The reason why some consider rock music evil is because of the context in which it sprung. It came from a time when love was free, rebellion was in, and people didn’t give a stuff, especially when it came to religion.
But, rock music can be clean.
Most of it though is still against religion.
Not quite accurate.
“Rock ‘n’ roll” is an offshoot of the jazz and rhythm ‘n’ blues of the late 40s/ early 1950s. The term “rock ‘n’ roll” in itself was a black slang term for the physical motions involved in the sexual act in the early 50s. Hence, “we’re gonna rock ‘n’ roll tonight” meant “we’re going to have sex.”
There were two problems when the music began to fire the imaginations of young people (like the young Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins etc.) in the mid-1950s. Firstly, the music and the lyrics were considered extremely vulgar and direct–lots of euphemisms for sexual activity abounded in the early R ‘n’ B records–and secondly, the segregated nature of the U.S. led the music to be labelled “race music,” i.e., music by and for negros. It was extremely disturbing to many people when white teenagers began to listen to this vulgar music; it was considered inappropriate for white kids to listen to black music.
The lyrics of those 50s records seem positively innocuous when compared to the types of songs that you hear on the radio today. “We’re gonna rock around the clock” in 1955 meant something entirely different than what it means today. Then, it was a euphemism for sexual activity; today it is little more than a nostalgic song from a more innocent era that conjures up images of teenaged girls in poodle skirts and their dungaree’d boyfriends dancing at “sock hops”. But in the 50s it was incendiary stuff.
It was only in the mid to late 1960s that rock began to assume an ideological content related with the radical left, mind-altering drugs, the hippies and their “free love” ethic, and social and political rebellion. This extremely fertile era in rock’s development was relatively brief (roughly 1967-72) but it was decisive in the music’s transformation from songs about teenaged romance and dancing into an art form which could tackle any subject or topic at all. Or could combine with any other musical form. Think of “rock operas” and “art rock” and “progressive rock” when you think of this era.
It was also this era which saw the birth of so-called “heavy metal” and the musical forms within rock which people tend to label “evil”. Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple etc. all arose in this period.
You have to be careful when talking about rock now, because the genre is so broad and includes so very many different styles. It has developed and evolved enormously, so be careful about painting with too broad a brush. There is some twisted, sick and evil stuff out there, yes, but there is also some great stuff. A person may or may not enjoy music that employs distortion and dissonance, but to claim that they are evil in and of themselves is just silly, imho.
I am a rock fan. I love rock music, but there are certainly groups and performers I won’t listen to. Sometimes it’s because of the sound, but most often it’s because of the lyrical content of their songs. U2 is a great rock group, and there is nothing evil about their lyrics. On the contrary, they have many beautiful songs of faith and devotion, as well as searching and longing for God. Eric Clapton is another of my favourites too, as are The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, The Who etc. I also love soul, classical, jazz, r ‘n’ b, folk, country, “americana”, celtic …
I love music, but I try to listen to it intelligently and
think about what I am hearing and how it may affect me.
) days when I need some 60s pop (á la The Mamas and The Papas and The Beach Boys) and days when I need to crank the Led Zeppelin or Van Halen and hear some noisy guitar riffs! As I said above, I love music.