Folk-Rock

Folk-rock melds folk's lyrical urgency and topicality with the rhythms and noise of rock. Jangle pop architects the Byrds unquestionably kickstarted folk-rock's mid-'60s heyday by applying the intensity of rock to folk material by Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger. Dylan's own incendiary performances with the Band in '66 -- when he shocked his folk audience by plugging in his guitar and cranking it up -- did as much as anything else to merge the two genres. And as the '60s wore on, folk-rock took on a variety of guises, from the urban lushness of Simon and Garfunkel to the California sprawl of the Mamas and the Papas and the ragged tension of Neil Young, each of whom sought to expand on the standard set by the Byrds and Dylan only a few years before. In the '70s, folk-rock found niches in unlikely places, not the least of which was on hard rock legends Led Zeppelin's third album. The folk-rock tradition continued into the '80s, as the second wave of jangle pop bands like R.E.M. and cult favorites Toad the Wet Sprocket revisited the folk-rock of the Byrds. More recently, the influence of folk on rock continues to be felt, not the least in the mainstream success of singer-songwriters like Tori Amos, Paula Cole, Sheryl Crow and Beck, who play folk-tinged rock to audiences of thousands. Today, the ridiculously named freak folk subset, which includes Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Sufjan Stevens, brought soft-hued psychedelics, quirky songwriting and a renewed interest in folk music to indie rock.