Gothic rock (also referred to as goth rock or simply goth) is a musical subgenre of post-punk that formed during the late 1970s. Gothic rock bands grew from the strong ties they had to the English punk rock and emerging post-punk scenes. According to both Pitchfork and NME, protogoth bands are Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus and The Cure. The genre itself was defined as a separate movement from punk rock during the early 1980s largely due to the significant stylistic divergences of the movement; gothic rock, as opposed to punk, combines dark, often keyboard-heavy music with introspective and dark lyrics. Gothic rock then gave rise to a broader subculture that included clubs, fashion and numerous publications that grew in popularity in the 1980s.
Read more about Gothic Rock: Style, Roots and Influences, Visual Elements
Famous quotes containing the words gothic and/or rock:
“The gothic is singular in this; one seems easily at home in the renaissance; one is not too strange in the Byzantine; as for the Roman, it is ourselves; and we could walk blindfolded through every chink and cranny of the Greek mind; all these styles seem modern when we come close to them; but the gothic gets away.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“Amongst the learned the lawyers claim first place, the most self-satisfied class of people, as they roll their rock of Sisyphus and string together six hundred laws in the same breath, no matter whether relevant or not, piling up opinion on opinion and gloss on gloss to make their profession seem the most difficult of all. Anything which causes trouble has special merit in their eyes.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)