1967-1969

Cock rock

A critical label for swagger-heavy hard rock, cock rock sits at the intersection of sound, image, and performance politics. It is less a neat genre box than a way of describing how certain rock acts projected masculine power onstage and in the songs around them.

Origins and context

Documented origin is in late-1960s to early-1970s rock criticism and feminist commentary, with the style associated mainly with hard rock scenes in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The sound

Characteristics

Distorted electric guitars
Drums
Lead vocals

History

The label emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and early usage appears in feminist and critical writing rather than as a musician’s self-description. A commonly cited early context is the underground feminist magazine *Rat* in 1970, where the term was used to describe the male-dominated rock industry; later writers such as Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie helped fix it as a way of talking about hard rock’s aggressive, boastful male pose. In practice, the phrase has mostly been attached retrospectively to hard rock and glam metal acts rather than to a tidy, self-contained scene. Led Zeppelin is frequently named as a formative example, and later writers have also applied the term to 1980s hair metal acts such as Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses, though the label remains subjective and sometimes controversial.

Notable artists