AC/DC

AC/DC crystallised hard rock into its purest chemical form: riffs hewn from sandstone, vocals scraped raw, rhythms that hit like a jackhammer on pavement. Formed in Sydney in 1973 by Scottish-born brothers Malcolm and Angus Young, the band forged an aesthetic of blue-collar defiance that never wavered across five decades. Their 1980 album Back in Black, recorded after original vocalist Bon Scott's death and featuring new singer Brian Johnson, became the second-highest-selling album in history, shifting over 50 million copies worldwide.

The Young brothers drew from Chuck Berry's duckwalk showmanship and the primal stomp of early rock and roll, stripping away prog-rock excess in favour of pentatonic aggression. Angus's schoolboy uniform became iconography; Malcolm's rhythm guitar work provided the pneumatic drive beneath every anthem. Songs like "Highway to Hell" and "You Shook Me All Night Long" distilled lust, sweat, and volume into three-chord universality.

Their refusal to adapt to changing trends became their greatest strength, cementing AC/DC as totems of uncompromising, unpretentious rock.