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For discussion and debate.
When did rock die?
It's a strong statement for some, so let me clarify just a little:
By "die" I mean no longer the over-arching dominant form of music in the United States in terms of sales and/or charting singles and albums. And I don't mean a 'down' year or two, but the long descension from its dominant position without sustainably recapturing the top spot as the most popular genre.
By "rock" I mean any and all of its genres and sub-genres (punk, metal, alternative, brit-pop, whatever).
By now there are tons of articles and not quite a consensus as to 'when' or 'why'.
Some cite key statics as early as 1995, and some others as late as 2005. But generally speaking, CERTAINLY by 2010 and now nearly fifteen years since then, has not recovered the top spot nor is it expected to.
So, here's my questions:
1) What year do YOU think rock 'died'.
2) Why?
3) What (broad) genre do you think may have replaced it (if any)?
Comments
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about 2006 for sure. nu metal/second-wave post-grunge/emo was in the last major wave of rock being popular imho. green day's american idiot, evanescence's fallen, mcr's wttbp, nickelback's ssu & attr and linkin park's hybrid theory & meteora remained iconic for that era, but following that they didn't achieve as much commercial success. ofc genres like metalcore developed and are associated with the 2000s-2010s, but it uses elements of other music genres too and even the most famous metalcore bands are older.
Nimthiriel
I can't give a certain date but 2005-2010 def, The last genres I remember being very popular in high school would be metalcore, poppunk, posthardcore. stuff like older bring me the horizon, asking alexandria, etc. Anything you would see on warped tour really.
I think rock kept getting mixed and mixed with other genres (to me not a bad thing), the wish to continue to make cool things and find your own people and not make millions on the radio or whatever. You can still be a somewhat successful touring band even if you don't get any recognition on the charts. You can get albums out a lot easier now too, you don't need big main stream media companies to do that for you, just get lucky on youtube or even tiktok. I have found a few favourites from tiktok recently.
I don't think a genre replaced it, like a new one took it's place. it's just more of the normal stuff on the billboards, theres not space for rock anymore. Although, it might have a resurgence with popular artists doing rock songs now (like poppy and yungblud.
I think a core of liking rock music and the alternative genres that have spawned from it has a small distaste(or great) of mainstream media, and they see that record companies are terrible to their artists or it's just a bunch of nepotism. Being up there isn't important, supporting these bands, and seeing their shows, buying their music doesn't need the use of these giant labels anymore. We know what we like, how to find it, and share it to keep it going.
Certainly the way music is being consumed has a big effect as well. The coming of the digital on-line age has changed things as dramatically as recording did in the 1880s and as much as radio did in the 1920s.
No shifts in music consumption from the 1920s to - say - the file sharing age has been as dramatic!
by Cranky Old Witch; ; Report
Koltin
2000-2006 back when post grundge bands like 3 doors down, puddle of mudd and nickleback etc
One outlier is Greta Van Fleet which actually was successful during 2017 (charting top 5 in some countries)
Tastes changed, now more electronic music..
Shift towards pop again.. rinse repeat
Tj
90s-2005ish
I'd give it to the mid 90s maybe
by Cranky Old Witch; ; Report
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I would say late 90s or VERY early 2000s. Grunge and nu metal were probably the last genres of rock/metal music to be widely consumed in the mainstream. Iβd say the decline started with nu metal, and it just got less and less popular since. As for whyβ¦ Iβm not entirely sure. You gotta remember, hip hop gained lots of traction at the same time as grunge. I think rock βdiedβ while hip hop was βbornβ. One declines while the other gets popular. And I think nu metal kinda rode the coattails of hip hop in a sense, which may have been the reason why it got the attention it did, being a very hip hop influenced genre at the same time it was blooming. I would definitely say hip hop replaced rock as the dominant music genre.
Thatβs my take on it, at least
Doug
1996. After the music industry decided Wildflowers would be the last time they promoted a Tom Petty album. Their priorities were so screwed up by then, that it became more important and profitable to create and promote pop bands for teenage audiences.
The real rock legends ( Petty, Dire Straits, Simple Minds, Lenny Kravitz) were resoundly ignored, no matter how good their work, in favour of grunge bands and teenybopper crap.
Cryptic Jasmine
1) What year do YOU think rock 'died'.
This is a tough one! As someone who was heavily into nu-metal, goth, metal (all subgenres of rock) it was extremely prominent in my life and so to me it never felt like it 'died' until probably 2010! It was then I started to feel a sort of shame surrounding my musical preferences and coinciding way of dressing. I remember in 2010, Paul Grey of SlipKnoT died and it felt like he took the whole genre down with him. Things really did feel different after that. I don't think his death IS actually the reason but it just seemed to have coincided with when it actually started to feel dead to me.
2) Why?
I think there are two reasons:
1) I don't think it 'died' it just changed / went underground. Rock kind of split into a softer more indie-rock sound that sounded a lot more like pop and the opposite extreme of really heavy metal. The mainstream rock thought the pop stuff wasn't heavy enough and they thought the metal stuff was too heavy - leaving us with the worst and most horrendous version of radio rock on 'rock' sations. They weren't playing Veil of Maya or Born of Osiris or 21 Pilots. There was a LOT of nu music - 'rock' radio stations just refused to play it. Even looking at goth, O. Children came out with Dead Disco Dancer in 2010 and for god sake they didn't get the attention they deserved from any mainstream outlets, at least not where I was living.
2) Which goes into reason 2 - The radio stations! Since the 1970s Rock radio stations played the newest - latest and greatest songs. At some point in the late 90s, it's like they stopped evolving. It was really just the same 100 songs on loop all the time it felt like. They didn't really dare to play anything heavier or anything softer. They were just playing stuff that sounded like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqds0B_meys
Just my opinion from what I saw/ experienced.
3) What (broad) genre do you think may have replaced it (if any)?
I think indie-pop/rock and hiphop/r&B in the mainstream - underground metal/deathcore/goth were still doing their own things.
To your points, by "dead" I mean no longer the dominant form of music
As to radio, I think that's a reaction, and the one fuels the other. But it's also how we consume music that's changed!
by Cranky Old Witch; ; Report