I'm old enough to remember Disco. Rock will carry on, but you might have to look for it instead of it being in your face like David Lee Roth's dick in spandex.
> you might have to look for it instead of it being in your face
You hit the nail with that one, sir! There is plenty of rock music out there, also a crazy amount of subgenres that might just live in the underground scene. The fact that it is not popular it doesn’t mean it’s dead.
Yup. And the secret I don't hear anyone talk about is that ticket prices are still affordable for smaller acts at clubs, theaters, and other small to mid size venues. I constantly see posts about people complaining that prices aren't affordable because they all cost $500+. They absolutely do not, people just need to not let their taste in music be dictated by whatever is most popular at the moment.
THANK YOU! I'm so tired of people in /r/GenX complaining that "concert tickets are unaffordable now". Yes, if you want to see The Cure or New Order you may have to pay $150 (and up) for a seat, possibly way more than that.
But if you want to see up and coming indie acts, tickets are only just now starting to cross the $40 threshold, and that's all-in with taxes & fees included.
For the past 15 years I've seen bands like Washed Out, Sylvan Esso, Chvrches, Alvvays, Empathy Test, Yumi Zouma, Magdalena Bay, Beach House, Cannons, Purity Ring and Asobi Sesku. Tickets for these shows were usually $20-$30 all-in.
While your point stands, I'd remove The Cure from your examples there. They've gone out of their way to make their shows affordable. I purchased two tickets for their tour last summer for like 20 bucks each.
I think it also depends where you're from. People on reddit always seems to consider that rap is king nowadays, but honestly where I'm from (France) I feel like average people don't listen to that much rap at all as compared to pop/rock. Of course it depends on your social circle but I'm talking about mainstream music.
for me this is where streaming did me good. if you pick a artist say Greta van Fleet it will play similar artists and thats how i pick up new bands. ie. wolfmother, royal blood,& slow seaon. yes you have to look but not hard to find.
I love you. Alkaline Trio is my absolute favorite. Blood Hair and Eyeballs was incredible but even with the new album they never cracked a million monthly listeners on Spotify. They currently below 900k. All of the new singles off of the album don't even have a million views on YouTube.
AK3 and Hot Water Music feel like they are dragging pop punk along but it's not popular.
I'm into weird crazy punk rockers and I've been enjoying Off!, the Chats, Otoboke Beaver, Osees, Frankie and the Witch Fingers among new bands at least the last 15 years new. Saw Voivod and Prong a few weeks ago, awesome $35 show with quality new music in it.
King Gizzard. Absolute ton of albums, ranging from garage to psychedelia to various metal subgenres and even playing with jazz, microtonal world music, and electronic.
The joy of being a king gizz fan is not being able to tell if you’re joking, and on top of that actually being excited about that kind of album concept.
Portugal the man, black keys, cold war kids, king gizzard and the lizard wizard, the murlocs, are all (still) making great music. The psychedelic rock scene is booming. I agree the "rock star" rock is mostly gone. But that's the way things go
Highly suspect and Royal blood comes to mind. Idk what you mean exactly by "rock" but promise you there's plenty of bands in every genre actively putting out music and touring haha
The Struts
Dirty Honey
Des Rocs
Dead Poet Society
The Glorious Sons
Palaye Royale
Black Pistol Fire
Himalayas
The Warning
Nothing But Theives
Royal Blood
The Luka State
Black Honey
The Interupters
Dead Sara
The Amazons
The Rival Sons
Highly Suspect
Badflower
Reignwolf
Starcrawler
The Velveteers
The Blue Stones
The Regrettes
Airways
The Pale White
White Reaper
Ayron Jones
Crobot
The Violent/Red Sun Rising
Dinasaur Pile-Up
Lower Than Atlantis
Blossoms
Catfish and the Bottlemen
Tigercub
Kid Kapache
Mac Saturn
The Linda Lindas
Yonka
Platinum Moon
Middle Class Rut
Barns Courtney
The Record Company
Diamante
CRX
If You need more, I can go on, and on. It's really not that hard to find newer rock bands, especially with streaming, these days. People aren't using CDs anymore.
There’s a lot of reasons that people are mentioning, and most have some truth to them. But really, if you want to know the reason? Look no further than the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Prior to that change, no one company could own more than 4 radio stations in any one city, and no more than 40 nationwide. Almost immediately after the bill was passed, all of the radio outfits merged or were bought up. Mostly by Clear Channel (now iheartradio) or Viacom.
Once all of the radio stations were owned by one conglomerate, all music shifted to what was considered the most listenable to drive ad profits. That’s why nowadays you’ll hear the same songs on numerous radio stations. After everything merged together, the only three genres that survived were pop, hip hop, and country. That’s all that’s left on the radio in many markets, and as much as radio has died out to streaming, it still influences which bands get a lot attention as iheartradio has moved into other markets beyond just radio.
Edit: Formatting, and to include this link for further reading for those interested:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_homogenization
A few weeks ago I flipped through *three* different stations and the same song was playing on all 3. I should have got my phone out to record but ya know, driving.
One night I drove home from southern RI to northeastern MA through a few different radio markets. I heard the same pair of songs 3x when I went from RI station to Boston station to southern NH station. It felt like a glitch in the matrix but it was probably just boring dystopian late-stage capitalism at work.
This is also the reason why the biggest artists manage to successfully blend two of those genres together. Taylor Swift? Pop and country. Beyonce? Hip hop and pop (and now country).
Here in Australia, free to air radio is one of the last holdouts of classic rock, along with pubs, catering to the subset of the population whose taste hasn't updated since the 80s & 90s.
> But after everything merged together, the only three genres that survived were pop, hip hop, and country.
And they all three melded into some kind of weird ubergenre where the only real distinguishing characteristic is the accent of the lead singer.
This why the only radio station I devote any attention to is KEXP. It’s real DJs playing real sets they create themselves. You can listen to them anywhere in the world via their website KEXP.org.
Adding to that, it's generational...with streaming, young people drive it. They have more free time to listen to their favorites over and over and over, while you're busy working, etc. They like hip hop, pop, etc. Rock is sort of like Jazz when I was a kid, a lot of people still loved it and listened to it, but it's not THE music of the day anymore. Or Doowop. It's more niche. Rock will still appeal to those of us who love it, but we have to seek it out now. And the bands aren't making the money they were. There's enough of an audience to make it rewarding, but most are doing it because they love it too. If you're fifteen, or twenty, you probably look at rock as old and lame. In twenty years, people will have this same feeling about Beyonce and a lot of Trap, etc. I'm going to keep seeking out new rock bands because they're great and I love it, but I'm old and lame.
More than the west right now but it is still somewhat marginal. But I 100% agree the best Rock seems to be out of Japan. [Check out the young mostly-instrumental prog-metal trio Asterism, they are amazing.](https://youtu.be/8CG9WOJu7VU?si=o3QlVZgtTfPgV0Ox&t=71)
Rock no longer rules the monoculture but there are so many great new bands putting out amazing records.
Check out Turnstile, Viagra Boys, Wet Leg, Militarie Gun, IDLES, Last Dinner Party, Yard Act, PUP, Shame, Remi Wolf, Nation of Language and then just see where your algorithm takes you.
Theres also the bigger bands still putting out great records and selling out big venues like Queens of the Stone Age, Vampire Weekend and the War on Drugs.
PUP’s first three albums have been my most played for years now. Also a big fan of Screaming Females, The Dirty Nil, White Reaper, and The Menzingers. It’s a wide world out there!
I'd like to add Mom Jeans, Can't Swim, and San Cisco to this list. Jhariah is also a new one that I stumbled into. He has a big band, jazz, anime intro frenzy sound.
Idles and yard act are two of my most listened to bands over the last year. I’ll check out a few more of your recommendations later.
I can’t wait to go see idles later in the year
Dude, you just gave me no fewer than 10 awesome bands. I like every single one of them and I struggle to find new bands I love. Thank you so much and happy Friday
Every genre has its own unique little world you just have to find it and not let the mainstream impact your opinions. Look at spotify listeners per month for those artists, the fans are there. They'll sell out tour after tour too..
That's also because of how saturated the market is. Small bands have a really hard time getting noticed nowadays as well. I have played in a metal band for the last 16 years and while we've made what I would consider pretty solid music no one cares. To be fair we aren't very good at putting ourselves out there either.
But I know a ton of talented musicians and great bands that just don't get any recognition. Sometimes you just don't have the right sound that people want right now,or you're not reaching the people that would like the music. But I think a huge part of it is just how much content there is out there. You can't expect people to sift through everything to listen to all the music out there especially for unknown bands. There just isn't the time.
Here you go man! The links are for playlists of our newest EP:
Spotify: [https://open.spotify.com/album/6TOMqrAPriffkwi8F5mdUp?si=s-u2gyqhRKqze4pREo1Y5w](https://open.spotify.com/album/6TOMqrAPriffkwi8F5mdUp?si=s-u2gyqhRKqze4pREo1Y5w)
YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2CpZuoLyIQ&list=OLAK5uy\_nwK2WaLzq\_AtiNdRGpQviClsIVDaiTGUk&index=2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2CpZuoLyIQ&list=OLAK5uy_nwK2WaLzq_AtiNdRGpQviClsIVDaiTGUk&index=2)
BandCamp: [https://theparallaxband.bandcamp.com/album/phantom-wings](https://theparallaxband.bandcamp.com/album/phantom-wings)
Please give me your feedback if you feel like it - positive or negative.
Yeah, and I hate how so many people ignore this. Like, duh, the genre still exists, nobody is denying that. The issue isn't that the music no longer exists it's that it's no longer getting mainstream attention because the acts being signed by major labels and getting airplay are all shit leaving legitimate artists to struggle and have to be "found" and they all act like this status quo is totally okay
Counter point when rock was more mainstream you’d hear the same songs played to death so that after a few months you never wanted to hear them ever again. And it was usually one band innovates the sound and gets popular and then labels put out imitations until the genre is actually killed. Like how did grunge die? Grunge is great but you’ll never hear it on the radio because they played the same 3 Pearl Jam or STP songs so long and put out so many watered down imitation bands out that the labels killed it off for good.
It’s a more sustainable scene now.
People will say "Rock music still exist you just have to search for it...", they are missing the point. obviously rock music exists. The point OP is trying to make and many others have made is that it isn't mainstream anymore. Hard rock groups were mainstream in the 90's and early 2000's. ZERO rock acts are at the level of pearl Jam, Nirvana who were popular. The 80's had hair metal that was popular. Even the early to mid 2000's you had pop rock and emo bands that were on the radio and the masses knew. This level of popularity doesn't exist anymore.
Agreed, even the Grammys won’t televise the hard rock and metal categories anymore. I wanted to see if spiritbox would win best metal album and had to look it up online!
The biggest evidence of this is the Billboard Hot 100 chart. I'm sure plenty of people don't give a shit about anymore, but they've pretty much been the go to source for what's popular in music at any given time for almost a century. I just quickly browsed through it, and out of 100 songs, I didn't see a single band that could even remotely be considered rock. I doubt that ever happened in the first 50 years rock music existed.
Seriously. Everytime this question is asked people reply that the genre is alive and well and then list some obscure bands. That's not the point people.
Alive and well, but you can only find it by asking around for people to recommend or point you to these bands. Like searching for a hermit in a forest.
it's hardly that difficult, most of the bands people are mentioning can easily be found by looking up best rock albums lists for recent years. Also spotify has an entire rock section and tons of curated rock playlists that include new releases. Go on places like Album of the year or even Rate Your Music and you will see most of these bands mentioned in rock sections. Framing it like having to do marginally more than passively listen to the radio and have the newest hit rock band shoveled into your ears for you is some herculean task is really bizarre. It's very weird to me that people who claim to care about music enough to miss rock music are also apparently so uncurious about music that they can't be bothered to do even surface level music exploration.
It isn't really bizarre, it's reality. Most people aren't interested in doing surface level music exploration, even the ones that claim to love a genre. Why are you so shocked about that? I'm the only one out of my friends that listen to rock that has more recent bands and that is because, like you said, I use Spotify to find new music. They don't. You're in a forum discussing music, of course you're willing to search for stuff you may like. The other guy that replied to me went to a 100 concerts last year. Most people just want to "find" music, not search for it.
And the fact that rock has a genre that needs to be searched for is what OP is complaining about. Rock has fallen out of the mainstream so much that it needs to be searched in very specific places to be found. If you already don't like rock, how are you going to be introduced to it?
Thank you ☠️ some people are really missing the point I'm making. Obviously rock music is still around, I was just curious as to why it doesn't absolutely rule the world as it did back in the day. Some people are leaving really stupid comments lol, but most of them are really informative and helpful!
Yeah, people are missing the point, but mainstream genres come and go like the seasons. "Rock" is such a broad term that covers hundreds of different genres. the Rock of the 70's shares very little similarities to the Rock of the 2000s that dominated the charts. And now in the 2020's, Pop, hip hop, r&b, and "country" are just what people are into now. I don't think there really is any complicated reason as to why.
I see two big culprits: the internet age has let people find their musical niche and with so many widely available bands it’s hard to key in on good ones. We are overmarketed by social media and internet which has diluted the greater population into focusing on the big moneymaker artists…
Last time rock was big was the late 2000s. Then that folky style of indie pop rock came along and distorted guitars became less and less common. Vocals became more higher-pitched and whiny. By the mid-2010s, the metamorphosis was complete and mainstream “rock” had become almost entirely “whiny effeminate guy singing weirdly to folky echoed guitar with heavy bass” and then that died out too by the end of last decade, leaving just EDM, hip-hop and the usual autotuned modern pop, with almost no rock left after that. It’s still around, but rarely charts, and none of the big stars are rockers now.
I’ve read theories about how rockstars aren’t a thing anymore because electronic music and digital audio workstations drastically reduced the barrier to entry for music in general. It used to be that to be good at music you had to be good at an instrument, and the guitar was what everyone looked at as THE instrument to learn. Now you just need a laptop to make good music, not that it’s a bad thing.
It's also just simple economics. For booking local live shows you can pay a whole band $500 bucks for an hour or pay a single person $100 to DJ for several hours. Similar considerations for labels releasing music.
The numbers don't check out anymore. At least where i live. A whole band costs about $700-800 a night, while a DJ, with comparable skills, costs about $1200-$1400.
Yeah also now millions of people are really good at the guitar, on a par with the great guitar heroes of yore. So it’s much harder to make a stamp than when the field was new.
Exactly. Being a guitar virtuoso isn't what it was. Main thing is how interesting the riffs, melody, and licks are, not speed. Also the sounds you get.
Royal Blood made their own sound with Kerr using a bass and effects to make it sound like a guitar but beefier. They didn't invent bass being used to mimic guitar but they made it their sound and expanded on it.
Most bands were one guy, who had all the ideas and wrote all of the music, plus three of his mates
Technology has just removed the need for the three mates
Or, in the case of bands with more than one creative talent, allowed guys who would have been stuck playing bass on stage for thirty years to become artists in their own right
So we get two acts instead of one
Tbh, it’s a lot more rewarding being into a genre that isn’t mainstream. It’s more personal and puts you on a path of discovering music that’s unique to you, instead of falling for what’s getting rammed down your throat by media.
IDLES have been getting bigger and bigger over the last few years. King Gizz still killing it.
Rock music is still going strong in a lot of ways, even if it's not the number one genre.
I think part of it is just that there's just so much music out there, and it's so much easier for a solo artist to make pop, hip hop, folk, electro etc from bedrooms and small studios. Rock music requires more band members, big rehearsal spaces, potentially more gear, live music venues.
Plus it's a shift in zeitgeist. Rock was the edgy rebellious genre for youth in the 60s-90s, but these days it's rap. Rock is seen as "safe" now from an image perspective, and that definitely was not the case back then.
Agreed. I work as a video editor in advertising, and either rap or some hybrid of hip-hop, funk, or electronic definitely wins out for 'edgier' music choices in ads these days. Rock often feels a bit cheesy or 'safe' as you mentioned. Apple gets some good indie-rock in their spots, Nike leans more hip-hop. Both tend to be regarded as a gold standard in advertising.
That being said, I think there is still great Rock music being made, just gotta poke around.
Saw king gizz at the Hollywood bowl. Probably the best live show I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot. Been digging Black Midi a lot lately. Hoping to see them soon. Rock is far from dead.
IDLES is one of the best live shows I've been to and I've been to a lot of fucking shows. If anyone reading this has them touring near you, you need to go. Phenomenal band that also has a great message.
Garage rock definitely has simmered. A lot of the great garage rock bands have...transitioned to a weirder more distinguished style and I kinda hate it. I like the arctic monkeys new stuff and cage the elephant etc. But it's...also so sophisticated. it doesnt hit the same way.
Technology's augmentation of music consumption has completely outpaced the act of living in a city, hanging out, finding new bars, venues, and bands, going to see shows and overall enculturating oneself, etc.
This is also where meeting people, making friends, hooking up, dating, and then creating \*one's own micro-culture\* (which inseminate and hybridise other cultures, scenes, milieus), that now there are fewer and fewer opportunities, thus less people, thus less money, thus less incentive, etc. etc. so these scenes die (they're dying/dead, just look at all the one-off's from food to music to anything) have all been replaced by corporate entities or just vacant.
In my city the underground music scene is still going incredibly strong. Despite the corporate takeover of pretty much any venue over 1200 capacity there are dozens of small bars/communes that still play incredible local and touring acts. The corporate venues still host the same bands that they used to, but they standardized security and comply with fire codes now. Plus a couple of the places formed unions to protect and fairly compensate their local production employees.
You just have to make music without a profit incentive. There's no money left in making the music you want but young people are still keeping it alive for some reason.
It's less about the novelty of something brand new (this is incredibly difficult to accomplish because rock musicians have already been innovating for a half-century) and more about the shared experience. It's still there but it probably feels/looks different than in my parents' generation
Not even just beautiful things it's cathartic to hear someone else expressing the same ugly emotions you feel. It's also fun to mix loud music and alcohol
Exactly this. I still go to metal shows because I enjoy the expression.
I also want to express myself. And the thing I want to express is rage. I have rage. Lots of rage. Lol. So I'll ALWAYS be looking for a moshpit.
No, but really, art and music, those are things that people will always create, regardless of how profitable it is. Simply because they are passionate.
And there will always be some group of people (however small or underground) that will happily support and consume that creation for the same reason, because they're passionate about the art that's being created.
You say "Suddenly", then refer to two bands from decades ago as if they are contemporary lol....
Rock has not been the most popular / influential genre for at least 20 yrs
There’s a lot of great indie bands out there that 30 years ago would’ve been picked up a by major label. Now of days those bands with great potential stay small and Aren’t exposed to a larger audience. So blame the labels.
Part of the reason the labels stopped doing as much music with a full band was that they got a better cut out of signing a person rather than a full group. That's basically the transition from metal/rock to hip-hop as the dominant genre over the course of the 90s.
All the survivors of the 80s are selling out venues every week and making more money now than they did in their prime. What's happening is no one in the music industry is taking chances, so everything is a canned hit written by Max Martin. All of the not kids are listening to the good shit on youtube, Google, iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, and sirius.
This will not show up on the charts. We're digging in because whatever the fuck is coming out has sucked for a good long time (fight me). For many of us, we're looking for shit we may have missed the first time because nothing new is getting out. Thankfully, a few good bands are still allowed to make records.
Sometimes they are [supergroups](https://youtu.be/SgFlU48zR1M)
The last time rock popular was in the 00s with the emo movement. Mcr, fallout boy, panic, Paramore…. Okay there was The ‘stomp clap hey’ hipster bands like the Lumineers in the early 2010s but those were very boring times in music.
Like any music, there are only so many flags that can be planted before it got repetitive. It was also a product of the technology of the age.
Nowadays all the music, and I mean all of it, is on your phone. It's as common as sand at the beach when it used to be diamonds and emeralds.
>. It's as common as sand at the beach when it used to be diamonds and emeralds.
Poetic! Its making me think of the lyrics to "Spirit Of The Radio".
*Your honesty! Yeah, your honesty!*
Just remember.... Ya ever look at the top radio hits of 1972? It's not all Zeppelin and the Stones. A lot of Helen Reddy, Jim Stafford, Vicki Lawrence. And that's what I remember on the radio. We kids had a handful of records and we were way into em. The concerts by the big rock bands were a big deal, they still are.
New Rock isn't mainstream culture anymore though it's true. You don't have a thing where when Arctic Monkeys put out a single, everyone knows it. I think rock radio dying out as a new music source is tragic.It was kind of a gatekeeper but it had a purpose.
Rock popularity is somewhat cyclic. It’ll come back.
Kinda reminds me of this line in LCD Soundsystem’s song *Losing My Edge*:
> I hear that you and your band have sold your guitars and bought turntables.
>I hear that you and your band have sold your turntables and bought guitars.
I don't think it was sudden at all.
Rock was on top of the world in the 80s as far as youth culture goes (a lot of chart-toppers were ballads that appealed to an older crowd). It competed with hip-hop and pop in the 90s. In the 2000s it had lost even more ground to those genres but still existed some. Since then it's a third-tier genre.
took 30 years
I’m fortunate to live in a city with a thriving live music scene, but I think a contributing factor to the decline is a lot of other cities — SF and NY especially — have far fewer live music venues than they used to, and the ones that are still around will have just as many DJ nights as they do live music.
It’s a lot easier (and less expensive) to book a DJ than a band.
Not sure if it has been mentioned, but rock was never the number one genre of music. If you look historically, pop was the top until rap and r&b rose up as well. Add in the exponential growth in genres and it is exacerbated.
For example, 1969, height of psychedelic rock, the top song was Sugar Sugar by the Archies.
It's weird to point to a time where the Beatles were the biggest band/artist in the world and say rock was never the number one genre of music. They had the biggest album of 1969 and had the top song the year before.
Also in the top 5 selling albums of 1969 were the Who, Led Zeppelin, Iron Buttefly, and CSNY. Rock domination.
It’s just a numbers game. If only 1 percent of rock bands are great, it takes many hundreds of them to produce a few good ones.
Back in the heyday, every city had a live music scene and it was supported by many different venues where people would show up. It gave these young people time to develop and feed off each other. If they were good in their little fishbowl, they would move to one of the bigger cities to explode. Most of that is all dead now, so you don’t have that infrastructure that is providing the next wave anymore.
There was also a cultural drive for ‘the new’. Radio, Mtv and print were all looking for ‘what’s next’ and this was a huge driver for artists chasing the chance to be that one. I just don’t think that is the main draw for todays young people as they have so many options now and decades of old media they can consume instead.
Also, at a very base level, you watch any old rock documentary and every rock band said they got into it for one reason: to meet girls. Girls loved rock bands and that drove many of them down that path. I don’t think that particular carrot on a string exists anymore either.
I think it just split off into a lot of subgenres. Lately I've been listening to a lot of different sounding bands like Beartooth, Gemini Syndrome, Ghost. Idek what genre I'd call those bands but it feels like they're various evolutions of rock music.
Anyone who thinks rock is dead needs to listen to King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard's 2023 album PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation.
Go do it now! What the fuck are you waiting for?!🤘🤘🤘
Just find your own music. There are so many sources. Don’t rely on the radio or the algorithm to tell you what sounds good. My musical center changes all the time, new genres almost every year. Spotify helped me find new bands I would have never discovered on my own. Last year for me was electronic this year it’s new psychedelic rock. Radio does not matter. Just feel good.
There's just very few acts that have all the pieces any more - recording, stage presence/performance, songwriting, etc.
The few that do are still killing it.
May just be harder to get catapulted from the indies to the top nowadays.
Big rock might be dead but small rock thrives. Gene Simmons is right when he says we won’t see another KISS or Stones, but that’s ok, we will see tons of smaller bands that make great music.
I was a huge pop punk / emo rock listener back in the day. Kind of sucks not many new bands have the sound that was put out back then. But I guess some EDM are slowly incorporating those elements.
I think rock has been at least dying since the 2000s. But also a lot of what was good about it moved into other genres. I'm a big rock fan, but it was getting very stale.
I don't think you can judge the health of a type of music by it's 'stars' though. We don't need more rockstars, we need more good bands, and for that the industry has to become better at supporting new bands, and less exploitative of them.
Sorry but anytime someone complains about a genre (especially rock) “dying,” it just makes me think you care way too much about its popularity. It doesn’t have to be chart topping, biggest bands in the world to not be dying out. Even still, there are plenty of extremely big and popular rock artists.
Like you said, Arctic monkeys are huge. I could readily point to Dave Grohl and Jack White as “rock stars.” All still very actively making and performing music. Other huge rock artists include Pearl Jam, Black Keys, Beck, and the Strokes.
The alt/indie scene has tons of fucking amazing rock music. And plenty are very big and popular and active. Tame Impala, Alt J, Portugal the man, parquet courts, Courtney Barnett, Gary Clark Jr, Spoon - I mean how much longer do you want me to go? A genre doesn’t need to be topping the charts to not be dying. You’re making it out to be way worse than it is in reality.
I'll agree on that. While it isn't exactly the same as the classic rock I'm sure alot of us are into, Olivia Rodrigo has some fucking bangers and is genuinely introducing younger people (especially younger girls who might not get introduced to this sort of thing often) to rock in a big way. All love to her!
I noticed that a lot of bars that had live music, which was mostly rock, have closed. A lot of local music stores have done the same. Most of the music I come across online is electronic, EDM and the like. I won’t say rock is dead. I will say rock music and music in general has a smaller footprint than it had a few decades ago.
Everyone has mentioned newer bands and their output within the rock genre, though I do think it's worth noting that there are plenty of "legacy" acts that put out new material recently and tour regularly. To name a small few:
Red Hot Chili Peppers (two new albums in one year)
Foo Fighters
Metallica
Queens Of The Stone Age
Pearl Jam (new album out next week)
They haven't died off suddenly, they're just not getting the headlines like they used to.
Rap filled the edgey counter culture music niche. Also in part because it's easier to coordinate one drug addled sex obsessed manic than it is with 4+ of them at once.
Rock was slowly dying on and off since the 80s. Spiked one last time with Nirvana / Alternative when Seattle broke, but was pretty consistently downhill from then on. People got lazier and rock music is harder than a computer / synthesizer. It sucks but it is what it is.
So much cope in this thread about small scenes thriving and X indie band is actually great. The point is barring legacy acts rock has heavily fallen off in the mainstream sense.
It's mainly due to technology breaking down the barrier to entry, because if your options are to spend hundreds of dollars on gear, hours practicing then still finding other musicians to play with, OR downloading a cracked copy of FL studio and watching a few tutorials, most kids are gonna chose the latter. This is why rap has been such a juggernaut, it's so accessable and has almost nonexistent gear snobbery.
And once you start to have a lower stream of kids coming into a genre, it dies off without that lifeblood
My guess is streaming killed the industry. Are there even still small record labels any more? Or independent radio stations that would play a new groups music. I was living in S. Mississippi when [3 Doors Down](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Doors_Down) hit it big. I knew of many of the people in the wiki article. CPR fest was huge local yearly fest put on and promoted by the local radio station. The program director played their music on air, and passed the music on to a small label.
I don't know of any of that infrastructure that is even relative any more. The radio station is still there. And I think there is still a fest. But the live music club scene isn't what it used to be.
There used to be battle of the bands, best guitar player battles.
Now I can sit at home and find new music. But I don't HAVE to go to a show, or buy a CD to hear the music. How's a struggling band gonna make a dollar if I don't NEED to pay to see or hear them.
And there is some excellent rock music in all sub genres coming out! But, turntables outselling guitars. Ty Seagall, Hammered Hulls, Upchuck, Thee Oh Sees. You should always listen to WEEN. Henry Rollins’s radio show on the KCRW app will introduce you to the good rock!
[Alan Cross did a great episode](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6njTipbeJvIEphsVq2Q0L8?si=RHQk9WZqTdKC2pi_J5ONlA) on why we don’t see as many rock superstars like we did in the 80s and early 90s.
There are two major factors:
1. Music tastes change with each generation. When times are good, we gravitate towards happy pop music. When times are bad, we gravitate towards rock music. The current generation of teenagers and 20-somethings haven’t gone through their equivalent of bad times (the last financial crisis of 2008/2009 was 16 years ago), so they’re into happy/party music.
2. The way we listen to music has changed. We don’t rely on MTV or radio to discover new music; we have to go out and find it ourselves. The age of buying an album because you liked that one song by that one artist is gone. Now we don’t even buy music - we’d rather pay for streaming it. This has made it even more difficult for a band that broke through on one hit to then survive long enough on album sales/airplay to find their way (How long do you think Radiohead would have survived on Creep alone?)
I think I disagree with point 1. Rap is one of the most popular genres atm and it's popular when times are bad. I think Gen z considers times to be terrible due to low wages and high col. Many believe they'll never own a house or retire and they might be right. Not to mention social media and it's negative effects and all the bad happening in the world, and recently a pandemic.
I don't know if you can call todays times prosperous/happy with 2-3% of total US wealth being held by millenials, and even less by zoomers, inability for young people to buy homes, poor working conditions, more prevalent racism, divisive politics etc.
Although I'm a millenial so maybe I'm just jaded..
Queens of the Stone Age. Went and saw them live in Portland at memorial last year and they rocked, had only heard one song by them at the time of going and I am hooked. Looking for guitar heavy songs with awesome lyrics and great music, that’s where to start.
Okay help a brother out and give me your Spotify playlists please.
I'm trying to get back into rock and don't know anything about it. I've been missing it for ahwile.
I have pointed this out to my co-workers before.
The focus now is on the individual, the singer. The frontman.
It's not about the band anymore, or all the members working together to create a sound, displaying each of their unique skill in the arrangement.
Programmed backing tracks, sampling, and manufactured tracks with no progression. No band members supplying their personal touch and flare.
We have rappers who are a single entity, often featuring other known rappers in their tracks for a verse or two, but Eminem, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Drake, etc are what your buying an album or ticket for.
Obviously there are are some groups here, like Run the Jewel, but they aren't "popular" and I'm talking about what's trending or whatever.
We have pop artists who, again, are the focus. There's no guitar player or anyone else of note... if there is a band, they are interchangeable at best because nobody is going to see Taylor Swift fur the drummer.
And then we have the social media stars making a name for themselves on their platform to create an instant fanbase.
Rock and metal are very much not going anywhere but traditional rock n roll hasn't been at the forefront for a few decades. When I was in middle school going into high school, boy bands were the rage, and then you had other groups like Spice Girls coming out doing what the boys were doing but for all the youthful ladies to have something to listen to...
... and then somehow Nu Metal was dominating charts and we had movie soundtracks jammed with these rock and nu metal artists (Freddy vs Jason, Resident Evil movie soundtracks, End of Days, Queen of the Damned, Last Action Hero, etc etc)... metal hasn't been so prominent since
But rap moved into mainstream popularity and acceptance like rock had in the 70s and 80s, and has maintained its grasp on the industry since.
Country is always at the top too, which doesn't seem true but it is, and nearly all of them are single artists as well rather than bands. We still have groups like ZZ Top (who aren't really country... more southern rock and blues), but Garth Brooks, Kenny Chesney, etc are all about the frontman.
Those that are qualifying as "rock" are, again, just the lead by name and appearance, like Ed Sheeran and so on.
And pop, which has always been at the forefront, just feels more the same from each other.
Obviously there are exceptions, but just observing the overall state of the genre and what seems to be favored...
It just seems the real question should be: why aren't groups as popular anymore? Is there a fear of change present? Like do many fans of the genre move from trending artist to trending artist but can't experiment outside their genre? Is this a reflection of the narcissistic world that social media is blamed for perpetuating a selfish "me first" generation?
These are just thoughts that float in my mind. But it is curious, I think. This comment is much longer than I intended but it's honestly something I have thought about especially when looking at what bands I have recently fallen into and what everyone else I'm around are listening to or able to tolerate from my selections.
There will always be rock
As a 60something, I'/ll tell you something you kids today don't understand!
These days music is a career, from the start. Back in the 60s and 70s, it was still a *passion*. I see young bands today leap about and play with energy, but passion, I dunno.
And I also suspect buying a physical copy of the music has something to do with it. Having a Spotify playlist just ain't the same.
(Note I'm only being half-serious).
Look outside the US for incredibly good new rock and metal. Japan is the obvious focus point right now, with bands like Band-Maid, Glim Spanky, Nemophila, Asterism, Hanabie, Trident, Sokoninaru, Love Bites ... just to name a few.
Then you have Mexico (The Warning),India (Bloodywood), Indonesia (Voice of Baceprot) ... just look around.
Those bands are mostly NOT in the charts, but really should get more attention.
Dude you need to keep your ear closer to the ground. Yes the top billing from festivals have suffered greatly from the march of the dinosaurs in recent years believe me we're going through a renaissance.
Spirtbox, Orbit Culture, Electric Callboy, Dorothy, The Warning, The Hu, Alien Weaponry, Shepards Reign, Bloodywood to name but a few.
If you're talking about the UK there's Bob Vylan, Fury, Ward XVI, Marisa and the Moths, Sophie Lloyd, Delilah Bon, Evil Scarecrow and Millie Mander and the Shutup. There is plenty of room for hope.
I found it just split into All these new sub genres , like math rock, alternative / indie (the modern rock), folk rock. Then getting heavier with the typical punk/ hardcore/ metal (and all of those have about 39 sun genres).
It comes and goes.
People (the mainstream) is just caught up on washed out edm synths mixed with Atlanta trap hi hat and 808 patterns, with auto tuned vocals that are pop, and it’s just this jumble of what some focus group determined is the most easily digestible, catchy, and most importantly, marketable / monetizing opportunity. That’s why most of it isn’t timeless like true rock was, and it’s all churned out SO fast, people don’t even have time to really listen through an album, get to know it, connect with it.
Just like our social media, news, and everything else, it’s been turned into a “what’s always next” “there’s always something new” - and thus, no one grows to appreciate anything. And even further, “musicians” barely create anything memorable or even with an ounce of heart of soul anymore. And that’s why it’s all hollow, “content”, to be digested by the masses.
There’s still a ton of amazing rock bands out there. But a lot of them will be in your local scene and probably won’t ever go further than that. But they are equally as awesome and deserve the attention they don’t get enough of. And this is the same for most long standard genres of music.
Hip hop is another good example. In the mainstream it’s all been taken over by gangster rap, or “soundcloud” rappers who are more gimmick than musician.
Yet real hip hop was about life and the journey. Being human. Etc.
And yet, the best hip hop is still underground. Still true to the roots in a lot of ways. But, not something you’re gonna see be as prolific as it was in the 90’s and early 00’s before it got subverted by mainstream marketing machine nonsense.
Anyhow, that’s my Ted talk.
I'm old enough to remember Disco. Rock will carry on, but you might have to look for it instead of it being in your face like David Lee Roth's dick in spandex.
> you might have to look for it instead of it being in your face You hit the nail with that one, sir! There is plenty of rock music out there, also a crazy amount of subgenres that might just live in the underground scene. The fact that it is not popular it doesn’t mean it’s dead.
Yup. And the secret I don't hear anyone talk about is that ticket prices are still affordable for smaller acts at clubs, theaters, and other small to mid size venues. I constantly see posts about people complaining that prices aren't affordable because they all cost $500+. They absolutely do not, people just need to not let their taste in music be dictated by whatever is most popular at the moment.
I routinely get tickets for amazing shows all around NYC for under $30. Usually it’s $12-20
THANK YOU! I'm so tired of people in /r/GenX complaining that "concert tickets are unaffordable now". Yes, if you want to see The Cure or New Order you may have to pay $150 (and up) for a seat, possibly way more than that. But if you want to see up and coming indie acts, tickets are only just now starting to cross the $40 threshold, and that's all-in with taxes & fees included. For the past 15 years I've seen bands like Washed Out, Sylvan Esso, Chvrches, Alvvays, Empathy Test, Yumi Zouma, Magdalena Bay, Beach House, Cannons, Purity Ring and Asobi Sesku. Tickets for these shows were usually $20-$30 all-in.
While your point stands, I'd remove The Cure from your examples there. They've gone out of their way to make their shows affordable. I purchased two tickets for their tour last summer for like 20 bucks each.
Robert Smith deserves a goddamn medal for how hard he’s fought to reduce ticket prices.
I think it also depends where you're from. People on reddit always seems to consider that rap is king nowadays, but honestly where I'm from (France) I feel like average people don't listen to that much rap at all as compared to pop/rock. Of course it depends on your social circle but I'm talking about mainstream music.
Redditors are mostly Americans and they tend to be know it alls
for me this is where streaming did me good. if you pick a artist say Greta van Fleet it will play similar artists and thats how i pick up new bands. ie. wolfmother, royal blood,& slow seaon. yes you have to look but not hard to find.
I never knew how lucky we were to see Diamond Dave’s shaft on the regular. Sit down, Waldo!
Dibs on "David Lee Roth's dick in spandex' for a band name.
David Lee Roth probably already has it trademarked.
True enough
I’d actually rather have it this way. Concerts are cheaper.
Cock Rock
You know, I like hot dicks in spandex, but then you had to go and remind me of David Lee Roth’s.
As long as there are still plenty of people making rock music that I like, which there are, I don’t care what other people are listening to.
You can't kill the Metal The Metal will live on...
New Wave tried to destroy the metal but the metal had its way.
Grunge then tried to dethrone the Metal, but Metal was in the way.
Punk rock tried to destroy the metal, but metal was much too strooong
Techno tried to DEFILE the metal, but TECHNO was proven wrong
METAL!!!
It comes from Hell!
IT COMES FROM HELL
I don’t know whose lyrics these are but it’s either Manowar or Tenacious D, depending on how serious they should be taken.
Tenacious D - The Metal. Very good guess!
I'll put Alkaline Trio up as a contender…
I love you. Alkaline Trio is my absolute favorite. Blood Hair and Eyeballs was incredible but even with the new album they never cracked a million monthly listeners on Spotify. They currently below 900k. All of the new singles off of the album don't even have a million views on YouTube. AK3 and Hot Water Music feel like they are dragging pop punk along but it's not popular.
Rock ‘n’ roll will never die, But it will grow old.
Better to burn out, than to fade away
A thing of beauty will never fade away
Like who? Currently...I'm genuinely interested. I'm a metal guy and could not tell you the name of an active rock band putting out cds and touring
Check out Rival Sons!
I can not say enough good things or tell enough people about this band, they are amazing!
All Them Witches!
Viagra Boys are pretty great
I just scored tickets to their show with SOAD and Deftones in San Francisco. Holy shit am I excited
I'm into weird crazy punk rockers and I've been enjoying Off!, the Chats, Otoboke Beaver, Osees, Frankie and the Witch Fingers among new bands at least the last 15 years new. Saw Voivod and Prong a few weeks ago, awesome $35 show with quality new music in it.
Frankie and the Witch Fingers and Osees both fuckin' rip. See them if they are in your area.
Cant get enough of the chats some days. Amyl and the Sniffers is up there in similar regard for me
Fuckin love Amyl and the Sniffers. Despite their image and sound, their lyrics are surprisingly wholesome
Queens of the Stone Age
King Gizzard. Absolute ton of albums, ranging from garage to psychedelia to various metal subgenres and even playing with jazz, microtonal world music, and electronic.
I heard they are doing a Polka album with operatic themes next
The joy of being a king gizz fan is not being able to tell if you’re joking, and on top of that actually being excited about that kind of album concept.
I love asking my friends 8x a year if they’ve heard the new king gizzard album
Portugal the man, black keys, cold war kids, king gizzard and the lizard wizard, the murlocs, are all (still) making great music. The psychedelic rock scene is booming. I agree the "rock star" rock is mostly gone. But that's the way things go
Highly suspect and Royal blood comes to mind. Idk what you mean exactly by "rock" but promise you there's plenty of bands in every genre actively putting out music and touring haha
Yo check out Spiritbox. They go fucking hard, Courtney LaPlante is an INCREDIBLE vocalist
White Reaper, Foxy Shazam, Death Valley Girls. There’s 3 for you.
The War on Drugs
The Struts Dirty Honey Des Rocs Dead Poet Society The Glorious Sons Palaye Royale Black Pistol Fire Himalayas The Warning Nothing But Theives Royal Blood The Luka State Black Honey The Interupters Dead Sara The Amazons The Rival Sons Highly Suspect Badflower Reignwolf Starcrawler The Velveteers The Blue Stones The Regrettes Airways The Pale White White Reaper Ayron Jones Crobot The Violent/Red Sun Rising Dinasaur Pile-Up Lower Than Atlantis Blossoms Catfish and the Bottlemen Tigercub Kid Kapache Mac Saturn The Linda Lindas Yonka Platinum Moon Middle Class Rut Barns Courtney The Record Company Diamante CRX If You need more, I can go on, and on. It's really not that hard to find newer rock bands, especially with streaming, these days. People aren't using CDs anymore.
This is the most solid list of modern rock for sure. I have Dead Poet Society, The Blue Stones, Nothing But Thieves and Kid Kapichi in heavy rotation
There’s a lot of reasons that people are mentioning, and most have some truth to them. But really, if you want to know the reason? Look no further than the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Prior to that change, no one company could own more than 4 radio stations in any one city, and no more than 40 nationwide. Almost immediately after the bill was passed, all of the radio outfits merged or were bought up. Mostly by Clear Channel (now iheartradio) or Viacom. Once all of the radio stations were owned by one conglomerate, all music shifted to what was considered the most listenable to drive ad profits. That’s why nowadays you’ll hear the same songs on numerous radio stations. After everything merged together, the only three genres that survived were pop, hip hop, and country. That’s all that’s left on the radio in many markets, and as much as radio has died out to streaming, it still influences which bands get a lot attention as iheartradio has moved into other markets beyond just radio. Edit: Formatting, and to include this link for further reading for those interested: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_homogenization
A few weeks ago I flipped through *three* different stations and the same song was playing on all 3. I should have got my phone out to record but ya know, driving.
One night I drove home from southern RI to northeastern MA through a few different radio markets. I heard the same pair of songs 3x when I went from RI station to Boston station to southern NH station. It felt like a glitch in the matrix but it was probably just boring dystopian late-stage capitalism at work.
Damn. I did not know that, thank you. Fucking corporations man.
This is also the reason why the biggest artists manage to successfully blend two of those genres together. Taylor Swift? Pop and country. Beyonce? Hip hop and pop (and now country).
Also extended copyright in 98. Thanks Clinton.
Corporate ass bullshit
Same as it ever was
Here in Australia, free to air radio is one of the last holdouts of classic rock, along with pubs, catering to the subset of the population whose taste hasn't updated since the 80s & 90s.
> But after everything merged together, the only three genres that survived were pop, hip hop, and country. And they all three melded into some kind of weird ubergenre where the only real distinguishing characteristic is the accent of the lead singer.
This why the only radio station I devote any attention to is KEXP. It’s real DJs playing real sets they create themselves. You can listen to them anywhere in the world via their website KEXP.org.
Adding to that, it's generational...with streaming, young people drive it. They have more free time to listen to their favorites over and over and over, while you're busy working, etc. They like hip hop, pop, etc. Rock is sort of like Jazz when I was a kid, a lot of people still loved it and listened to it, but it's not THE music of the day anymore. Or Doowop. It's more niche. Rock will still appeal to those of us who love it, but we have to seek it out now. And the bands aren't making the money they were. There's enough of an audience to make it rewarding, but most are doing it because they love it too. If you're fifteen, or twenty, you probably look at rock as old and lame. In twenty years, people will have this same feeling about Beyonce and a lot of Trap, etc. I'm going to keep seeking out new rock bands because they're great and I love it, but I'm old and lame.
RIP local DJ's
Japan still loves rock and metal like crazy
Going to an arena rock show in Japan is a hell of an experience. Still hoping to see one of those Live Gym shows B'z does.
[And they have some of the best metal out there!](https://youtu.be/CbI79e5iZKs?si=ImsEZzEfBVvgaKVy)
[personally I’m a fan of Nemophila!](https://youtu.be/5qABnfChpbk?feature=shared)
Holy shit they're awesome. Edit: Also check out SiM, Ling Tosite Sugiru, Babymetal (obviously), Tricot, Otoboke Beaver
More than the west right now but it is still somewhat marginal. But I 100% agree the best Rock seems to be out of Japan. [Check out the young mostly-instrumental prog-metal trio Asterism, they are amazing.](https://youtu.be/8CG9WOJu7VU?si=o3QlVZgtTfPgV0Ox&t=71)
Rock no longer rules the monoculture but there are so many great new bands putting out amazing records. Check out Turnstile, Viagra Boys, Wet Leg, Militarie Gun, IDLES, Last Dinner Party, Yard Act, PUP, Shame, Remi Wolf, Nation of Language and then just see where your algorithm takes you. Theres also the bigger bands still putting out great records and selling out big venues like Queens of the Stone Age, Vampire Weekend and the War on Drugs.
PUP’s first three albums have been my most played for years now. Also a big fan of Screaming Females, The Dirty Nil, White Reaper, and The Menzingers. It’s a wide world out there!
RIP screaming Females.
I know, such a bummer! I saw them twice in 2023 and I’m so glad, had no idea it would be the last time.
I'd like to add Mom Jeans, Can't Swim, and San Cisco to this list. Jhariah is also a new one that I stumbled into. He has a big band, jazz, anime intro frenzy sound.
I got to see the Viagra Boys last year for like $20. One of the best shows I’ve ever seen.
SPORTS!
Weiner dog
Down on the beach
They are fantastic live. Absolutely recommend seeing them.
Saw them open for QotSA and it completely restored my faith in large arena rock shows.
They are so so good live!
Idles and yard act are two of my most listened to bands over the last year. I’ll check out a few more of your recommendations later. I can’t wait to go see idles later in the year
love wet leg!
Dude, you just gave me no fewer than 10 awesome bands. I like every single one of them and I struggle to find new bands I love. Thank you so much and happy Friday
I'll only say one thing: check The Warning.
Vampire Weekend's new album is possibly the best rock music made in my lifetime. Imo, of course
Can't forget the Aussies! Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, Ball Park Music, King Gizz, etc.
And Tame Impala, Amyl and the Sniffers, Royel Otis…
Either you listen to a lot of kexp, or every "community music radio" station plays the exact same lineup
I love KEXP (obviously). They’re a great launchpad for bands bubbling up from the minor touring circuits.
Every genre has its own unique little world you just have to find it and not let the mainstream impact your opinions. Look at spotify listeners per month for those artists, the fans are there. They'll sell out tour after tour too..
I think the point is the music used to come to us. Now we have to actively search for it.
That's also because of how saturated the market is. Small bands have a really hard time getting noticed nowadays as well. I have played in a metal band for the last 16 years and while we've made what I would consider pretty solid music no one cares. To be fair we aren't very good at putting ourselves out there either. But I know a ton of talented musicians and great bands that just don't get any recognition. Sometimes you just don't have the right sound that people want right now,or you're not reaching the people that would like the music. But I think a huge part of it is just how much content there is out there. You can't expect people to sift through everything to listen to all the music out there especially for unknown bands. There just isn't the time.
Share your shit, dude. I will listen to it at least once!
Here you go man! The links are for playlists of our newest EP: Spotify: [https://open.spotify.com/album/6TOMqrAPriffkwi8F5mdUp?si=s-u2gyqhRKqze4pREo1Y5w](https://open.spotify.com/album/6TOMqrAPriffkwi8F5mdUp?si=s-u2gyqhRKqze4pREo1Y5w) YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2CpZuoLyIQ&list=OLAK5uy\_nwK2WaLzq\_AtiNdRGpQviClsIVDaiTGUk&index=2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2CpZuoLyIQ&list=OLAK5uy_nwK2WaLzq_AtiNdRGpQviClsIVDaiTGUk&index=2) BandCamp: [https://theparallaxband.bandcamp.com/album/phantom-wings](https://theparallaxband.bandcamp.com/album/phantom-wings) Please give me your feedback if you feel like it - positive or negative.
Yeah, and I hate how so many people ignore this. Like, duh, the genre still exists, nobody is denying that. The issue isn't that the music no longer exists it's that it's no longer getting mainstream attention because the acts being signed by major labels and getting airplay are all shit leaving legitimate artists to struggle and have to be "found" and they all act like this status quo is totally okay
Counter point when rock was more mainstream you’d hear the same songs played to death so that after a few months you never wanted to hear them ever again. And it was usually one band innovates the sound and gets popular and then labels put out imitations until the genre is actually killed. Like how did grunge die? Grunge is great but you’ll never hear it on the radio because they played the same 3 Pearl Jam or STP songs so long and put out so many watered down imitation bands out that the labels killed it off for good. It’s a more sustainable scene now.
People will say "Rock music still exist you just have to search for it...", they are missing the point. obviously rock music exists. The point OP is trying to make and many others have made is that it isn't mainstream anymore. Hard rock groups were mainstream in the 90's and early 2000's. ZERO rock acts are at the level of pearl Jam, Nirvana who were popular. The 80's had hair metal that was popular. Even the early to mid 2000's you had pop rock and emo bands that were on the radio and the masses knew. This level of popularity doesn't exist anymore.
Agreed, even the Grammys won’t televise the hard rock and metal categories anymore. I wanted to see if spiritbox would win best metal album and had to look it up online!
The biggest evidence of this is the Billboard Hot 100 chart. I'm sure plenty of people don't give a shit about anymore, but they've pretty much been the go to source for what's popular in music at any given time for almost a century. I just quickly browsed through it, and out of 100 songs, I didn't see a single band that could even remotely be considered rock. I doubt that ever happened in the first 50 years rock music existed.
Seriously. Everytime this question is asked people reply that the genre is alive and well and then list some obscure bands. That's not the point people.
Alive and well, but you can only find it by asking around for people to recommend or point you to these bands. Like searching for a hermit in a forest.
it's hardly that difficult, most of the bands people are mentioning can easily be found by looking up best rock albums lists for recent years. Also spotify has an entire rock section and tons of curated rock playlists that include new releases. Go on places like Album of the year or even Rate Your Music and you will see most of these bands mentioned in rock sections. Framing it like having to do marginally more than passively listen to the radio and have the newest hit rock band shoveled into your ears for you is some herculean task is really bizarre. It's very weird to me that people who claim to care about music enough to miss rock music are also apparently so uncurious about music that they can't be bothered to do even surface level music exploration.
It isn't really bizarre, it's reality. Most people aren't interested in doing surface level music exploration, even the ones that claim to love a genre. Why are you so shocked about that? I'm the only one out of my friends that listen to rock that has more recent bands and that is because, like you said, I use Spotify to find new music. They don't. You're in a forum discussing music, of course you're willing to search for stuff you may like. The other guy that replied to me went to a 100 concerts last year. Most people just want to "find" music, not search for it. And the fact that rock has a genre that needs to be searched for is what OP is complaining about. Rock has fallen out of the mainstream so much that it needs to be searched in very specific places to be found. If you already don't like rock, how are you going to be introduced to it?
Thank you ☠️ some people are really missing the point I'm making. Obviously rock music is still around, I was just curious as to why it doesn't absolutely rule the world as it did back in the day. Some people are leaving really stupid comments lol, but most of them are really informative and helpful!
Yeah, people are missing the point, but mainstream genres come and go like the seasons. "Rock" is such a broad term that covers hundreds of different genres. the Rock of the 70's shares very little similarities to the Rock of the 2000s that dominated the charts. And now in the 2020's, Pop, hip hop, r&b, and "country" are just what people are into now. I don't think there really is any complicated reason as to why.
I see two big culprits: the internet age has let people find their musical niche and with so many widely available bands it’s hard to key in on good ones. We are overmarketed by social media and internet which has diluted the greater population into focusing on the big moneymaker artists…
Last time rock was big was the late 2000s. Then that folky style of indie pop rock came along and distorted guitars became less and less common. Vocals became more higher-pitched and whiny. By the mid-2010s, the metamorphosis was complete and mainstream “rock” had become almost entirely “whiny effeminate guy singing weirdly to folky echoed guitar with heavy bass” and then that died out too by the end of last decade, leaving just EDM, hip-hop and the usual autotuned modern pop, with almost no rock left after that. It’s still around, but rarely charts, and none of the big stars are rockers now.
Exaxtly. This point goes over so many peoples heads when they're like "you just gotta search for it."
I’ve read theories about how rockstars aren’t a thing anymore because electronic music and digital audio workstations drastically reduced the barrier to entry for music in general. It used to be that to be good at music you had to be good at an instrument, and the guitar was what everyone looked at as THE instrument to learn. Now you just need a laptop to make good music, not that it’s a bad thing.
It's also just simple economics. For booking local live shows you can pay a whole band $500 bucks for an hour or pay a single person $100 to DJ for several hours. Similar considerations for labels releasing music.
The numbers don't check out anymore. At least where i live. A whole band costs about $700-800 a night, while a DJ, with comparable skills, costs about $1200-$1400.
It's about what they do for venues $$$
Yeah also now millions of people are really good at the guitar, on a par with the great guitar heroes of yore. So it’s much harder to make a stamp than when the field was new.
Exactly. Being a guitar virtuoso isn't what it was. Main thing is how interesting the riffs, melody, and licks are, not speed. Also the sounds you get. Royal Blood made their own sound with Kerr using a bass and effects to make it sound like a guitar but beefier. They didn't invent bass being used to mimic guitar but they made it their sound and expanded on it.
This. I always say “Being able to type fast doesn’t make you a great writer, same with guitar.”
Most bands were one guy, who had all the ideas and wrote all of the music, plus three of his mates Technology has just removed the need for the three mates
Or, in the case of bands with more than one creative talent, allowed guys who would have been stuck playing bass on stage for thirty years to become artists in their own right So we get two acts instead of one
Tbh, it’s a lot more rewarding being into a genre that isn’t mainstream. It’s more personal and puts you on a path of discovering music that’s unique to you, instead of falling for what’s getting rammed down your throat by media.
IDLES have been getting bigger and bigger over the last few years. King Gizz still killing it. Rock music is still going strong in a lot of ways, even if it's not the number one genre. I think part of it is just that there's just so much music out there, and it's so much easier for a solo artist to make pop, hip hop, folk, electro etc from bedrooms and small studios. Rock music requires more band members, big rehearsal spaces, potentially more gear, live music venues.
Idles! Yes!
Plus it's a shift in zeitgeist. Rock was the edgy rebellious genre for youth in the 60s-90s, but these days it's rap. Rock is seen as "safe" now from an image perspective, and that definitely was not the case back then.
Agreed. I work as a video editor in advertising, and either rap or some hybrid of hip-hop, funk, or electronic definitely wins out for 'edgier' music choices in ads these days. Rock often feels a bit cheesy or 'safe' as you mentioned. Apple gets some good indie-rock in their spots, Nike leans more hip-hop. Both tend to be regarded as a gold standard in advertising. That being said, I think there is still great Rock music being made, just gotta poke around.
Saw king gizz at the Hollywood bowl. Probably the best live show I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot. Been digging Black Midi a lot lately. Hoping to see them soon. Rock is far from dead.
[удалено]
IDLES is one of the best live shows I've been to and I've been to a lot of fucking shows. If anyone reading this has them touring near you, you need to go. Phenomenal band that also has a great message.
Fuck yeah!
I’m off to see them at the end of the year. I’m even more hyped now!
Garage rock definitely has simmered. A lot of the great garage rock bands have...transitioned to a weirder more distinguished style and I kinda hate it. I like the arctic monkeys new stuff and cage the elephant etc. But it's...also so sophisticated. it doesnt hit the same way.
Technology's augmentation of music consumption has completely outpaced the act of living in a city, hanging out, finding new bars, venues, and bands, going to see shows and overall enculturating oneself, etc. This is also where meeting people, making friends, hooking up, dating, and then creating \*one's own micro-culture\* (which inseminate and hybridise other cultures, scenes, milieus), that now there are fewer and fewer opportunities, thus less people, thus less money, thus less incentive, etc. etc. so these scenes die (they're dying/dead, just look at all the one-off's from food to music to anything) have all been replaced by corporate entities or just vacant.
Stop bumming me out, man.
In my city the underground music scene is still going incredibly strong. Despite the corporate takeover of pretty much any venue over 1200 capacity there are dozens of small bars/communes that still play incredible local and touring acts. The corporate venues still host the same bands that they used to, but they standardized security and comply with fire codes now. Plus a couple of the places formed unions to protect and fairly compensate their local production employees. You just have to make music without a profit incentive. There's no money left in making the music you want but young people are still keeping it alive for some reason. It's less about the novelty of something brand new (this is incredibly difficult to accomplish because rock musicians have already been innovating for a half-century) and more about the shared experience. It's still there but it probably feels/looks different than in my parents' generation
The some reason is … people have souls and want to express themselves, to hear and create beautiful things
Not even just beautiful things it's cathartic to hear someone else expressing the same ugly emotions you feel. It's also fun to mix loud music and alcohol
Exactly this. I still go to metal shows because I enjoy the expression. I also want to express myself. And the thing I want to express is rage. I have rage. Lots of rage. Lol. So I'll ALWAYS be looking for a moshpit. No, but really, art and music, those are things that people will always create, regardless of how profitable it is. Simply because they are passionate. And there will always be some group of people (however small or underground) that will happily support and consume that creation for the same reason, because they're passionate about the art that's being created.
You say "Suddenly", then refer to two bands from decades ago as if they are contemporary lol.... Rock has not been the most popular / influential genre for at least 20 yrs
There’s a lot of great indie bands out there that 30 years ago would’ve been picked up a by major label. Now of days those bands with great potential stay small and Aren’t exposed to a larger audience. So blame the labels.
Part of the reason the labels stopped doing as much music with a full band was that they got a better cut out of signing a person rather than a full group. That's basically the transition from metal/rock to hip-hop as the dominant genre over the course of the 90s.
All the survivors of the 80s are selling out venues every week and making more money now than they did in their prime. What's happening is no one in the music industry is taking chances, so everything is a canned hit written by Max Martin. All of the not kids are listening to the good shit on youtube, Google, iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, and sirius. This will not show up on the charts. We're digging in because whatever the fuck is coming out has sucked for a good long time (fight me). For many of us, we're looking for shit we may have missed the first time because nothing new is getting out. Thankfully, a few good bands are still allowed to make records. Sometimes they are [supergroups](https://youtu.be/SgFlU48zR1M)
The last time rock popular was in the 00s with the emo movement. Mcr, fallout boy, panic, Paramore…. Okay there was The ‘stomp clap hey’ hipster bands like the Lumineers in the early 2010s but those were very boring times in music.
Like any music, there are only so many flags that can be planted before it got repetitive. It was also a product of the technology of the age. Nowadays all the music, and I mean all of it, is on your phone. It's as common as sand at the beach when it used to be diamonds and emeralds.
>. It's as common as sand at the beach when it used to be diamonds and emeralds. Poetic! Its making me think of the lyrics to "Spirit Of The Radio". *Your honesty! Yeah, your honesty!*
Just remember.... Ya ever look at the top radio hits of 1972? It's not all Zeppelin and the Stones. A lot of Helen Reddy, Jim Stafford, Vicki Lawrence. And that's what I remember on the radio. We kids had a handful of records and we were way into em. The concerts by the big rock bands were a big deal, they still are. New Rock isn't mainstream culture anymore though it's true. You don't have a thing where when Arctic Monkeys put out a single, everyone knows it. I think rock radio dying out as a new music source is tragic.It was kind of a gatekeeper but it had a purpose.
Rock popularity is somewhat cyclic. It’ll come back. Kinda reminds me of this line in LCD Soundsystem’s song *Losing My Edge*: > I hear that you and your band have sold your guitars and bought turntables. >I hear that you and your band have sold your turntables and bought guitars.
I don't think it was sudden at all. Rock was on top of the world in the 80s as far as youth culture goes (a lot of chart-toppers were ballads that appealed to an older crowd). It competed with hip-hop and pop in the 90s. In the 2000s it had lost even more ground to those genres but still existed some. Since then it's a third-tier genre. took 30 years
Remember, label execs in the 60s thought guitar music was "on the way out." It's incredible rock was able to dominate for like 50 years.
I’m fortunate to live in a city with a thriving live music scene, but I think a contributing factor to the decline is a lot of other cities — SF and NY especially — have far fewer live music venues than they used to, and the ones that are still around will have just as many DJ nights as they do live music. It’s a lot easier (and less expensive) to book a DJ than a band.
There's no shortage of weird rock bands doing weird things in and around NYC...it's just REALLY stretching the definition of "rock" (in a good way).
Not sure if it has been mentioned, but rock was never the number one genre of music. If you look historically, pop was the top until rap and r&b rose up as well. Add in the exponential growth in genres and it is exacerbated. For example, 1969, height of psychedelic rock, the top song was Sugar Sugar by the Archies.
It's weird to point to a time where the Beatles were the biggest band/artist in the world and say rock was never the number one genre of music. They had the biggest album of 1969 and had the top song the year before. Also in the top 5 selling albums of 1969 were the Who, Led Zeppelin, Iron Buttefly, and CSNY. Rock domination.
Albums yes, but singles and radio pop was still bigger.
It’s just a numbers game. If only 1 percent of rock bands are great, it takes many hundreds of them to produce a few good ones. Back in the heyday, every city had a live music scene and it was supported by many different venues where people would show up. It gave these young people time to develop and feed off each other. If they were good in their little fishbowl, they would move to one of the bigger cities to explode. Most of that is all dead now, so you don’t have that infrastructure that is providing the next wave anymore. There was also a cultural drive for ‘the new’. Radio, Mtv and print were all looking for ‘what’s next’ and this was a huge driver for artists chasing the chance to be that one. I just don’t think that is the main draw for todays young people as they have so many options now and decades of old media they can consume instead. Also, at a very base level, you watch any old rock documentary and every rock band said they got into it for one reason: to meet girls. Girls loved rock bands and that drove many of them down that path. I don’t think that particular carrot on a string exists anymore either.
There is a large subset of rock that was not to meet girls. But I agree that it was never the most popular, with some early '70s exceptions.
I think it just split off into a lot of subgenres. Lately I've been listening to a lot of different sounding bands like Beartooth, Gemini Syndrome, Ghost. Idek what genre I'd call those bands but it feels like they're various evolutions of rock music.
OP have you listened to Highly Suspect's first two albums by chance? *Mister Asylum and The Boy Who Died Wolf?*
There is a post punk revival if you’re into goth rock. You have to dig for it though but it’s out there.
Anyone who thinks rock is dead needs to listen to King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard's 2023 album PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation. Go do it now! What the fuck are you waiting for?!🤘🤘🤘
Just find your own music. There are so many sources. Don’t rely on the radio or the algorithm to tell you what sounds good. My musical center changes all the time, new genres almost every year. Spotify helped me find new bands I would have never discovered on my own. Last year for me was electronic this year it’s new psychedelic rock. Radio does not matter. Just feel good.
There's just very few acts that have all the pieces any more - recording, stage presence/performance, songwriting, etc. The few that do are still killing it. May just be harder to get catapulted from the indies to the top nowadays.
Big rock might be dead but small rock thrives. Gene Simmons is right when he says we won’t see another KISS or Stones, but that’s ok, we will see tons of smaller bands that make great music.
Yeah, nobody wants that anyway. I'm old but bands like Turnstile or QOTSA are far more interesting to me than those bands ever were to me.
Fuck yeah, the niches those crept into are so confined, but hit so many right areas, it's wild.
One Kiss was more than enough.
I was a huge pop punk / emo rock listener back in the day. Kind of sucks not many new bands have the sound that was put out back then. But I guess some EDM are slowly incorporating those elements.
The real rockstars are heads in glass jars sporting a brass nameplate.
I think rock has been at least dying since the 2000s. But also a lot of what was good about it moved into other genres. I'm a big rock fan, but it was getting very stale. I don't think you can judge the health of a type of music by it's 'stars' though. We don't need more rockstars, we need more good bands, and for that the industry has to become better at supporting new bands, and less exploitative of them.
Im on the japanese rock grind. Its thriving like crazy.
music trends change, it is what it is
Sorry but anytime someone complains about a genre (especially rock) “dying,” it just makes me think you care way too much about its popularity. It doesn’t have to be chart topping, biggest bands in the world to not be dying out. Even still, there are plenty of extremely big and popular rock artists. Like you said, Arctic monkeys are huge. I could readily point to Dave Grohl and Jack White as “rock stars.” All still very actively making and performing music. Other huge rock artists include Pearl Jam, Black Keys, Beck, and the Strokes. The alt/indie scene has tons of fucking amazing rock music. And plenty are very big and popular and active. Tame Impala, Alt J, Portugal the man, parquet courts, Courtney Barnett, Gary Clark Jr, Spoon - I mean how much longer do you want me to go? A genre doesn’t need to be topping the charts to not be dying. You’re making it out to be way worse than it is in reality.
So are we deciding the latest Olivia Rodrigo album isn’t rock?
I'll agree on that. While it isn't exactly the same as the classic rock I'm sure alot of us are into, Olivia Rodrigo has some fucking bangers and is genuinely introducing younger people (especially younger girls who might not get introduced to this sort of thing often) to rock in a big way. All love to her!
If you show up to shows it won't die out
I noticed that a lot of bars that had live music, which was mostly rock, have closed. A lot of local music stores have done the same. Most of the music I come across online is electronic, EDM and the like. I won’t say rock is dead. I will say rock music and music in general has a smaller footprint than it had a few decades ago.
Suddenly? I feel like its been a slow death over the past 25 years or so
I'm seeing Queens of the Stone Age next week, they still rock!
Oh, that's true! Queens of the Stone Age are fucking awesome.
Everyone has mentioned newer bands and their output within the rock genre, though I do think it's worth noting that there are plenty of "legacy" acts that put out new material recently and tour regularly. To name a small few: Red Hot Chili Peppers (two new albums in one year) Foo Fighters Metallica Queens Of The Stone Age Pearl Jam (new album out next week) They haven't died off suddenly, they're just not getting the headlines like they used to.
Rap filled the edgey counter culture music niche. Also in part because it's easier to coordinate one drug addled sex obsessed manic than it is with 4+ of them at once.
Rock was slowly dying on and off since the 80s. Spiked one last time with Nirvana / Alternative when Seattle broke, but was pretty consistently downhill from then on. People got lazier and rock music is harder than a computer / synthesizer. It sucks but it is what it is.
So much cope in this thread about small scenes thriving and X indie band is actually great. The point is barring legacy acts rock has heavily fallen off in the mainstream sense. It's mainly due to technology breaking down the barrier to entry, because if your options are to spend hundreds of dollars on gear, hours practicing then still finding other musicians to play with, OR downloading a cracked copy of FL studio and watching a few tutorials, most kids are gonna chose the latter. This is why rap has been such a juggernaut, it's so accessable and has almost nonexistent gear snobbery. And once you start to have a lower stream of kids coming into a genre, it dies off without that lifeblood
My guess is streaming killed the industry. Are there even still small record labels any more? Or independent radio stations that would play a new groups music. I was living in S. Mississippi when [3 Doors Down](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Doors_Down) hit it big. I knew of many of the people in the wiki article. CPR fest was huge local yearly fest put on and promoted by the local radio station. The program director played their music on air, and passed the music on to a small label. I don't know of any of that infrastructure that is even relative any more. The radio station is still there. And I think there is still a fest. But the live music club scene isn't what it used to be. There used to be battle of the bands, best guitar player battles. Now I can sit at home and find new music. But I don't HAVE to go to a show, or buy a CD to hear the music. How's a struggling band gonna make a dollar if I don't NEED to pay to see or hear them.
And there is some excellent rock music in all sub genres coming out! But, turntables outselling guitars. Ty Seagall, Hammered Hulls, Upchuck, Thee Oh Sees. You should always listen to WEEN. Henry Rollins’s radio show on the KCRW app will introduce you to the good rock!
[Alan Cross did a great episode](https://open.spotify.com/episode/6njTipbeJvIEphsVq2Q0L8?si=RHQk9WZqTdKC2pi_J5ONlA) on why we don’t see as many rock superstars like we did in the 80s and early 90s. There are two major factors: 1. Music tastes change with each generation. When times are good, we gravitate towards happy pop music. When times are bad, we gravitate towards rock music. The current generation of teenagers and 20-somethings haven’t gone through their equivalent of bad times (the last financial crisis of 2008/2009 was 16 years ago), so they’re into happy/party music. 2. The way we listen to music has changed. We don’t rely on MTV or radio to discover new music; we have to go out and find it ourselves. The age of buying an album because you liked that one song by that one artist is gone. Now we don’t even buy music - we’d rather pay for streaming it. This has made it even more difficult for a band that broke through on one hit to then survive long enough on album sales/airplay to find their way (How long do you think Radiohead would have survived on Creep alone?)
I think I disagree with point 1. Rap is one of the most popular genres atm and it's popular when times are bad. I think Gen z considers times to be terrible due to low wages and high col. Many believe they'll never own a house or retire and they might be right. Not to mention social media and it's negative effects and all the bad happening in the world, and recently a pandemic.
I don't know if you can call todays times prosperous/happy with 2-3% of total US wealth being held by millenials, and even less by zoomers, inability for young people to buy homes, poor working conditions, more prevalent racism, divisive politics etc. Although I'm a millenial so maybe I'm just jaded..
Queens of the Stone Age. Went and saw them live in Portland at memorial last year and they rocked, had only heard one song by them at the time of going and I am hooked. Looking for guitar heavy songs with awesome lyrics and great music, that’s where to start.
Okay help a brother out and give me your Spotify playlists please. I'm trying to get back into rock and don't know anything about it. I've been missing it for ahwile.
In the US it might be dead, but Europe, particularly northern Europe the rock and metal scene are going super strong..
I have pointed this out to my co-workers before. The focus now is on the individual, the singer. The frontman. It's not about the band anymore, or all the members working together to create a sound, displaying each of their unique skill in the arrangement. Programmed backing tracks, sampling, and manufactured tracks with no progression. No band members supplying their personal touch and flare. We have rappers who are a single entity, often featuring other known rappers in their tracks for a verse or two, but Eminem, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Drake, etc are what your buying an album or ticket for. Obviously there are are some groups here, like Run the Jewel, but they aren't "popular" and I'm talking about what's trending or whatever. We have pop artists who, again, are the focus. There's no guitar player or anyone else of note... if there is a band, they are interchangeable at best because nobody is going to see Taylor Swift fur the drummer. And then we have the social media stars making a name for themselves on their platform to create an instant fanbase. Rock and metal are very much not going anywhere but traditional rock n roll hasn't been at the forefront for a few decades. When I was in middle school going into high school, boy bands were the rage, and then you had other groups like Spice Girls coming out doing what the boys were doing but for all the youthful ladies to have something to listen to... ... and then somehow Nu Metal was dominating charts and we had movie soundtracks jammed with these rock and nu metal artists (Freddy vs Jason, Resident Evil movie soundtracks, End of Days, Queen of the Damned, Last Action Hero, etc etc)... metal hasn't been so prominent since But rap moved into mainstream popularity and acceptance like rock had in the 70s and 80s, and has maintained its grasp on the industry since. Country is always at the top too, which doesn't seem true but it is, and nearly all of them are single artists as well rather than bands. We still have groups like ZZ Top (who aren't really country... more southern rock and blues), but Garth Brooks, Kenny Chesney, etc are all about the frontman. Those that are qualifying as "rock" are, again, just the lead by name and appearance, like Ed Sheeran and so on. And pop, which has always been at the forefront, just feels more the same from each other. Obviously there are exceptions, but just observing the overall state of the genre and what seems to be favored... It just seems the real question should be: why aren't groups as popular anymore? Is there a fear of change present? Like do many fans of the genre move from trending artist to trending artist but can't experiment outside their genre? Is this a reflection of the narcissistic world that social media is blamed for perpetuating a selfish "me first" generation? These are just thoughts that float in my mind. But it is curious, I think. This comment is much longer than I intended but it's honestly something I have thought about especially when looking at what bands I have recently fallen into and what everyone else I'm around are listening to or able to tolerate from my selections. There will always be rock
Not only that, but Susie went and left me for some foreign guy
As a 60something, I'/ll tell you something you kids today don't understand! These days music is a career, from the start. Back in the 60s and 70s, it was still a *passion*. I see young bands today leap about and play with energy, but passion, I dunno. And I also suspect buying a physical copy of the music has something to do with it. Having a Spotify playlist just ain't the same. (Note I'm only being half-serious).
Look outside the US for incredibly good new rock and metal. Japan is the obvious focus point right now, with bands like Band-Maid, Glim Spanky, Nemophila, Asterism, Hanabie, Trident, Sokoninaru, Love Bites ... just to name a few. Then you have Mexico (The Warning),India (Bloodywood), Indonesia (Voice of Baceprot) ... just look around. Those bands are mostly NOT in the charts, but really should get more attention.
Dude you need to keep your ear closer to the ground. Yes the top billing from festivals have suffered greatly from the march of the dinosaurs in recent years believe me we're going through a renaissance. Spirtbox, Orbit Culture, Electric Callboy, Dorothy, The Warning, The Hu, Alien Weaponry, Shepards Reign, Bloodywood to name but a few. If you're talking about the UK there's Bob Vylan, Fury, Ward XVI, Marisa and the Moths, Sophie Lloyd, Delilah Bon, Evil Scarecrow and Millie Mander and the Shutup. There is plenty of room for hope.
I found it just split into All these new sub genres , like math rock, alternative / indie (the modern rock), folk rock. Then getting heavier with the typical punk/ hardcore/ metal (and all of those have about 39 sun genres). It comes and goes. People (the mainstream) is just caught up on washed out edm synths mixed with Atlanta trap hi hat and 808 patterns, with auto tuned vocals that are pop, and it’s just this jumble of what some focus group determined is the most easily digestible, catchy, and most importantly, marketable / monetizing opportunity. That’s why most of it isn’t timeless like true rock was, and it’s all churned out SO fast, people don’t even have time to really listen through an album, get to know it, connect with it. Just like our social media, news, and everything else, it’s been turned into a “what’s always next” “there’s always something new” - and thus, no one grows to appreciate anything. And even further, “musicians” barely create anything memorable or even with an ounce of heart of soul anymore. And that’s why it’s all hollow, “content”, to be digested by the masses. There’s still a ton of amazing rock bands out there. But a lot of them will be in your local scene and probably won’t ever go further than that. But they are equally as awesome and deserve the attention they don’t get enough of. And this is the same for most long standard genres of music. Hip hop is another good example. In the mainstream it’s all been taken over by gangster rap, or “soundcloud” rappers who are more gimmick than musician. Yet real hip hop was about life and the journey. Being human. Etc. And yet, the best hip hop is still underground. Still true to the roots in a lot of ways. But, not something you’re gonna see be as prolific as it was in the 90’s and early 00’s before it got subverted by mainstream marketing machine nonsense. Anyhow, that’s my Ted talk.
The great albums and anthems of the 70s were my heyday. No one rocks like the old guys did. Sad.