If Rock Is Dead

 

A Songday for 7/13

If rock is in fact ‘dead’, will it have a revival at some point in the future? Arguably, the quality of music in the traditional sense has been declining since the 60s, and yet music written in the two decades following, was still reverent of musical history, and directly influenced by it.

Every 20 years or so you get generational effects, which determine how music history is interpreted. 60s musicians were innovating on musically fertile ground; Now I’m not so sure. If David Bowie and The Who were writing songs today would they be as good? Probably not, as the parentage is altogether different. Moreover, having David Bowie as an influence doesn’t automatically inherit his very eclectic influences. You’d have to go back and listen to what he was listening to in order to make a Revival.

The bigger question is if the musicianship and zeitgeist are there. You’d need both.

7/13/2017

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7/13/2024: This was a response to a Quora question. If you've ever been on it, there are perhaps thousands of "is ____ dead" questions. As someone once said, “Painting might be dead--but it just won’t lie down”. As long as artists are inspired by other generations of artists in all mediums, none can ever really die. If young artists are inspired by a trip to an art museum, as I was when I was a teenager, you'd be copying the things you thought were interesting, regardless of age. The problem in 2024 is that people aren't looking for what intrinsically interests them, it's what might might trend or perform well on social media. Certainly, David Bowie never did that, and when he did, it was in collaboration with musicians and producers who would achieve some artistic vision. What's dead in July 2024 are those kinds of visions, as everything seems to have to be generated by AI. The problem might be forced revivals emerging from nostalgia, which is different from a metamodernist revival, or a "neo" something.