@Thomas Kaiser

Everything was big: the hair, the stars, the chart-topping anthems.

Floor-filling hits made from pop, EDM, trap, and global sounds.

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

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

The tracks you can’t get enough of lately, all in one place. Updated as you listen.

The songs you love. The more you use Apple Music, the better the mix. Refreshed every Tuesday.

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

Your favourite tracks of the year—all in one playlist, updated weekly.

As the 2000s began, hard rock had a nu-metal hangover: Limp Bizkit’s rugged riffage still had teeth, while P.O.D.’s thundering anthems and Papa Roach’s slash-and-burn approach rose to prominence. The genre was given an electrifying creative jolt by Linkin Park, a California group whose hip-hop-tinted take on nu-metal—and frustration-filled lyrics that zeroed in on the pain of personal shortcomings—felt fresh and energetic, not to mention all too relatable to a generation paralyzed by post-9/11 uncertainty and turmoil. In fact, although ’90s superstars such as Foo Fighters and Red Hot Chili Peppers continued to churn out comfort-food hits, a new breed of ambitious hard rockers captured the decade’s winds of change. Muse and My Chemical Romance unleashed heroic glam epics; Evanescence embraced an operatic vocal delivery; and radio-ready acts like Shinedown merged unstoppable hooks with roiling emotional angst.

After a decade of hair bands singing about wild times and fast living, hard rock in the ’90s turned darker, heavier, and meaner. This can be credited to the commercial success of a wave of bands emerging from outside the mainstream. Metallica’s bulldozing arena anthems reflect their thrash-metal roots, Nirvana’s grunge revolution delivered the angst of underground rock to MTV, Rage Against the Machine’s politically charged attacks reflected their days in the hardcore scene and Tool’s harsh nihilism grew out of the fringes of alt-metal. Outside of Guns N’ Roses, who managed to score some awfully big hits early in the decade, few veteran pop-metal acts survived these seismic shifts. It wouldn’t be until the tail end of the ’90s that a brash young MC from Detroit calling himself Kid Rock would help revive high-volume party music with his infectious mix of swaggering rock riffs and megaton hip-hop beats.

Hard rock ruled the suburbs in the ‘70s, but the ensuing decade took the genre to the next level. AC/DC kicked off 1980 with the infectious and tough-as-nails <I>Back In Black</I>, which set the standard for the next 10 years while becoming one of the best-selling rock albums of all time. Newly minted MTV propelled heavyweights like Van Halen, Def Leppard, and Judas Priest into the stratosphere while broadcasting hair metal nationwide via Mötley Crüe, Poison, and Twisted Sister. Meanwhile, Kiss enjoyed a makeup-free second act with <I>Lick It Up</I>, ZZ Top added synth-pop for <I>Eliminator</I>, and Guns N’ Roses welcomed everyone to the jungle.