Rock Is Dead. That’s What It Deserves.
Does anyone remember Machine Gun Kelly used to be a rapper? Megan Fox’s beau and Eminem’s past adversary started off as a rapper before switching to a rock sound. He’s not the only one. One of the biggest hits of 2021 was Olivia Rodrigo’s “Good 4 You,” where she channelled her inner Avril Lavigne. Billie Eilish found similar success with her take on rock. “Happier Than Ever” single-handly saved her from the dreaded sophomore slump. It seems like pop producers all across the world have been dusting off the cobwebs off their drum kits and electric guitars.
The fashion world is on board as well. Both Vogue and Harper Bazaar acknowledged indie sleaze as the new major trend, cementing Julia Fox’s war paint-esque solid black eyelids as the thing to emulate. With both industries on its side, it’s tempting to proclaim rock to be back. There is just one pesky thing missing: rock bands themselves.
I’m under no illusion. For these popstars, rock is a fling, not marriage, sure to be abandoned when it’s no longer shiny and new. But while the appetite for rock is growing, its songs like Arctic Monkeys’ fifteen years old “505” and The Neighbourhood 2013 “Sweater Weather” climbing Spotify charts. And the question arises: where are the new bands to capitalize on the movement?
Rock hasn’t been doing well for a long time. Over the last decade, there’s been a myriad of complaints and grieving over the genre’s bad condition. One of the pot stirrers was KISS’ frontman Gene Simmons who declared rock to be dead in a 2014 Esquire interview. The problem, according to Simmons, has lied in piracy.
“The problem is that nobody will pay you for the 10,000 hours you put in to create what you created. I can only imagine the frustration of all that work, and having no one value it enough to pay you for it.”
Simmons’ statement ruffled some feathers. His fellow veteran rockers, Alice Cooper and AC&DC duo Angus Young & Brian Johnson vehemently disagreed with Simmons’ assessment. However, in an interview with NME, Cooper did admit rock no longer has a place on the major scene:
“We’re not in the Grammys. We’re not in the mainstream. Rock ’n’ roll is outside now looking in. And I think that’s gives us that outlaw attitude.”
Contrarians often point out that rock has changed, that demise of “classic rock” doesn’t mean the genre itself is dead. But regardless of how far we stretch the definition of the rock, the fact is it doesn’t fare well on the charts. According to Billboard’s data, the ten biggest rock hits of the last decade came from six bands. Three entries each were efforts by Imagine Dragons and Twenty One Pilots. The remaining four were split between Panic! At The Disco, The Lumineers, Walk The Moon and Portugal.The Man. The last three bands haven’t since charted on the main list.
I wager a casual listener would have a problem with listing even three bands created within the last ten years.
So what is the problem? Simmons (as previously stated) thinks it’s the piracy and the lack of theatrics. Noel Gallagher points to the lack of working-class musicians. Others think it’s no longer exciting or just want the good old rock back.
Simmons’ claims are the easiest to debunk. Not only is piracy a widespread problem, but we’ve seen Arctic Monkeys' astronomical rise to fame: how they build their career by giving out free mixtapes and uploading music to MySpace. Free access didn’t stop the band from taking Whatever People Say That I’m Am, That’s What I’m Not to the №1. At the time it was the best selling debut album of all time in the UK. Radiohead In The Rainbows was free to download and it still went platinum. People are willing to pay for good music.
In fact, rock was doing just fine in the early 2000s, when piracy was arguably at its most severe. The charts might have not shown it, still clinging to the radio and physical sales formula, but on both sides of the pond kids were listening to rock music. The tangled and twisted headphone wires carried the sound of a guitar.
Britain experienced an indie boom, spearheaded by the aforementioned Arctic Monkeys, Domino Records’ labelmates Franz Ferdinand and their poppier versions like The Kooks. American teens were swept by the Fueled By Ramen’s pop-punk hurricane. Their acts, Panic! At The Disco, Fall Out Boy and Paramore, influenced the birth of an entirely new “emo” subculture, convincing an entire generation racoon is the fashion icon to imitate.
Eventually, both waves ultimately faded away, with pop stars like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry hogging the spotlight. The more subdued acts had to wait over five years for the pop to waver off; by 2013 people were ready for new sounds.
It should’ve been the prime time for rock, with the public exhausted by the mass-produced sugary pop from Max Martin’s hit factory. For once, technology was on rock’s side. Tumblr, where aesthetics ruled and uncool kids gathered, was keen on more alternative sounds. A couple of years later another opportunity came in MySpace’s successor, Soundcloud.
While both platforms made an undeniable impact on the music industry, neither of them became saviours of rock. Tumblr brought the bananas and avocados indie girls and Soundcloud created a whole subgenre of rap.
Which prompts a question: Why did rap do so well when rock failed miserably?
To answer this question we need to identify the problems plaguing the current music market: content overload and individualistic way of music consumption. The dominance of streaming services means the potential listener is its own curator, with the algorithm serving as its guide. Spotify or Apple Music are bombarded by hordes of new music, making it difficult for an artist to break out and even harder to keep the audience interested.
The major labels found their way around it. Songs are shorter — designated to be endlessly looped on Spotify — and they’re snappier too, with quirky lyrics meant to lure the TikTok audience. It’s no surprise the industry is so fond of the app. Tiktok, with its endless scrolling feature and heavy dependence on the algorithm, is the most radio-esque app. But the changes aren’t confined to music — the promotion method has changed as well. The most visible difference is the number of collaborations flooding the market in the last couple of years.
Megan Thee Stallion, half of the duo responsible for the cultural phenomenon “WAP”, has started off her new promotional cycle with a Dua Lipa feature.
Ed Sheeran has released an entire collaboration album in 2019. Bad Bunny, Spotify’s most-streamed artist of 2021, J Balvin and Tainy. Gayle, the singer behind viral Tik-Tok hit “abcdefu” is already back to share the love with new artist Justus Bennetts.
Nowadays, even “going solo” requires a hefty amount of group work. Just as the notion of A-listers, capable of carrying a movie on their own shoulders, disappeared from the cinema, singers have to learn to share the spotlight. The frequent partnerships between select few artists create little ecosystems: not only do they keep artists in the public’s eye, but they lead to fanbases overlapping.
Every trending genre rose to popularity thanks to connections between singers. K-pop, Latin pop, mainstream pop, hyperpop and… especially hip-hop.
Hip-hop was primed for this. Underneath the beef and disses, there always has been a genuine connection between hip-hop artists. Big names like Dr. Dre, Jay-Z or Lil Wayne have been heavily involved in young artists’ promotion, each taking a protegee or two. And those who didn’t get so lucky to get attention could take a page out of Wu-Tang Clan or N.W.A’s book and create a collective.
It would be difficult to find a hip-hop artist who flew solo their entire career, and when it comes to collaborations the genre’s fans are positively spoiled. Rock enjoyers don’t get to enjoy this kind of privilege. The days of Mark Knopfler sharing the mike with Sting while Phil Collins plays the drums are over.
It’s not to say the lack of cooperation is rock’s biggest problem. It’s the fact rock world is detrimental to its own success.
Many articles have written about the snobbism of rock, of its burning hate for disco and pop and hip-hop and… every single genre its fans assumed to be un-authentic. But not enough has been said about rock’s self-hatred.
People love to hate on rock bands — no current act has managed to escape the criticism. For a decade the punching bag’s position had been filled by Nickleback until Imagine Dragons finally put them out of their misery. They weren’t the only ones. Every breakout act’s been coming with a set of complaints. And so Mumford & Sons were insufferable hipsters who dared to play the banjo; The 1975 and Muse committed the grave offence of amassing a female following and Coldplay was too middle of the road to take seriously. Even the critics’ darlings, The Strokes, were put under the microscope due to their affluent background.
There is nothing wrong with criticism (and frankly speaking some of it was on point), but I wager one would be hard-pressed to find a genre that is so critical of its emerging stars. Pitchfork’s review of Jet’s Shine On (which is just a video monkey peeing in its own mouth) is the classic example, but a quick Google search spews out a number of articles explaining why [insert any popular group] is the worst band on Earth.
Make no mistake; it’s not just media dunking down — fans and musicians are jeering right alongside them. Since its rise to fame Imagine Dragons has been dissed by the likes of Smashing Pumpkins, Slipknot, The 1975, Marilyn Manson and Foster the People. Sounds like a decent lineup for a festival night, doesn’t it?
It’s different for hip-hop artists. DJ Khaled, once a meme fodder, has collaborations with Jay-Z, Drake, Chance The Rapper and 21 Savage under his belt. Kendrick Lamar, indisputably one of the brightest stars of his generation, had no claims about joining Imagine Dragons for their 2014 Grammy performance.
This riff between popular and indie, new and old, had a far more disastrous consequence: the loss of community. If we look at Reddit, the closest thing to old Internet forums, both hip-hop and pop can boast about their vibrant communities: r/hiphopheads (with two million subscribers) and r/popstars (with 800 thousand subscribers). Well, what about r/rockheads? It’s barely scrapping 200 readers. Of course, it’s not all gloom or doom — rock fans can join r/music or r/indieheads. But the first one features almost exclusively old and the following has rock share a place with a myriad of other genres.
As it stands today, there is a small chance old-time Pink Floyd fans will check out King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Or that Paul Weller’s admirers will take a moment to listen to his protegee, Sam Fender’s album. If rock wants to come back to its earlier glory it must do its best to create a community, to bridge the gap between rock lovers of different ages and different nationalities. Without it, the rock will continue to be a minor, forgotten genre.
