Musician Neil Young, most known for playing bands like Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills and Nash, said it best: “Rock ‘n’ roll can never die.”
Rock ‘n’ roll is a gift from God that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s from musical styles such as gospel, jump blues, jazz, boogie-woogie, rhythm and blues, and country music. It is music for everyone, but it really became popular in the 1960s though the 1980s with harder beats and louder music.
The art of rock may be declining, a sentence that physically hurts me to type, but the soul, the purpose and the meaning of rock will live on forever. There are so many conversations about if the rock genre is dying or not.
Personally, I am a huge rock ‘n’ roll fan. My first concert was Def Leppard, Styx and Tesla. I headbanged and threw my fists in the air when Foreigner played at the Soybean Festival and I have rock lyrics tattooed on my body. I’m committed.
However, I do not control the music world, nor does everyone have the same music taste as I do, which is great because there is great music out that is not rock. But here is the main question: Is rock actually dead, or is it the industry just as stale as the open loaf of bread that’s been sitting on your counter for two weeks?
Many people will point out that rock isn’t dead, it’s just finally evolving to become more inclusive of women and people of color. While that is true and good, it’s not what people mean when they say “rock is dead.” One way to look at it is by the actual industry rather than the music itself. The genre is being surpassed, in means of popularity and profitability, by pop, hip-hop and electronic dance music (EDM). The Billboard Hot 100 charts have been flooded with new pop artists who fake being rockers and hold a guitar as a fashion accessory.
More so, a lot of people my age, early twenties, don’t particularly listen to rock music, at least not as much as before. And if they do, it’s “because their parents listened to it when they were growing up.” That’s how I became acquainted with rock ‘n’ roll.
So, to the young people whose parents didn’t listen to rock ‘n’ roll, they never got to really listen to the music, and then some people’s parents listened to it, but their child had different music taste and would rather listen to country or pop/hip-hop.
But there’s tangible proof that young people aren’t listening to rock as much as in the past. “Top 40 radio, which has always been for teenagers, is mostly devoted to post-rock, pop and hip-hop. In 2016, rock is not teenage music,” says author, television executive and radio host, Bill Flanagan. “Rock is now where jazz was in the early 1980s. It’s fixed.”
But I still believe that, just because the industry isn’t making as much money as it used to, that rock ‘n’ roll is still alive and well. This is just another cycle of “rock is dead!” It happens every few years.
“Long live rock and roll. The beat of the drums, loud and bold. The feeling is there, body and soul,” said famous rock musician Chuck Berry. “Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ roll.” Long live rock.
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