![\"\u00a9Keystone,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/7461044ddda30dfbe3e52226502a4b8c.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u00a9Keystone, Getty Images \/ Peter Cade, Central Press, Hulton Archive, Getty Images \/ Michael M. Santiago, Getty Images \/ Gijsbert Hanekroot, Redferns \/ Ted Bath, Daily Express, Hulton Archive, Getty Images<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/bef872dd885c6bad72bfbbf686cd8269.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
For decades, New York City has been attracting creative people from all over the world to it likes moths to a flame.<\/p>\n
In New York, perhaps more than any other American city, there is a sense that success \u2014 however one might define it \u2014 is always just around the corner. With a little bit of patience, passion and elbow grease, anyone can be exactly who they want to be here.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, I should have been born in New York, man,\u201d John Lennon<\/a> once told<\/a> Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone \u2014 Lennon moved to New York in the summer of 1971. \u201cI should have been born in the Village! That\u2019s where I belong! Why wasn\u2019t I born there? \u2026 Everybody heads towards the center, that\u2019s why I\u2019m here now. I\u2019m here just to breathe it. It might be dying, or there might be a lot of dirt in the air, but this is where it\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n So much groundbreaking music has come out of the Big Apple, across many years, genres and origins, a phenomena that continues today. Below, we\u2019ve somehow narrowed it all down to what we\u2019re considering the \u201cBig 4\u2033 of New York City rock acts. To be clear, we\u2019re not judging based solely on commercial success, but on overall impact, influence and importance to the broader musical landscape.<\/p>\n The Velvet Underground<\/p>\n There is frankly nothing more New York than the Velvet Underground<\/a>, a band made up of three quasi-New Yorkers (Lou Reed<\/a>, Moe Tucker and Sterling Morrison spent their childhoods on Long Island, but much of their teens and early 20s in the city), an immigrant from Wales (John Cale<\/a>) who possessed the only technical training and a German singer (Nico) who came into the picture at the behest of the one and only Andy Warhol. Only in New York could an array of these people find one another.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been regurgitated a million times, but Brian Eno<\/a> truly hit the nail exactly on the head in 1982 when he noted that although the Velvet Underground\u2019s 1967 debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico<\/a>, sold only around 30,000 copies in its first few years of existence, \u201ceveryone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.\u201d Such was the power of the Velvets, with songs that combined elements of just about every style of music one can think of. In the Velvet Underground was the foundation for further experimentations \u2014 both by its own members and many others \u2014 in punk, art rock and pop.<\/p>\n In many ways, Reed\u2019s songwriting was the darker, grittier, more sexual and sinister version of what Dylan<\/a> had been doing in the same city. Drag queens, drug dealers and hustlers came to life in the songs, often accompanied by droning, dissonant sounds that stood in direct contrast to much of the melodic music of the \u201960s and \u201970s. We may not be able to experience this era of New York ourselves, but we can absolutely take a tour via the music of the Velvet Underground.<\/p>\n Subscribe to Ultimate Classic Rock on Youtube<\/a><\/p>\n Kiss<\/p>\n If there is one thing Kiss<\/a>, a band of native New Yorkers, understood it was this: a large part of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll lies in the spectacle of it. There is no business like show business.<\/p>\n Performing as the Starchild (Paul Stanley<\/a>), the Demon (Gene Simmons<\/a>), the Spaceman (Ace Frehley<\/a>) and the Catman (Peter Criss<\/a>), Kiss was able draw inspiration from glam rock and New York City theater to create not just a band, but an overall experience for their audience that would not soon leave their minds. Their first few albums sold poorly, but what they lacked in traditional commercial success, they more than made up for at their live shows, which often included pyrotechnics and fake blood. Kiss\u2019 diligence with their touring and promotion eventually paid off, with 1975\u2019s Alive!<\/a> proving to be their breakthrough release. Before too long, Kiss was bringing their fantastical show to fans all around the globe, where people often showed up in their own black-and-white face paint \u2014 it was hardly something a group of boys from Queens could have dreamed of.<\/p>\n For all intents and purposes, Kiss didn\u2019t make sense. Four men in heavy makeup, heels and costumes isn\u2019t exactly a \u201cmasculine\u201d representation of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll. But these were New Yorkers who knew that oftentimes more is more, and standing out in the music industry is crucial to both lasting success and artistic self-empowerment. As Stanley put it to LA Weekly<\/a> in 2011: \u201cI don\u2019t necessarily want to buy a t-shirt with a guy on it who looks like my neighbor.\u201d<\/p>\n Subscribe to Ultimate Classic Rock on Youtube<\/a><\/p>\n Talking Heads<\/p>\n To describe Talking Heads<\/a> is to describe something intangible. This is their strength.<\/p>\n When Talking Heads, a band of former art school students, got together in New York City, punk music was becoming all the rage with acts like Television, the Ramones<\/a>, Suicide, etc. Those bands and many others would find their own lane of success, but Talking Heads were in a category that didn\u2019t quite exist yet. Not everyone felt drawn to the harder rocking, take-no-prisoners attitude of the punk rock bands \u2014 there had to be something for the quirkier, more eccentric New Yorkers who still wanted to dance.<\/p>\n READ MORE: Why David Byrne Walked Out on Talking Heads\u2019 Final Concert<\/a><\/p>\n Which is precisely where Talking Heads, who found inspiration in world music, R&B and the general NYC art world around them, came into play.<\/p>\n \u201cOther contemporary acts, people around us, some of them were adopting poses or clothes or guitar styles or whatever that seemed to be from a previous era, from a previous generation,\u201d frontman David Byrne <\/a>explained to NPR<\/a> in 2023. \u201cAnd I thought to myself, well, those were invented or created by other people and they belong to them and they express something about their generation. But how do I do something that belongs to us, that speaks to our generation, that speaks to our concerns? And I thought, well then, I have to jettison everything that went before and be very careful not to adopt any of that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n What Talking Heads expertly did \u2014 likely without realizing they were doing it \u2014 was take the can-do spirit of punk rock and combine it with a more angular style of music, a sort of skittish energy that sounded like a group of young New Yorkers finding their path and trying new things along the way. In their music, it was cool to be curious about the world and people surrounding you, and perfectly fine to ask yourself how you got there.<\/p>\n \u201cMusically\u2026and visually we felt very, very different than what was then considered punk rock,\u201d Byrne continued to NPR. \u201cBut [we had this] this kind of DIY, the do it yourself, idea that was prevalent amongst the punk rockers\u2026and we [could] speak to the concerns of our generation and our contemporaries.\u201d<\/p>\n Subscribe to Ultimate Classic Rock on Youtube<\/a><\/p>\n Billy Joel<\/p>\n It sort of doesn\u2019t get more New York than Billy Joel<\/a>, the man who has played Madison Square Garden more than anyone else in history. (He\u2019s done it 150 times, for the record.)<\/p>\n One look through his catalog and the album and song titles will speak for themselves: 52nd Street<\/a>, \u201cNew York State of Mind,\u201d \u201cUptown Girl,\u201d \u201cBig Man on Mulberry Street,\u201d Turnstiles<\/a>, etc. Though he grew up in Hicksville on Long Island, Joel\u2019s musical life centered around New York, and he was quite purposeful in his mission to become a certain kind of singer-songwriter.<\/p>\n READ MORE: The Best Song From Every Billy Joel Album<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think the punks are typically representative of the whole spectrum of New York music,\u201d he to The New York Times<\/a> in 1978, the year he played his very first show at Madison Square Garden. \u201cI wanted to present another point of view, but I didn\u2019t want to be Barry Manilow, either.\u201d<\/p>\n That he did, writing songs about New York that spoke to its grit, promise, spontaneity and reliability. One Reddit user <\/a>we found put it as succinctly as anyone ever could: \u201cBig flourishes while also being a ham-and-egger personality wise. Dude IS NY.\u201d<\/p>\n