Glam rock

Glam rock is a movement that appeared (and had its greatest degree of popularity) during the first half of the 1970s in the United Kingdom. Musically, it originally took elements of Rock & Roll and Blues Rock (something that would make it closely associated with Hard Rock and Proto-Punk) that were incorporated into catchy Pop Rock melodies (a feature which contrasts to the complexity of the nascent Progressive Rock movement, with which glam rock shared a Psychedelic Rock background inherited from the 1960s), as well as featuring compositions with lush piano arrangements and instrumentation that fit with the antics of their performers. The music was usually accompanied by a strong sense of theatricality in lyrics, performances, delivery and fashion, an aspect that would also be explored by Art Rock artists that would come to be associated with the movement. The roots of glam rock date back to the late 1960s and early 1970s with Marc Bolan's band T. Rex often being considered the founders of the genre, with their early albums Electric Warrior and The Slider helping to establish the genre's sound. Subsequent releases by T. Rex and David Bowie are credited with further establishing glam rock as a major force in the British music scene, which would pave the way for the success of similarly-minded artists such as Sweet, Slade, Roxy Music, Mott the Hoople, Gary Glitter and Mud. While the genre did not share the same level of attention in the United States, there were some American glam rock musicians that garnered recognition (mostly in the UK), such as Alice Cooper, New York Dolls, Sparks and Transformer-era Lou Reed. By the arrival of Punk Rock, glam rock had already lost its commercial appeal, with some of its representative artists having made the transition into other forms of rock music. The style would nevertheless remain influential for the development of other genres such as the Post-Punk movement of Gothic Rock, the New Romantic style, Glam Metal and the Japanese Visual kei.