Angst - in Popular Music

In Popular Music

Angst, in contemporary connotative use, most often describes the intense frustration and other emotions of teenagers and the mood of the music and art with which they identify in accordance with adult stereotype. Heavy metal, punk rock, grunge, nu metal, emo, and virtually any alternative rock dramatically combining elements of discord, melancholy and excitement may be said to express angst. Angst was probably first discussed in relation to popular music in the mid- to late 1950s that was popular amongst the nuclear disarmament and antiwar protester subculture. Folk rock songs like Bob Dylan's 1963 Masters of War and A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall articulated the dread caused by the threat of nuclear war. A key text is Jeff Nuttall's book Bomb Culture (1968), which traced this pervasive theme in popular culture back to Hiroshima.

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