Heartland rock
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In the late 1970s and 1980s, one of the most popular forms of rock and roll was heartland rock. It was characterized by a straightforward musical style, a concern with the average, blue collar American life, and a conviction that rock music has a social or communal purpose beyond just entertainment.
History
The origins of "Heartland Rock", like that of so many genres, are as nebulous and difficult to describe as the genre's definition itself. The genre began as a confluence of white soul, garage rock, rhythm and blues and rock and roll.
While the genre emerged recognizably into the mainstream in the late 1970s with the commercial success of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, and Tom Petty, the genre's antecedents appeared throughout pop chart history, via popular artists like Bob Dylan, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and Van Morrison, and lesser-known examples (The Flaming Ember, whose 1971 hit "Westbound Number Nine" was an example of the mixing of garage rock, rhythm and blues and rock influences that would later exemplify the genre) and earlier ones like Eddie Cochran and Del Shannon.
The genre reached its commercial, artistic and influential peak in the mid-1980s, with John Mellencamp joining Springsteen, Seger, and Petty as its most prominent artists.
In concert, heartland rock often took the form of crowd-rousing anthems, leading to comparisons with Midwestern arena rock groups such as REO Speedwagon and Head East, whose style however owed more to seventies pop rock.
Heartland rock faded away as a recognized genre by the early 1990s, as rock music in general, and blue collar and white working class themes in particular, lost influence with younger audiences, and as heartland's artists turned to more personal works. Many heartland rock artists continue to record today with critical and commercial success, most notably Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp, although their works have become more personal and experimental and do not fit easily into a single genre anymore. Newer artists whose music would clearly have been labeled heartland rock had it been released in the 1970s or 1980s, such as Pittsburgh's Tom Breiding, often find themselves these days labeled alt-country and finding little more than a cult following.
Prominent Artists
By far the most prominent heartland artists, and the nucleus of the genre, were:
* Bruce Springsteen - Bringing the influences of Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, and pre-Beatles rock and roll to bear, the musical style and the lyrical themes of heartland were lurking in Springsteen's Jersey-flavored music from the start. But they really gelled on Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) and The River (1980), where songs such as "Badlands" and "The River" intertwined personal and economic concerns. The heartland genre reached the apex of its general popularity with Springsteen's massively-selling Born in the U.S.A. (1984) and his subsequent sold-out arena and stadium tour. These shows featured rock versions of Nebraska (1982)'s depressed heartland folk as well as Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" and the Steinbeck-influenced "Seeds", preceded and followed in best redemptive fashion by party songs from the early 1960s, all documented within the Live/1975-85 album.
* Bob Seger - More rooted in traditional, blues-based barroom rock than Springsteen, Michigan native Seger owed a lot more to Chuck Berry, Mitch Ryder, and The Rolling Stones. Some of Seger's early songs such as "Beautiful Loser" and "Turn the Page" were heartland antecedents, while his later classic heartland albums include Night Moves (1976), Stranger in Town (1978), and The Distance (1982). Generally acknowledged as the best singer of this group, Seger's voice could convey heartland sentiments ranging from the delicate time-spanning nostalgia of "Night Moves" to the powerless fury of "Feel Like a Number" to the uncertain maturity of "Against the Wind". Seger is also recognizable for the signature raw driving power of much of his music as exemplified by "The Mountain" from "The Fire Inside" (1991).
* John Mellencamp - A reformed glitter-rocker, Mellencamp came to embrace and finally flaunt his small town Indiana roots in the early 1980s. "Jack and Diane" from 1982 and "Pink Houses" from 1983 were among the first hit singles directly identified with the genre, while his albums Uh-Huh (1984) and The Lonesome Jubilee (1987) were representative. Moreoever the quintessential work of the entire heartland rock genre was probably Mellencamp's 1985 album Scarecrow, with its depictions of struggling family farmers, odes to small town life, tales of the passing of generations, and tributes to the redemptive power of rock 'n' roll, set to a deceptively low-tech sounding production.
* Tom Petty - Out of Gainesville, Florida and forthright about his debt to The Byrds, Petty's style was both more laconic and more experimental than most other heartland rockers. But "Refugee" and "Even the Losers" from Damn the Torpedoes (1979), "The Waiting" from Hard Promises (1980), and "I Won't Back Down" and "Runnin' Down a Dream" from Full Moon Fever (1989) all fit squarely in the genre, while the daring Southern Accents (1984) stretched the genre to its limits.
Both an antecedent and a heartland example was:
* Creedence Clearwater Revival and John Fogerty - Creedence was the seminal proto-heartland band, a decade before the genre was popularly recognized. Former leader Fogerty revived his career in 1985 with the album Centerfield, which recapped and extended Creedence's themes. Fogerty's influence is widespread throughout the genre.
[edit] Lesser-known artists
Lesser-known heartland artists included:
* Michael Stanley - A Cleveland-area rocker with wide regional following but relatively obscure in the rest of the country, Stanley's 1984 hit "My Town" captured many of the themes of the genre: blue-collar swagger, cocky regionalism combined with a dogged love of local themes, and a broad, muscular musical arrangement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartland_rock
Basically A thread to post videos of the Boss, John mellancamp, and all those other that fit this Charateristics..
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