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(Credits: Far Out \/ NASA \/ Uwe Conrad)<\/p>\n
Tue 9 December 2025 18:00, UK <\/p>\n
What is classic rock<\/a> exactly?<\/p>\n It\u2019s a term that tumbles around in our vague intuitions without explicitly marking out any specific chapter or concrete sound. Broadly, rock\u2019s celebrated \u2018classic\u2019 era seems to begin around the time of the counterculture\u2019s psychedelic peak around 1967, strutting across the years with lauded, rockist primacy before facing an existential upend from the new wave cohort eager to tear down the whole bloated parody much of the AOR generation had lapsed into.<\/p>\n It used to be called \u2018dad rock\u2019, or at least it was 20-odd years ago before former Britpoppers started touching 60. It was always a sniffy term, many fantastic bands unwittingly subsumed into the pejorative perception of yesteryear\u2019s dinosaur acts featured on the latest Dad Rocks! compilation CD, but it\u2019s true that a stodginess had set in, precipitating punk\u2019s necessary bulldoze of a gloop of soft rock, FM radio staples coasting into complacency and deathly aloof of what made rock exciting in the first place.<\/p>\n For whatever reason, David Bowie\u2019s glam turn as the Martian messiah just doesn\u2019t feel quite as \u2018classic\u2019 as the Eagles crooning \u2018Hotel California\u2019\u20141977\u2019s longest held classic rock single\u2014or The 13th Floor Elevators\u2019 acid-fried garage conjurings somehow dwelling in a realm of unclassifiable permanence that Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac<\/a> just cannot hope to reach.<\/p>\n Perhaps it\u2019s the blunted political edge, aversion to the avant-garde, or unmooring away from the 1960s\u2019 formative radicalism that springs to mind, The Doobie Brothers over Roxy Music when casting your mind back to the 1970s\u2019 classic rock heyday.<\/p>\n Chin-stroking analysis aside, \u2018classic rock\u2019 encompasses some of the greatest bands of the rock and pop canon, if suffering from a Boomer perception that such a pedestal of groups is the most essential, important, and peak artistic musical efforts of all time, which can never be topped. Still, rock\u2019s nebulous classic tag would carry a cultural stature and longstanding fascination long after the severe shoeing new wave meted out by the 1970s\u2019 close.<\/p>\n Curiously enough, 1980 was not the year classic rock went into hibernation. While double denim was out and skinny ties were certainly in, the terser, keyboard-driven pop dominating the day\u2019s singles chart was still planting a crown on the bands that punk had, rhetorically at least, waged musical war with only a few short years previously.<\/p>\n So, what song was number one for the longest?<\/p>\n Over in the States, Blondie and Kenny Rogers\u2019 \u2018Call Me\u2019 and \u2018Lady\u2019 topped 1980\u2019s longest held with six weeks each at the top spot, but for four weeks from late February, Queen had ridden the Second British Invasion\u2019s simmering wave and coasted to number one with \u2018Crazy Little Thing Called Love\u2019, curiously enough an attempt at classic, rockabilly pastiche from the otherwise new wave coated The Game.<\/p>\n