Progressive Rock:

Top 30 Acts

Progressive rock is one of the most beloved and ridiculed of rock music’s sub genres. As a hilarious piece at Cracked.com says, it is “categorized by a sacking of traditional song structure, complex rhythms, odd time signatures,” and insane song lengths betraying the creators’ lack of awareness of when to stop a song.

The players tend to be average singers and extremely skilled musicians, often working with wacky instruments. As the piece amusingly states, it is “the only rock genre in which the term ‘flute solo’ has any meaning.”

Also prevalent are a propensity toward concept albums built on half-baked themes and philosophy. There tends to be plenty of drug inspiration and “a sense of inherent superiority over other rock genres.”

All kidding aside, it is a difficult genre to absorb. The stereotypes detailed at Cracked.com lean toward the truth more often than not, but prog rock is largely defined by not being definable. It is an experimental form which doesn’t play by the rules.

16 lists focused on progressive rock acts were aggregated to create this list. The top 15 were determined by which acts appeared on the most lists. The next fifteen were determined by looking at all acts reaching 4 to 9 lists and then ordering them by overall status in Dave’s Music Database.

See other lists of Acts/Music Makers by Genre.