re: 1 minor to 5# major..how many (hard)rock songs would exist without this chord progression?

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Not sure if you’re serious, but I’ll play along…using the Nashville number system, let’s say your song is in the key of Em…E would be your “1”, making C your “5#”….so let’s try this another way….how many rock songs would exist if you couldn’t go from Em to C on the choruses?

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C is the minor sixth interval of Em. It is a flat sixth, not a sharp 5. You could not make an Em chord without B, it’s perfect fifth, therefore there is no sharp 5 in the key if Em, even though C is a semitone up from B (or one tone sharp of the 5). The key context matters.

ETA: the simple way of looking at it is there is always one of each letter in every scale, which is either natural, sharp or flat. So a #5 in any given E key is a B#. Even though B# is C, the 5 is being augmented, so notated as B#. There would still be a sixth scale degree, and would either be a C, Cb or C#.

For those that don’t know music theory, I will say I meandered through learning music for many years, but when I finally learned theory my skills kind of took off. It actually makes learning easier, it’s just a vocabulary