Heartland Rock - History

History

Many major heartland rock artists began their careers in the 1960s, as with Bob Seger, or the 1970s, as with Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Springsteen would be the first artist to bring heartland rock to US and international attention, and its most commercially successful exponent. After a series of critically highly regarded, but modestly selling albums with the E Street Band, he achieved his breakthrough in 1975 with Born to Run, which presented stories of loss, betrayal, defeat and escape in the context of his native New Jersey shoreline, with songs influenced by 50s rock and roll, Bob Dylan and Phil Spector's Wall of Sound. While Springsteen struggled for three years with legal disputes, other artists in a similar vein came to the fore. These included Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Eddie Money, and fellow Jersey Shore residents Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. In 1978, Springsteen returned with Darkness on the Edge of Town, which reached the top ten in the US and then the number one album The River (1980), which continued the themes of economic and personal dissolution, produced a series of hit singles, and has been seen as "getting the heartland rock bandwagon rolling", together with the stripped down sound and darker themes of his next album Nebraska (1982).

The genre reached its commercial, artistic and influential peak in the mid-1980s, with Springsteen's Born in the USA in 1984, which topped the charts worldwide and spawning a series of top ten singles. This decade saw the continued success of established artists and the arrival of new figures including John Mellencamp (initially recording as Johnny Cougar), who has been described as defining the genre in the 1980s, Michael Stanley, Joe Grushecky and the Iron City Houserockers and more gentle singer/songwriters such as Bruce Hornsby. A number of country music artists like Steve Earle and Joe Ely also became associated with the genre. Probably the first significant female artist in the genre was Melissa Etheridge, whose self titled debut album issued in 1988 drew critical comparisons with Springsteen and Mellencamp.

Heartland rock had begun to fade 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. However, although some heartland rock artists disappeared from the scene, others continued to record with critical and commercial success, most notably Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and John Mellencamp. Their works have become more personal and experimental and no longer fitted easily into a single genre. Newer artists whose music would perhaps have been labelled heartland rock had it been released in the 1970s or 1980s, such as Missouri's Bottle Rockets and Illinois' Uncle Tupelo, were now grouped into alt-country.