This was a very interesting question. Also an honor to be asked: It’s a tall order, being asked to codify butt rock. I mean, loads of people have given it a shot before, but as challenges go, it was too fun to pass up. Common characteristics of butt rock started popping into my head immediately. I decided to take a beat to wrap them up together.

Butt rock is a running joke. Everyone recognizes it as pejorative, so instantly recognizable as pejorative that it can be glossed over in conversation without anyone pushing back and questioning what it is. It’s an old term of uncertain origin. There’s an urban myth that it’s a pun on the tagline “Nothing but rock,” used by numerous rock radio stations during the late ‘90s nu metal era. This is revisionist history, and it’s wrong. The term “butt rock” goes back to at least the Geocities/Tripod/Angelfire era (turn of the millennium), where it was used in regard to ‘70s and ‘80s rock fare that had fallen out of fashion.¹

You’re supposed to dance with your hips, but a decisively unfunky person may have difficulty with the hips and instead lead with the butt. And there are certain kinds of music that seem to reward loping butt-swing. Also, we talk about music that comes from the heart, and music that comes from the head, or from the soul. The term “butt rock” tells you where this music comes from.

So let’s lay out some common characteristics of butt rock. Possessing any of these characteristics does not necessarily make a song or artist butt rock, because they occur across rock subgenres. But when several of them come together into a stew of Altogether Too Much, you probably have butt rock. Here goes:

I’d expect any discussion of butt rock would involve some discussion of guitar riffs. Now, riffs are simply one of the foundational elements of music, period, regardless of instrument. But with butt rock, you’ll probably be getting big, crunchy guitar riffs that come off sounding heavy-handed and start to drag after a while. Butt rock riffs seem to favor power chords. For the non-guitarists: There are six strings on a guitar, but with power chords, you only need three, and two of them are playing the same note an octave apart.

What makes the sound drag, though? One likely way to get there, I would say, is what I’ve always called “dancing around the root.” For those of you who have never touched music theory (which is most people tbh), the root is the note the rest of a chord is built on. So if you’re playing a D or Dm chord, the root is D. When I’m talking about dancing around the root, which is not an accepted music theory term, I’m talking about starting on the root, moving up the scale a few notes, down the scale a few notes, not venturing very far. This is very, very common practice among rock guitarists. Sometimes it’s all you need to get a riff over, but in novice or simply apathetic hands, it can start feeling really dirgey really fast.

Butt rock tends to be more rhythmic than melodic. The question of what it means to play melodically is a slippery and kind of odd one, because a melody is just a series of notes in succession. The best explanation I’ve heard of what people mean when they say music sounds “melodic” has something to do with making use of broader intervals between notes. Butt rock doesn’t necessarily need a lot of melody; it needs to be heavy. Under those requirements, a rhythm itself can function as a hook.

We’re clearly seeing a theme here: It seems as though if you’re going to describe anything as “butt rock,” it’ll probably need to be heavy-handed to the point of excess. That goes for guitar tone, too. Overdriven, crunchy guitars are standard issue for hard rock, but it seems as though the point where that tone slides into butt rock territory is where the sound feels grating. That’s a subjective point, but guitarists widely agree that a Boss MetalZone pedal will take your tone beyond the point of no return. Boss effects pedals are affordable, reliable, and unfussy, which is why they’re so popular. But the MetalZone is the punchline of the Boss line. Its distortion just has too much white noise. It’s what you might consider a “mall guitar store tone.” It’s the sound of n00b guitarists in a Guitar Center, trying out instruments and amps they don’t intend to buy, and thinking they sound really cool. The MetalZone is considered kinda gauche, and so is butt rock itself.

When we talk butt rock, we’re talking sonic limitations. One of those common limitations is the “pentatonic box.” Okay, this is another theory/guitar nerd thing: In the Western music tradition, the major or minor scale has eight notes. Then there’s the pentatonic scale, a/k/a the blues scale, which has five notes, and will generally sound “correct” played over either a major or minor chord. It’s the basis of any blues-based music, however complex, but it also provides shortcuts for a beginner guitarist to play leads effectively. And the box: That’s a section of any part of a guitar neck that’s about three frets wide, underneath all six frets. You may hear a discerning guitarist talk about training themselves to “get out of the box” and use more of the neck to their advantage. But some guitarists never really break out of it. That’s where blues downgrades to blooz, and that’s where a lot of cut-rate rock guitar lives.

Butt rock also seems to have something to do with gruff vocals, probably male. You can do the affected rasp, the mouthful-of-marbles thing, the diaphragm growl, as long as you’re keeping to a lower register (it’s common knowledge that the lower register is where a singer really feels it, man) and it’s not your natural voice. One good way to achieve a butt rock vocal is to impersonate Jim Morrison on one of The Doors’ blues-styled songs, without listening to any of the straight-up blues musicians The Doors were referencing.

That’s a lot of words, without very many citations of actual recorded audio. Who is butt rock? When I was first asked in my writing group how I’d define butt rock, and I rattled off bullet-point versions of characteristics I’ve listed above, Stefan said, “It sounds like you’re describing Puddle of Mudd.” Sure! I mean, I don’t know that band’s full discography, and for all I know, maybe there are melodies somewhere in there that blow a hole through the ceiling, like something on the second Cheap Trick album. I’m willing to be surprised. But the hits? Total butt rock.

Indeed, retrospectively, a whole lot of turn-of-the-millenium nu metal has been slapped with the butt rock label. Nu metal’s premise was something like: What if more heaviness, but less melody? Did anyone else watch the footage of Limp Bizkit in that Woodstock ’99 documentary and think, “Is there more than one chord in this riff, or nah?” That’s total butt rock. But it’s also important to go back to the roots of butt rock – the arena rock pioneers who dedicated themselves to picking up a steady paycheck by grinding out journeyman riffs with cookie-cutter choruses over the top. If the band is made up of five guys from other famous bands; and if the title of the song is a tired platitude, cliche, or idiom… you might be getting some butt rock. Yes, I am looking right at Foreigner, and to a lesser extent maybe select Bad Company tracks. But, Foreigner: My god, the deeply unsexy lurch and unsympathetic lyrics of “Hot Blooded?” Or “Jukebox Hero” – such an annoying verse buildup, to such a stupid chorus payoff, and no swing.²

Someone’s going to hate me for this, but I’d consider Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “Takin’ Care of Business” to be butt rock. It’s a hugely popular song that spends its entire duration meandering in the same circle. If you love clapping on the one, now, here’s a track for you. (Is BTO too easy of a target? They’re, like, a Mormon family band, so it’s not as though they’ve ever been cool.) Mötley Crüe’s “Kickstart My Heart” is probably butt rock. If you take away the catchiest part of the song, the guitar hook – which the Crue didn’t even write! It’s the lick from Sweet’s “Hell Raiser,” a song that rules and is catchy front to back – you don’t have much left. The infamous live version of “Kickstart My Heart” featuring a shitfaced Vince Neil, is definitely butt rock. It’s also amazing as a cultural artifact, arguably a rare case of butt rock elevated to the level of art.³

Butt rock is an inherently pejorative term. The implication is that whatever it’s describing is artless. But that sounds awfully dismissive. So we have to ask: Is it possible to make great, artistically valid butt rock? Doubtlessly. Man, you can make an art anything.

Whatever overall profile of butt rock I’m outlining here, I’m not presenting it as gospel. These characteristics and points are all subject to be added to, removed, debated, or ignored. Don’t @ me. Maybe share some art-level butt rock instead? Or let me know how you’re using a MetalZone in an interesting way. I’ve accidentally made a Line 6 Spider amp do some wild stuff for me. Gotta keep an open mind.

1. My own first exposure to the term was one of those user-generated sites, a compendium of photos depicting various mullet styles, breaking down the likely habits and preferences of the wearers of each mullet variety. Several mullets signified a predilection for “butt rock.” ↩︎
2. I think most of these bands I’m mentioning deserve a “Not all _____,” tired as that caveat is, and I feel oddly compelled to throw in a “Not all Foreigner.” They’re so inconsistent that they have some songs I really like. Foreigner, when they tried, could swing. ↩︎
3. Let’s breeze through another few bands that I’ve heard described as butt rock. Stone Temple Pilots: Don’t think it’s fair to call them butt rock. Will always point out the DeLeo brothers were far more interesting and imaginative musicians than a popular alt-rock band ever needed to be. AC/DC: Not remotely butt rock. AC/DC swings hard, has a lot of melodic motion going on, and is funny. Kiss: Lotta butt. One might suggest they didn’t really try to aim higher than the butt, anyway. How can one band rock so heavily, but sound so unfun? ↩︎