Who invented this term, when and why? True meaning of it?
Your thoughts?
You'd be surprised at how difficult this is to answer. The earliest confirmed reference to it I could find on ye ol' Interwebs was a Pitchfork review in 2011, which seemed to acknowledge that it was already an emerging term (with some disdain). The term really started picking up speed around 2014 it seems, since most of the usage of the term I saw in Google news searches were 2014 or later. USA Today also has a podcast called "Dad Rock" apparently. Global Google search data shows a few searches stretching as far back as of 2004, and it seems to be more popular in the UK than the US. There's a HUGE jump in searches in June of this year, since that's where the biggest portion of searches come from.
I couldn't find any actual info on where the term comes from. Most likely, it comes from critics. A lot of names start as derogatory terms by critics which the genre then adopts over time. Like "baroque" classical (which literally means "Gaudy") or the "hipster" movement, for example.
Also, interestingly enough, some places list it as the one word "dadrock". Weird.
Dad rock essentially refers to music your dad would like. Almost always rock bands from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, but there doesn't seem to be a specific genre that it always references. I've seen 90s alternative rock and post-grunge bands like Foo Fighters described as dad rock, prog bands like Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, and even
punk described as dad rock. 90s rap groups like A Tribe Called Quest are sometimes called dad rock, weirdly enough. Basically, it's a derogatory term that means "old fashioned". The most obvious example of this is rock music, since it hasn't really been an important part of our modern culture for about a decade, outside of the Indie Rock Fluke Hit Sweepstakes(TM) winners. These kind of things are almost natural, and the youth of previous generations had the same reaction to disco, jazz, classical, whatever. It'll go away eventually, rock will probably exit the popular consciousness, and enter into academia as a form of "classy" music. That seems to be what happens.