Is Rock Really Dead?
Article ★ Kenzie Gay ★ @kenzwrites ★ 1.5k words
During my senior year of high school mere months before this magazine debuted itself (though it was a different name with a much more amateur look and style at the time), I had the honor of participating in a 4 month long independent study during my last trimester of school. Most teenagers, as I’ve found, choose this opportunity to focus on something they want to pursue as a career such as Chemistry, marketing, or art in some form but as for me?
Well, I had no clue what I was going to quite do with my life yet.
I’d flipped between possible majors ranging from pre med to political science throughout my teen years but all I knew at that point is that I was about to graduate early, I had a knack for writing and research that my teachers seemed to approve of, and my parents had given me a deadline of choosing a school/program that I truly did not want to think about (for those curious, I failed to meet this deadline).
18 year old me (YIKES)
Thus, I chose something fun to distract myself from the rest of the stress and tension that was going on in my life both in and outside of school. It was initially an excuse to watch biopics during school hours and blab about ‘dad music’ to a class of juniors who couldn’t have cared less but I learned much about myself and the world through this study on the evolution of rock music (even if the presentation was a bit awkward...18 year old me had some public speaking issues, that’s for sure).
A snippet of my original project!
Specifically, I learned that rock is widely considered a thing of the past, something that’s died and isn’t returning any time soon. I’m sure you’ve heard people make the claim that rock is dead but now as I approach my 21st year I wanted to explore this subcategory of my original project more in depth because if anything, I am a woman with opinions, especially when it comes to the music world.
So, without further ado, let’s talk about how rock itself never died: the genre is actually alive and well.
Opinion: Rock is Alive and Thriving.
The Day the Music Died
I once read an internet forum comprised of rock fans that dove into the idea of rock and its supposed death. Amongst the sea of conversation within the forum, there is one answer that will always stick with me: “rock is not dead, it is just hibernating”. That answer was more than likely from some guy in New York or even Alaska who had no idea just how profound his response was but one thing’s for certain: he was right.
When the word/genre rock n roll comes about, most people think of its prominence between the late 1950s and the early 1990s. Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Guns N’ Roses, Queen, and hundreds more dominated the industry for their unique but welcomed takes on rock throughout the decades.
After 1994, though, rock took a massive backseat. This is mostly why listeners and the press claim rock to be dead because of how it seemingly vanished from the charts. It was gradual as trends tend to be but nobody seemed to notice the patterns until pop music morphed from hard-hitting songs full of experimental guitar solos and battle cries to more emerging styles that followed a completely different structure and instrumentation.
Though most say that the day the music died was in 1969 when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson met their demise in a plane crash, you’ll find that much of the rock world considers the day the music died to be an undefined moment in the 90s, the day when grunge, r&b, and modern pop took the throne.
(left to right) Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson
The music never died, though, if that wasn’t apparent. It just developed. Forced to go back to humble beginnings, rock shrunk down to DIY scenes and became a hidden gem rather than something that’s easily accessible. Some were able to slip through the cracks, sure, though most remain a little-known treasure.
Beating the Odds
Obviously, not every single popular musician from the last two and a half decades sounds the same. Though most of them are labelled as modern pop, there have been a great few that have beat the odds and overcome industry barriers to present rock to the masses in a time where it isn’t so attainable.
The early 2000s brought on bands like Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys, Muse, The Killers, and my personal favorite: The White Stripes. Most refer to these groups as garage rock, which had a successful time with all things considered between the years of 2000-2008.
With the 2010s came more hybrid approaches to rock n roll through acts such as Cage the Elephant, Dirty Honey, The Black Keys, and Greta Van Fleet. Some combined rock with pop and soul whereas others melded it with blues influences that arguably dominated the eventual sound. During this era, however, few new artists actually boomed to a status that called for arenas or large scale crowds in contrast to the early 2000s period. Most of the bands from this time either still have yet to reach such an audience or it took them another decade because of the industry and its competition.
(left) The Black Keys (right) Cage the Elephant
The 2020s really screeched to a halt with such popular new rock artists. Instead, those same older groups were the only ones really hitting people’s radars and even with those aforementioned bands (Greta Van Fleet, Cage the Elephant), it took much time, effort, and luck for their music to reach such a large fan pool.
I believe this pattern has the potential to flip over the next half of the 2020s but so far, the trend has listeners looking elsewhere for new rock though many don’t know where to look. You’ll come to find, though, that it may just be right under your nose.
The Power of “Local” Bands
Local bands that play venues ranging from black mold ridden basements to upscale theaters are our only hope (not to be dramatic or anything) as rock fans but they seem to be constantly overlooked. Most don’t even know they exist, to be frank.
Now, when I say local bands, I don’t exactly mean local. Not every city has a bustling rock scene so by local I more so mean underground. The bands/soloists that aren’t selling out stadiums, the ones that aren’t on the front cover of Rolling Stone, the ones that aren’t with a record label, the ones who are as broke as they come. The underdogs, if you will. There are thousands upon thousands of them and they have always been a staple within the culture of DIY music, which is a foundation of this publication and its ideologies, and now is more important of a time than ever to pay attention to them because there truly is something for everyone, even your average crotchety old man who’s convinced that everything post-1994 sucks.
If we neglect these 'nobodies’, then we’ll get what an even deeper showcase of we’ve been ignorantly reiterating for twenty some years: the death of rock. It won’t totally vanish, no, but it’ll become even more difficult to discover and before we know it, the next generation may have no clue who the likes of Metallica, Eric Clapton, and Joan Jett are.
Finding New Rock…A Challenge
It’s hard to discover new rock unless you’re adamantly searching, I’ll give you that. I myself sort of stumbled into it on a stroke of good luck when I was 17 but after working with it for two years and listening for even longer, there’s plenty of surefire ways to get involved.
For starters, streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple, etc.) are an excellent and algorithm-based way to begin. These apps curate playlists by genre each week and when I’m craving something new, I never hesitate to type in something along the lines of modern rock mix and sure enough, over four different variations of that pop up that are specifically catered to my already logged songs.
Aside from that, reading and keeping yourself keyed into smaller newspapers/magazines (such as this one!) focused on rock music are foolproof ways to find new rock that’s relevant with the times.
Attending local shows at smaller, all standing room venues are also great ways to find these underdogs (specifically pay attention to opening acts…they are crucial!) and it helps that most of the cover charges at these concerts are under 30$.
Rock, much like every other musical genre that’s graced humanity, changes. It would be boring and excruciatingly predictable if it still sounded like it did in the 50s. As a style that prides itself on rebellion and experimentation, it should have been a universal expectation that rock wasn’t always going to be #1 and that it wasn’t going to sound the same forever but it appears that was lost in translation (or should I say stubbornness?).
The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter what all of these big time outlets that push the same pop acts time and time again say or what John Doe from across the globe thinks about rock, its significance, or its place in 2025 and onward. At the end of the day, those claims are bred from ignorance since we all know the contrary to be true:
