20 Artists Who Significantly Altered the Musical Landscape

Submitted by podizz on Wed, 10/15/2008 - 11:59
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  1. The Beatles-What is there to say? There's everything before the Beatles, and then there's everything after. They forever changed popular music and defined a generation.
  2. Elvis- Say what you will about the King, but the impact he had on popular music cannot be understated. He brought black music to the white masses and gave birth to rock and rock in the mainstream.
  3. Robert Johnson-The orginal gangsta of blues, the man who sold his soul to the devil so that the world could eventually come to know rock music.
  4. James Brown- The hardest working man in show business is rightfully referred to as The Godfather of Soul. While Elvis and the Stones were responsible for bringing black music to white people, James Brown brought white people to black music.
  5. Bob Dylan- One of the first to inject poetry into his music, Dylan popularized folk music while poignently speaking to the heart of a 60's generation struggling with an unpopular war and alienation from their parents. Before Dylan, song lyrics largely consisted of simplistic, poppy love ballads.
  6. Run DMC- Though not the first guys to ever rhyme into a microphone, Run DMC cemented hip hop as a legitimate art form and brought it to the masses with the help of Aerosmith, Mtv, and a generation of music listeners ready for the next big thing in music.
  7. Little Richard-- One of the seminal architects of Rock and Rock, Richard Wayne Penniman
  8. drew on gospel, rhyme and blues, funk, and boogie-woogie and combined it with an off-the-wall persona to create a show like no one had ever seen.
  9. Chuck Berry- John Lennon once said "If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry." From "Maybelline" to "Johnny B. Goode" Berry, perhaps more than any other artist, put all the pieces together to truly give birth to rock and roll music.
  10. The Velvet Underground-Drawing their name from a book about the secret sexual subculture of the early 1960's, Lou Reed and John Cale would go on to create the most seminal expiremental/art rock band the country had yet seen. Buried within their verses were the seeds of punk, alternative, and grunge rock.
  11. Led Zeppelin-The original- Though predicted to go down like the Hindenburg, Zep created and perfected the hard rock sound. There are few today who didn't draw some influence from the dream team lineup of Page, Plant, Bonham and Paul Jones.
  12. Nirvana- Nirvana brought grunge to the forefront of popular music and gave voice to a generation of dissaffected youth. Though short for this world, his music continues to live on in crappy imitators such as Nickelback and Creed.
  13. Bob Marley-When you think reggae, you think Bob Marley, plain and simple.
  14. Hank Williams-Though only gracing this earth for a brief twenty-nine years, Hank unquestionably cememented his status as the king of country music. He even found time to bequeath to the world five famous offspring. Are you ready for some football???
  15. Charlie Parker--A living personification of the beatnick era, "Bird" was one of the most influential jazz musicians of all time. He pioneered the fast tempos and harmonically structured improvisations of the Bebop sound.
  16. Black Sabbath- The Godfathers of Heavy Metal, Ozzy and the gang made dark music popular.
  17. George Clinton and the Parliament Funkadelic- To quote my recent reveiw of this legendary band, P-Funk doesn't play funk music, they are funk music. George and the gang can be heard today in everything from Snoop Dogg to Outcast.
  18. Louis Armstrong-Satchmo might not be the greatest jazz musician to ever pick up a trumpet, but he's surely the most important.
  19. The Sex Pistols-The epitomized punk by injecting a 'fuck you' attitude into popular music.
  20. NWA- NWA gave birth to gangsta rap by with their raw, unyielding lyrics and all-star lineup that individually would go on to dominate west coast rap for the next decade.
  21. Kraftwerk-One of the most sampled groups of all time, Kraftwerk originated the electronic sound. Coming out of Dusseldorf, Germany, founding members Florian Schneider and Ralf Hutter pioneered several groundbreaking musical technologies and techniques, including the Minimoog, Synthanorma Sequencer, and the vocoder. Their use of looping and sampling would eventually be central to the rise of hip hop and techno.
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