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The parades and the ticking prove: the rock returns against all odds, but not as we imagined
After the genre almost died out, two rock songs are currently the biggest hits in the world and it comes from the most unexpected direction: a Disney star and Eurovision contestants, with Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift charting the path and even to Israel it has arrived.
Does this mean that bands will return to conquer the world?
Not sure
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Taylor Swift
Miley Cyrus
Maroon 5
Avril Lavigne
Olivia Rodrigo
Monskin
Avi Goldberger
Sunday, 18 July 2021, 00:00 Updated: 10:04
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Well, older guys, here's an update on what's going on right now in music that young people are hearing - that is: what's powerful to Allah in Tiktok or Spotify.
Well, the big trend right now is a new, contemporary, cool sound: a kind of sound that includes live instruments.
Guitar, bass, drums and such, maybe even some synths and all this is accompanied by a singer or singer shouting.
This, it turns out, is called rock.
The two biggest hits in the world currently belong to the genre.
First of all there is "Good 4 U", a punk-rock segment by young singer Olivia Rodrigo, a Disney Channel star who became a singer, which is currently number one on the Billboard Global Parade.
The second segment is by the band Monskin, the Italian band that won the Eurovision Song Contest in May with a heavy rock segment.
Their rookie novelty to the "Beggin '" segment of the Four Seasons is ranked number one in the world by Spotify.
Now, older guys, you're probably grinning and saying, 'What's new? What's trendy? rock??? The rock has always been here! So this is it, no. In the last 15 years the rock has undergone a rapid devaluation in its status, so much so that it has completely disappeared from the charts. So much so that for most teens today this is something completely new. seriously.
A look at the list of first-place hits on American Billboard reveals that the last time - before Rodrigo's "Good 4 U" - that rock hits reached number one in the United States, was in the summer of 2007 (!). That summer we won a guitar-hit streak thanks to Avril Lavigne's punk rock "Girlfriend" segment, which was replaced by two Plain White T's rock ballads and Maroon 5, which was America's leading rock band in those years.
And to illustrate how the wheel spins, in early March, Adam Levin, lead singer of Maroon 5, was hosted on the prestigious Zane Lowe podcast on Apple Music. This is a band that has undergone a complete metamorphosis. Upon their breakup, in 2002, they were a typical mainstream rock band. As the years went by, the band changed: the guitars, bass and drums were discarded and replaced by a computer production that intensified Levin's voice and character, while the rest of the band disappeared. Satellite did not operate in a vacuum. He realized that rock was gone, and his move to electronic pop kept Maroon 5 as a successful name in the world top.
The interview with Satellite Apple Music was pretty drowsy, until Lowe directed him to questions about Maroon 5's breakthrough period, at the turn of the millennium.
Satellite was struck by nostalgia, began to tell how he has been listening to music with his 5-year-old daughter since then, the likes of which are no longer heard on the radio, and then dropped a bomb: "What makes me sad," he described, "is that there are no more bands. "In 2002 there were more bands around, but today they are an extinct species."
Absolute metamorphosis.
Adam Levin (Maroon 5) at the 2019 Super Bowl (Photo: GettyImages)
The quote caused many on social media to mow down the satellite. Fans of k-pop bands like BTS and Blackfink were offended by their name and veteran bands like Garbage made sure to mention their existence in a tweet: "And what are we, cats?". But all of these missed Levin's claim. True, there are produced pop bands in the field. There are also all sorts of old bands still operating, as well as interesting fringe bands that those who understand anything on the edge radio are familiar with. But what is not really there today is the classical guitar-bass-drum bands. Those who dominated music from the 1960s, to the beginning of the millennium. In 2002, with the release of "Songs About Jane", the Maroons' debut album, there were plenty of other new bands in the field, like them. The Strokes, Libertines, Interpol, Coldplay and Queen of the Stone Age, for example. But as the years went by, this macho strain of music disappeared.
Of course all this does not belong only to the United States. In Britain, too, they were thrilled by the sudden return of rock to the charts, when in one week in mid-June, Rodrigo, Manskin and Willow Smith's pop-punk segment "Transparent Soul" marched. Rodrigo's song became the first rock piece to reach number one in the UK, since 2009. By comparison, in the first decade of the millennium no less than 30 rock pieces reached the top in the UK.
Martin Talbot, who heads Chart Company, the company that creates the British charts, said in an interview with the company's website that "we have been expecting rock for a long time to return to the charts, in the end. ". Talbot's diagnosis that rock came back thanks to two artists who came from sources who are the pinnacle of kitsch, perhaps explains what actually happened here. Both Rodrigo and Manskin were successful through intensive marketing work at Tiktok. A very different path from the track that rock artists have done for success in the past.
Although Rodrigo and Manskin seem to be pioneers of the new wave of rock, this trend did not happen overnight.
This process has been brewing in recent months, until the current outbreak.
Apparently the first to change the pendulum in favor of rock was the number one singer in the world today, Taylor Swift.
At the height of the Corona closures last year, Swift released two mournful surprise albums, "Folklore" and "Evermore."
Swift not only used guitars here and there on albums, she also hosted two of the leading rock-indie bands today, Bon Iver and The National.
Swift, and her status, gave legitimacy to alternative rock returning to the forefront of the stage, and its impact was immediately apparent.
Rodrigo, for example, is a big fan of Swift, and the latter even signed on to write Rodrigo's previous hit, "Deja Vu."
More on Walla!
The first in isolation: Taylor Swift's "folklore" is the perfect closing album
To the full article
After Swift, another pop star decided to turn to rock - Miley Cyrus.
Like Rodrigo, Cyrus is a Disney star who has become a singer.
On her latest album, the acclaimed "Plastic Heart" released in late 2020, she did a complete crossover to the world of guitars with collaborations with Joan Jet, Stevie Knicks and Billy Idol.
Although the album was not a great commercial success, it did draw enough attention to the dying genre and the thirst for it.
Culture is shaped by technology
But will the rock really come back and in a moment a new generation of bands will take over the charts? probably not. Apparently the whole current trend is happening in the pop world, which just enjoys flirting now with guitar music. Swift, Cyrus, Rodrigo, Will Smith's daughter or the Eurovision-winning band are not exactly Hendrix, Mercury, Morrison or Joplin, and although we now hear guitars on the radio, the reality, for the rock world, is bleak, with very few such bands in the field.
In an article in the British Guardian that referred to Levin's quote from Luo, several key people in the music industry were interviewed. Jamie Osborne, the owner of the Dirty Hits record label that signed Wolf Alice and the 1975 - two of the most prominent rock bands in the world today - illustrated the problem. "We're really trying to sign bands," he said. "Desperate to find a young band we can develop."
"The problem," he explained, "is that there are almost no such people around."There is a greater chance today that a child will make music on his own, because of the technology."
Ben Mortimer, president of Polydor Records (where The Who, Eric Clapton, Susie and the Benches and many others have previously signed), explained in the same article that it also has an economic aspect.
"Not for the record company," he clarified, "to train yourself: if you are a young musician, you are faced with a choice. Do you find more people with a vision like yours, buy expensive tools and pay full for rehearsal rooms, or simply download Ableton (music creation software). "AG", slam the door of your room and start creating. Culture is shaped by technology. "
The Israeli version of the trend?
Static and Ben El along with Lake Bohbot
It could also be that the current trend, which did start through the pop world, is an expression of the public's real thirst for rock 'n' roll as it used to be. At the end of 2019 we pointed out that nine of the ten most successful tour appearances in the second decade of the world were by veteran rockers: U2, Ganz & Roses, The Rolling Stones, Roger Waters, AC-DC and the like. If there is a demand for such shows, someone will soon have to replace those old bands that are already on the verge of retirement. For that to happen, a new wave of bands will have to emerge that will conquer the world through riffs and distortions.
In the meantime, until all this happens, we will have to make do with the current trend that is spreading.
By the way, he also came to Israel when Static and Ben El, together with Lake Bohbot, ride the wave.
Yes Yes.
The guitar trend, bass, drums so strong, that the new section of Israeli pop stars, a song called "The Big City", includes dirty drums, live synthesizers of a new wave segment from the eighties and a guitar solo that would not embarrass Slash or Eddie Van Helen.
It can be dismissed with contempt, but if it would make one boy or girl want to own a guitar, for us it did the job.
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