, fast, hard music, with stripped-down instrumentation and often political or nihilistic lyrics. The associated punk subculture expresses youthful rebellion, distinctive clothing styles, a variety of anti-authoritarian ideologies, and a DIY (do it yourself) attitude.

Heavy metal (sometimes referred to simply as metal) is a genre of rock music that developed between 1969 and 1974. With roots in blues-rock and psychedelic rock, the bands that created heavy metal developed a thick, heavy, guitar-and-drums-centered sound, characterised by the use of highly-amplified distortion and fast guitar solos. Allmusic declares, "Of all rock & roll's myriad forms, heavy metal is the most extreme in terms of volume, machismo, and theatricality."

Throughout its history heavy metal has had a large world-wide following of fans known by terms such as "metalheads" and "headbangers". Although early heavy metal bands Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were popular, they were critically reviled at the time, reflecting a trend that has been present throughout the history of the genre. As the original wave of heavy metal bands began to wane, the late 1970s brought the New Wave of British Heavy Metal which sought to strip away much of the music's blues influence and fuse it with a punk rock sensibility.