AHC: Rock stays popular in the 2010s

SavoyTruffle

SavoyTruffle

Since its evolution from rock and roll in the 60s, rock music has by and large dominated music in the pop culture sphere. It's to the point where the Platonic ideal for a musical act is the rock band that pens their own music, plays it live, and invariably features guitars, bass, and drums.

While it has weathered challenges to its proverbial throne over the decades, it's become clear that rock music has finally taken a backseat in the 2010s. While many aesthetics of the genre like the singer-songwriter remain, the traditional "let's get the lads jamming" paradigm has been largely set aside in favor of, say, the producer at his or her workstation tweaking Pro Tools instead of strumming a guitar.

So what kinds of changes would be needed to make rock music (and its ancillary paradigms) stay popular in the 2010s?
 
Aisha Clan-Clan

Aisha Clan-Clan

It's honeslty surprising it fell out of favor OTL, given how only negative trends from the 2000s have tended to continue. Going by that logic, you would have expected rock to remain on top in the 2010s but SOMEHOW we dodged that bullet
 

RichmondHistory

I just hope it comes back in the 2020's, I think it may. We have a whole new generation coming of age and they might be in the mood to make some new and innovative music with a guitar after so long. Maybe an offshoot of shoegaze could happen, taking an electric guitar and using it to make sounds that are only possible with current and future technology.
 

Mark E.

Music goes through fads. The volume of accumulated rock is so great that we are only seeing a temporary lull in progress or growth.
 

Mister Abbadon

People forget that there was a solid mainstream Rock scene post 2000, it's just that it was at best mediocre and at worst unlistenable garbage. See Nickelback and their derivatives.

Modern Rock in my opinion is split into pop "indie", punk, alternative, and a handful of electronic based metal. All of which delve into heavy topics that Radio stations avoid
Modern rock will have trouble putting out "good times" singles to go up against whatever lingere model record industries are pretending can sing this month without sounding like Bastielle at best or Nickelback at worst.

Best chance for something like that is bands like Foster the People, of Monsters and Men, and a slightly more hard edged Bastielle to helm a U2 esque pop rock revival with the Ed Sheerans of the world not existing or helming actual bands.
 
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thekingsguard

There were three things that spelled the downfall of rock as a dominant genre - the first is that the rock acts pushed by labels in the mid to late 2000s have just SUCKED. For frags sake, bands like Nickelback and Maroon 5? Deathcab for Cutie and Fallout Boy? Half can't sing, and the other half are hipster weenies that would have thier teeth kicked in by acts like Metallica or Guns and Roses, and nither can really shred. Rock lost it's voice, it's balls and it's ability to shred in less than a decade.

Then there was a power play by the record labels - the labels by and large hate rock stars because it takes a lot of investment to make them big, and when they do get big, they can dictate terms to the label. You get a much better return with pop acts - they're cheap, disposable, and half of them today can't sing without sound engineering, so they're careers depend entirely on the mercy of their label. From the label's standpoint, the decline of rock and rap in favor of bubblegum pop acts is the best thing to happen to them in ages.

The other half, and more critical, is that radio stations now all mostly play the same crap - indie rock stations were the backbone of new talent becoming popular, especially rock acts outside the major markets or the labels back yards. Now every radio station is owned by one of two companies, and they all play the same top 40 club shit. It's the same reason why hiphop lost it's edge too.

You wanna save rock? You gotta kill the monopolies controlling the labels and the radio stations.
 
Neoteros

Neoteros

Here's a few reasons why rock has failed to stay relevant, in my opinion:

  • The fans, or at least the fans that count, are an elitist and gatekeeping lot; it's more noticeable in the metal crowd, to an infamous degree, but rock fans are not immune to it, either. It's the same reason why the left has lost the War for the Internet to the right: would you rather join the group that requires you to prove your worth over and over again, or the group that welcomes you with open arms whoever you are?
  • Related to the above, a huge amount of old fashioned rockism, and when I say "old fashioned", I mean that many rock fans seem to disregard anything that came after the early 2000s at best - bands like Ghost, Halestorm or Sabaton have carved quite a comfortable niche for themselves, but they constantly have to fight for an audience and/or tickets with bands that reached their peak before they were even born. Rock music is a gerontocracy.
  • Related to both the points above, musical conservatism: rock may have started as rebellion, rock may have blossomed into a thousand sub-genres, but any kind of innovation or experimentation is met with skepticism at best and hostility at worst. Memey bands like Alestorm and Steel Panther get a pass for being both hilarious and talented, but if you're a band that takes itself seriously, you can't expect to be weird and still appeal to the core rock crowd.
  • Rock stars used to be rock stars - they were not afraid of the mainstream, and they either courted it or challenged it with both middle fingers up high - often, they did both at the same time. Present-day rock bands have basically retreated into a ghetto of their own making but, once upon a time, rock bands that are now revered used to star on Top of the Pops, and they didn't change their image or sound to do it.
 
Aloha

Aloha

Mister Abbadon said:
Which would be a ridiculous topic as Dwayne Johnson is more popular than ever in the 2010s.
Click to expand...
That's what I was thinking. Maybe a topic for that would be "AHC: Make The Rock unpopular after 2000" or "Make The Rock widely disliked". Not that I would want that to happen because I love Dwayne Johnson.
 
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Mark E.

Don’t forget the impact of technology. Look what happened when rock and roll hit the scene. Crude early stereo in 1953 became classic rock in only 15 years with sophisticated full fidelity and studios with literally dozens of microphones to produce recordings that still today are re-mastered to produce copies even better than those marketed on vinyl disks. The accumulation of quality recordings grew and grew.

Then, sometime after 2010, came a ground-shaking technological change. Music once sold on vinyl disks, CD’s and iPod master files was marketed in a new way: streaming over the Internet. Listeners no longer have permanent copies of their own. They just pay a subscription fee to listen and this change makes a certain new genre stand out over established styles. In other words, people bought copies of older music but stream new music per listening session.
 

Glory2Cabinda

I will never understand the hate boner people have for fallout boy. They are pretty fucking good sorry they don't bend the knee to the 1970s model of rock and roll.
 
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