here's my list of the 7 rock/pop artists that changed music forever, and reasoning:rolling stones...the first immensely popular british act in america, and the pioneers of hard-edged rock in america...they would obviously go on to change their sound over time, but their early days are still what make them immensely popular todaythe beatles...obviously, their pop music era got them popular originally, and then their switch to a psychedelic sound showed their tremendous songwriting talentled zeppelin...it can be debated, but i see them and not black sabbath as the inventors of metal...also, they can be credited with the advancement of blues rock around the worldpink floyd...getting past their psychedelic era, they put prog rock on the map and opened the door for any and all such bands to have any popularity at allac/dc...they are the pioneers of hard rock, their talent, image, and edge were unmatched, and they had the personality for popularity(cont.)michael jackson...as much dislike as i hold for this guy, you can't deny that he put pop music on the map and opened the door for a lot of similar acts, including the ones we see today...he was very talented, too bad he's a headcasenirvana...i know people will bash me for putting them on the list and i know that neil young is the actual inventor of grunge, but they put the genre on the map and actually knocked jacko off the top of the music world, which was no small featso, who would you add to the list if you could, or maybe subtract from it? and you can critique my list if you wanti don't know that elvis was particularly influential for any other reason other than being the "king"bob dylan never really did anything earth-shattering imoto me, the who weren't that much different than the stones in terms of sound, and the stones did come first and cleared the way for any popularity the who might have had, regardless of who was better(i personally prefer the stones though)queen i think we can add to the list for their musical experimentationi guess chuck berry did have something to do with it as well, he was the influence of the influencesand hannah montana as influential? uh, no, no one ever will look back on her as anything...and even though i like bon jovi, they didn't influence anyone or anythingactually shades, imo the ramones were the first punk rockers, which leads me to believe that maybe they should be on this list