A second wave of British and American rock bands became popular during the early 1970s. Bands such as AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Queen, Alice Cooper, Judas Priest, Aerosmith, Black Sabbath and Kiss played highly amplified, guitar-driven hard rock. The genre was marked with aggressive, hard driven sounds of overdriven electric guitars and an insistent 4/4 drumbeat. As the decade progressed, bands began incorporating different sounds into their music such as the use of synthesizers and using influences from progressive rock and disco in their records. Although it remained popular throughout the decade, music critics overwhelmingly disliked the hard rock genre. In the 1980s bands such as Metallica, Iron Maiden, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax continued the popularity of the style.

The arena rock era can be traced to the late 1960s, when bands such as The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and The Who garnered audiences large enough to fill stadiums. Those bands set the stage for huge live performances in stadiums and arenas around the globe. Richards, Kelli (2006-07-13). Some popular act often associated as premier performers of the arena rock era include; Boston, Styx, Foreigner, Journey and Kansas. Those hard rock bands would go on to sell-out the world’s largest venues throughout most of the 1970s.

In the 1980s many acts were at the zenith of their popularity and leading tours of the world's largest stadiums. Eventually, however, the financial and logistical strains of producing elaborate arena rock concerts would limit the growth of the size of rock concerts. In the 1990's, festivals became a more popular concert format, including such notable events as Monsters of Rock, Lollapollooza, and the Lilith Fair. These concerts often provided the audience a greater range of performances, often including multi-band collaborations and musical improvisations, without the pretense of a staged spectacle.

Punk rock developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States and the United Kingdom. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock. They created fast, hard-edged music, typically with short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political, anti-establishment lyrics. Punk embraces a DIY (do it yourself) ethic, with many bands self-producing their recordings and distributing them through informal channels.

By late 1976, acts such as the Ramones and Patti Smith, in New York City, and the Sex Pistols and The Clash, in London, were recognized as the vanguard of a new musical movement. The following year saw punk rock spreading around the world. Punk quickly, though briefly, became a major cultural phenomenon in the United Kingdom. For the most part, punk took root in local scenes that tended to reject association with the mainstream. An associated punk subculture emerged, expressing youthful rebellion and characterized by distinctive clothing styles and a variety of anti-authoritarian ideologies.

By the beginning of the 1980s, faster, more aggressive styles such as hardcore and Oi! had become the predominant mode of punk rock. Musicians identifying with or inspired by punk also pursued a broad range of other variations, giving rise to post-punk and the alternative rock movement.

Since punk rock's initial popularity in the 1970s and the renewed interest created by the punk revival of the 1990s, punk rock continues to have a strong underground cult following. This has resulted in several evolved strains of hardcore punk, such as D-beat (a distortion-heavy subgenre influenced by the UK band Discharge), anarcho-punk (such as Crass), grindcore (such as Napalm Death), and crust punk.

Punk rock attracted devotees from the art and collegiate world and soon bands sporting a more literate, arty approach, such as Talking Heads, and Devo began to infiltrate the punk scene; in some quarters the description New Wave began to be used to differentiate these less overtly punk bands. If punk rock was a social and musical phenomenon, it garnered little in the way of record sales (small specialty labels such as Stiff Records had released much of the punk music to date) or American radio airplay, as the radio scene continued to be dominated by mainstream formats such as disco and album-oriented rock. Record executives, who had been mostly mystified by the punk movement, recognized the potential of the more accessible New Wave acts and began aggressively signing and marketing any band that could claim a remote connection to punk or New Wave. Many of these bands, such as The Cars and the Go-Go's were essentially pop bands dressed up in New Wave regalia; others, including The Police and The Pretenders managed to parlay the boost of the New Wave movement into long-lived and artistically lauded careers.

Between 1982 and 1985, influenced by Kraftwerk, David Bowie, and Gary Numan, New Wave went in the direction of such New Romantics as Spandau Ballet, Ultravox, Duran Duran, A Flock of Seagulls, Culture Club, Talk Talk and the Eurythmics, sometimes using the synthesizer to replace all other instruments. This period coincided with the rise of MTV and led to a great deal of exposure for this brand of synth-pop. Some rock bands reinvented themselves and profited too from MTV's airplay, for instance Golden Earring, who had a second round of success with "Twilight Zone", but in general the times of guitar-oriented rock were over. Although many "Greatest of New Wave" collections feature popular songs from this era, New Wave more properly refers to the earlier "skinny tie" rock bands such as The Knack or Blondie.

Alongside New Wave, post-punk developed as an outgrowth of punk rock. In a way it was tied to punk rock. Sometimes thought of as interchangeable with New Wave, post-punk was typically more challenging, arty, and abrasive. The movement was effectively started by the debut of Public Image Ltd., Psychedelic Furs, and Joy Division and was soon joined by bands such as Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Fall, Gang of Four, The Cure, and Echo & the Bunnymen. Predominantly a British phenomenon, the genre continued into the 1980s with some commercial exposure domestically and overseas, but the most successful band to emerge from post-punk was Ireland's U2, which by the late 1980s had become one of the biggest bands in the world.

In the 1980s, popular rock diversified. This period also saw the New Wave of British Heavy Metal with bands such as Iron Maiden and Def Leppard gaining popularity. The early part of the decade saw Eddie Van Halen achieve musical innovations in rock guitar, while vocalists David Lee Roth (of Van Halen) and Freddie Mercury (of Queen as he had been doing throughout the 1970s) raised the role of frontman to near performance art standards. Concurrently, pop-New Wave bands remained popular, with performers like Billy Idol and The Go-Go's gaining fame.

American working-class oriented heartland rock gained a strong following, exemplified by Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, John (Cougar) Mellencamp and others. Led by the American folk singer-songwriter Paul Simon and the British former progressive rock star Peter Gabriel, rock and roll fused with a variety of folk music styles from around the world; this fusion came to be known as "world music", and included fusions like aboriginal rock. Also, more extreme forms of rock music began to evolve; in the early eighties, the harsh and aggressive sounds of thrash metal attracted large underground audiences and a few bands, including Metallica and Megadeth, went on for mainstream success.

By the mid to late 80's, the teen band Renegade coined the term Commercial Metal to signify a combination of heavy metal instrumentation with pop rock melodies. The term caught on and remains a viable genre description to this day.

The New Wave of British Heavy Metal (frequently abbreviated as NWOBHM) was a heavy metal music movement that started in the late 1970s, in Britain, and achieved some international attention by the early 1980s. The era developed as a reaction in part to the decline of early heavy metal bands such as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. NWOBHM bands toned down the blues influences of earlier acts, increased the tempos, and adopted a "tougher", harder-edged sound. The era is considered to be a main foundation for heavy metal sub-genres with acts such as Metallica citing NWOBHM bands like Diamond Head and Motörhead as a major influence on their musical style.

The early movement was associated with acts such as: Iron Maiden, Saxon, Motörhead, Def Leppard, Angel Witch, Tygers of Pan Tang, Blitzkrieg, Avenger, Sweet Savage, Girlschool, Jaguar, Demon, Diamond Head, Samson and Tank, among others. The image of bands such as Saxon (long hair, denim jackets, leather and chains) would later become synonymous with heavy metal as a whole during the 1980s. Some bands, although conceived during this era, saw success on an underground scale, as was the case with Venom and Quartz.

Glam metal was popular in the 1980s. Combining a heavy metal musical style and a glam rock visual look influenced from various artists such as: Queen, Alice Cooper, Sweet and the New York Dolls, the earliest glam metal bands to gain notability included: Mötley Crüe, Ratt and Quiet Riot. They became known for their debauched lifestyles, teased hair and use of make-up and clothing. Their songs were bombastic and often defiantly macho, with lyrics focused on sex, drinking and drugs. In 1987 a second wave of glam metal acts emerged including Warrant, L.A. Guns, Poison and Faster Pussycat.

The term alternative rock was coined in the early 1980s to describe rock & roll music that did not fit into the traditional 4-piece rock band orchestration. Unfortunately, the label became meaningless since bands dubbed "alternative" could be most any style, and these bands commonly covered music of well-known genres. Nevertheless, by the early 1990s, "alternative" bands effectively marketed themselves as the successors to hard rock and, more obviously, punk pioneers. Important bands of the 1980s alternative movement included R.E.M., Jane's Addiction, Sonic Youth, The Smiths, Dinosaur Jr. Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Pixies, Hüsker Dü, The Cure and countless others. When first establishing themselves, these artists largely were confined to independent record labels, building their music scene primarily on college radio, fanzines, touring, and word-of-mouth. Although these groups seldom broke album sales records, they exerted a considerable influence on the direction of rock and roll, ushering in subgenres gothic rock, indie pop, and grunge.