Acoustic Rock Facts

Origins and early development

Following the birth of rock in the 1960s, some rock bands began to experiment with acoustic songs. This would be known as acoustic rock.

Evolution or diversification

Many well-known artists such as Eric Clapton and Nirvana performed acoustic versions of their well-known songs in the early 1990s, which were collected on the MTV Unplugged series. Pop music artists also experimented with acoustic variants sometimes called acoustic pop, and by the 2000s popular indie musicians began to identify their genre as "contemporary acoustic" in opposition to being classified as "folk music".

Cultural or musical significance

Acoustic music is music that solely or primarily uses instruments that produce sound through acoustic means, as opposed to electric or electronic means. The label "acoustic" or "unplugged" carries an assumption that other types of music are cluttered by technology and overproduction and therefore aren't as pure.