@Braden Porter

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Created with FreeYourMusic.com where you can transfer playlists to Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and others

Created with FreeYourMusic.com where you can transfer playlists to Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and others

Whether it’s a weekday morning or Saturday night, get going with this personalized mix of upbeat music. Refreshed every Monday.

Songs to help you relax and unwind. Updated every Sunday.

Discover new music from artists we think you'll like. Refreshed every Friday.

We have terrestrial radio to thank for inventing classic rock. Conceived as a programming format, it emerged in the ’80s when stations around the U.S. began devoting heavy airtime to a mix of beloved titans from the ’60s and ’70s (The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Bob Seger) and then-current hitmakers (Tom Petty, John Mellencamp) whose music contains heavy echoes of the vintage stuff. Even when classic rock opens its ranks to ’90s alt-rockers such as Soundgarden, it’s because they sound old-school. In terms of stylistic variety, the format boasts considerable leg room. Classic rock rotation can and does include soaring ballads from Pink Floyd, The Beatles, and Elton John, and even the occasional glam nugget from David Bowie. Yet at the end of the day, the format definitely relies heaviest on thunderous hard-rock anthems perfect for Friday night parties or powering you through your workday.

“Hey Siri, play the A Day in San Francisco playlist.”

“Hey Siri, play the Golf playlist.”

A dreamy, moony-eyed middle ground between the strident earnestness of ’60s folk and the lusty funk and soul grooves that dominated the latter part of the ’70s, soft rock offered listeners stories of love lost, found and longed for, set to lush arrangements. Characterized by incandescent vocals (wistful falsettos from Boston, Peter Frampton, and Bread; golden purrs from Carole King and Stevie Nicks), rich harmonies (Hall & Oates; the Eagles), warm, pure guitar tones, and laidback synth chords, these tunes offered a mellow, melodic haven in a world undergoing tremendous social and political change.

The stadium-filling band that inspired a million karaoke nights was built on genres that display both grunt and grandeur. Journey's first two albums riffed on the blues-rock fusion of The Jimi Hendrix Experience. By the '80s they adopted the skyscraping dynamics and vocal range of Boston, while their masterful power balladry echoed the cavernous sound and big emotions of Nazareth and Procol Harum.

Heartland rock hit its stride in the ’80s, when Bruce Springsteen’s stadium-sized anthems and John Cougar Mellencamp’s lively roots tunes provided sly social commentary while dominating the charts. Although the guitar-heavy genre served as an alternative to the decade’s synth-pop hits, it wasn’t at odds with keyboards and, more important, wasn’t meant to represent one singular authentic American experience. In fact, the heartland-rock catalog strives to capture a diverse cross-section of eras, emotions, and approaches, including Laurel Canyon folk rock, down-and-dirty blues, brawny Southern rock, and realistic character-driven vignettes.