Or, more to the point of the continued vitality of rock subgenres, albums I reminded myself to check out during 2017 (almost entirely metal):
Apart from the 20 or so “look into these bands” items, that’s about 200 records, almost entirely from one subgenre, and not even representing a fifth of the output of said genre that year, by my back-of-the-envelope guesswork.
Now, no, Fen’s Winter ain’t gonna move 4 million copies, but the point is there’s enough of a scene to inspire this level of output, year after year. It’s a little awesome :)
Band-Maid is good. Thank you.
I think we need to separate rock and metal here.
Metal is still doing well, but there are very few rock bands out there. Foo Fighters are touring. Uhhhhh what else?
I think that we will see rock on the rise again, music is all cyclical, and I think that we have reached peak EDM when it comes to pop music. You can see pop music swinging towards country music in terms of influence. Lady Gaga’s album, Kesha’s album and her duet with Dolly Parton , Miley Cyrus upcoming album, the stellar “All American Made” by Margo Price.
EDM’s takeover of pop music is going to decline, and I think that Country and Rock will kind of rise up again. There are tons of great indie rock bands out there, but as rock isn’t the hip thing right now, nothing has hit mainstream.
All we need is another tween novel series to be made into a movie trilogy and use some indie rock music to kick up the interest levels.
There are lots of rock bands out there.
Even disco has been making a comeback. See The Killers and Arcade Fire. Ugh.
These are all mere echoes bouncing back from the depths of the caverns. Rock will soon be like ballet or opera — endless repetitions of the classics and new works that don’t matter. Whole subgenres and revived genres that may satisfy taxonomists but will change nothing.
The Stones’ last n albums have been their best-selling ever. But everyone knows they don’t matter. Those purchases reflect old persons insisting “Hey, we’re the rock generation!” in denial of their imminent deaths. And the kids — have you ever had someone 30 years younger than you assume you’re too old to have heard of Katy Perry? Fuck the kids (not literally).
You know what awaits in the deeper caverns, where those echoes have not yet reached? The next Chuck Berry? The next Ozzy Osbourne? The next Tiny Tim? No, the fucking KUO-TOA, that’s who (not the band). With their nets and man-catchers. Do they care about a living, vital rockitude? They do not. And they will be here when we are gone.
Nah. It’ll end up just like the blues or jazz or soul or ska or, hell, surf music - mostly dead. But still kicking enough that you can find interesting artists if you poke around and don’t care about the fact the acts don’t fill stadiums.
And every decade or so, there will be a microburst of interest due to a movie or TV soundtrack, or a mass-market popular artist who tends retro (think Amy Winehouse a decade ago and soul/early 60s R&B.) And there will be a flurry of articles about The Rock Revival. The stalwarts who have been plugging away for years will get a turn in the spotlight (think Sharon Jones.) And then the spotlight of popular awareness will shift away again, only to return after another decade or two.
That sounds right to me.
I said a-blib, dool, a-blibdoolpoolpy to the blibdoolpoolp an’ you don’t poolp the blibby—
Eh, maybe the smelly fish-men will dance to it.
I don’t know about the state of rock & roll. Personally, all I know is that I used to listen to the local top-40 station on my drive to work, but since about 2000 I’ve been slowly dropping it in favor of talk radio and NPR instead, because there’s almost nothing I like to listen to that is played on top-40 stations anymore. I can count on one hand the number of new songs that I’ve heard and liked in the past year.
“Dunna why ya bother. It’s all shite sence Raoy Arbison doid.”
Roll over Chuck Berry, tell Elvis the news
I would argue opera is as alive as jazz is, adjusting for the fact that you can’t have three people put on an opera in every upscale nightclub in a city.
There aren’t a ton of new operas written, but there are some, and bit by bit they trickle into the standard repertory. John Adams, Benjamin Britten, etc. I also feel like the constant reinterpretation of universally acclaimed masterpieces doesn’t really constitute ‘death’ because the interpretation itself is such a massive undertaking and one that constantly changes. They who tread the boards doing Hamlet or singing Figaro are not merely museum keepers, IMO.
Is new, good rock & roll dead. Mostly. Is the rock & roll that I like dead. Nope. :)
You ever been over to your friend’s house to eat
And the food just ain’t no good?
The elves are all soggy, the dwarves are all mushed
And the humans they taste like wood
I think I’ve only heard of maybe 2 bands on that list - Alice Cooper and Enslaved. No Avenged Sevenfold? didn’t they release something last year?
2016 for A7X: The Stage. I kinda fell off the wagon of those dudes but they were dece.
Last year was a pretty awesome year for music. My personal toplist was super hard to organize. Mostly metal, some rock, some electronica. Actually less pop than I jammed to. Substantially less K-pop than I jammed to.
But remember kids, rock n roll is dead cuz a bunch of old dudes don’t know how to use Spotify ;-)
Spotify asked for my email address. Ain’t nobody gets my email address.