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Why did western rock music die completely?

Woffls

Member
Not sure why OP got so triggered over this 🤷🏻‍♂️ Sad.

I couldn’t say if rock is dead artistically because I, like many others, migrated to metal and don’t stray too far into rock unless it’s proggy stuff. Will absolutely go through the songs linked in this thread, though.

There will always be good rock out there being made, but it has no large-scale cultural relevance. It makes sense because genres kinda get their time in the sun.

Metal is doing very well but in scene pockets rather than the charts. Shows have great attendance and the crowds are highly engaged.
 

bigsnack

Member
No offense but that shit was way to slow... I gotta have the fast drums..
Agreed. Those examples were all droning / atmospheric, and the last example was just grunting vocals.

Brutus has the only record that came out in the recent past that I think has both melodies and hard hitting music. They are a mix of Bjork / Dredg / At The Drive In

 

Pejo

Gold Member
I made a thread about this a few months ago too, OP. It seems that as far as pop culture goes, rock is just dead. I'm not saying I was ever a fan of shit like Bush and Nickelback, but it was nice to have some variation in the music you hear. I don't personally care for much modern music, but I don't know if that's just me hitting my "old man yelling at cloud" stage. I find that other countries like Japan and Sweden still make some good rock/metal stuff though, but the language barrier kinda sucks sometimes. Ah well, no amount of modern day shit can take away the albums I own at least.
 

Happosai

Hold onto your panties
Simple question, in preference to the current monopoly which is trash(systemic racism). Even by standards of fifteen years ago. There were dualities where now there is nothing.

Brit Rock-Dead

Ameri-Rock-Dead









Wtf is going on here, this doesn't even make sense from a business perspective.

It died at the dawning of the 80's. Rockers stopped writing creatively and all wanted a top pop single. Yes (the band), were putting out amazing prog rock symphonies and then they recruited Trevor Rabin (after Steve Howe left) and put out a cheap song "Owner of a Lonely Heart." It shot up the charts but marked the ending of the band's reputation . This is the same band that wrote Roundabout.

80's showed a desperate time for everyone to conform to a similar pop formula and rock was no longer just rock. It became and never came out of pop rock.

90's was a trash fest and I can't name a single composer or artist during that decade. Just bands and forgettable 1-hit madness.

It gets worse every decade closer to 2020.

I'd say rockers got bored of not selling out to the pop monster in the late-70's and many great hands were splitting or reforming to something else then. Just appreciate the great music made before it went to hell.
 

TheMan

Member
I see a couple of reasons:
rock pushed by the record companies in the mid 2000s, the stuff that the teens were told to like, was actually really lame and low quality compares to the shit in the 90s and before. People got tired of it and looked for other music.

Tastes change. Younger generations come to reject that which was popular before. Rock ran its course as the dominant music genre in favor of hip hop, but in reality it hasn't gone away, not at all. Older bands like deftones and NIN still pump out new music, hell even tool released a new album relatively recently. New bands still come along but you need to branch out and deliberately look for stuff rather than just turn on the radio like in 10, 20, 30 years ago, but it's there. Open up spotify and just go down the rabbit hole.
 

Tenaciousmo

Member
Saw those guys as a first part to amaranth a year or 2 ago, they were amazing. to me it is what feels the most classic rock with ...


those guys. They have a sound that i never get tired of hearing.



Foo Fighters have been on all my media listening device since forever



 

Bridges

Member
How about Dilly Dally?


Oh shit, I saw Dilly Dally a few years back open for Grouplove and was super taken aback. I really loved their sound but people in the crowd started booing them because they were so different from the headliner.

When I got home I had to immediately look up these two




Seeing how few views these songs have is pretty saddening though, not gonna lie.
 
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Bridges

Member
I see a couple of reasons:
rock pushed by the record companies in the mid 2000s, the stuff that the teens were told to like, was actually really lame and low quality compares to the shit in the 90s and before. People got tired of it and looked for other music.

I'll have to disagree here. Not all of it was great, but the garage rock revival of the early 00s saw some great bands rise to (temporary) prominence.









I miss when songs like these were common on the radio
 

lock2k

Banned
There's still good rock bands coming out with new music. It just isn't radio/TV popular.

The pop culture sphere is dominated by the tv variety show format. You're made and then you get played. There is no old school system of earning your chops in the local scene. Rock still works in that old school way, so it doesn't vibe with the people who produce pop culture.
This.
It's not dead at all. It's just that it's not popular and promoted.

It became niche due to the extreme pulverization of styles. We don't have an MTV playing Nirvana to the masses anymore.

Morons aren't listening to it anymore, only enthusiasts. Nowadays you can have so many channels so not a lot of artists can appeal to a huge base of fans (only the extreme dumbed down shit that somehow gets billions of views).

Rock and metal fans are the most loyal (also jazz). I actually have a podcast and 80% of what I play are new bands and songs and I have a fuckton of new content to play. It's hard to choose. The show is spoken in portuguese but I"ve been thinking of making an English version to spread the gospel.
Also, listen to Ayron Jones, awesome new rock

 
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TaySan

Banned
It died out of popularity. People got tired of the mediocre bands on the radio and moved on to Metal and alternative rock. It's still out there you just have to find it yourself instead of turning on the radio and top 20.
 

Woo-Fu

Banned
Rock is alive and well, and better off for not being the focus of the major labels.



Thanks the way things have changed we get cool stuff like this all the time.
 
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Raonak

Banned
Music Genres come and go in terms of popularity...

Why isn't 90s europop a thing anymore....

Or maybe it's because of the illuminati.
 

BigBooper

Member
It seems that way, but honestly I haven't listened to FM radio more than a few minutes in more than a decade. I did see the top hits on Spotify or something and then deleted Spotify.

Most recent music I listen is Progressive rock/folk? Like Big Big Train and Tin Spirits(who I just now read broke up in 2018)

Fortunately, there's 60 years worth of rock music to listen to and CDs are pretty cheap these days. I recently picked up the Creedance Clearwater Revival Collected set and it is excellent. I've filled out my collection with WAR, Zappa, Supertramp, Grand Funk Railroad, and others over the past couple years.

Surely this beepity boopity music won't go on forever, right?
 
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betlbum2

Member
I know that this is pop, however it made me really happy that this sort of music is released in 2020:


And yes it's quantized.


And if you jack the BPM up, you have DnB beat, there are multiple people who are creating hop-hop and DnB at the same time, reusing beats (which means just drums, snares, percussion)....

Good tune
 

Jooxed

Gold Member
I know that this is pop, however it made me really happy that this sort of music is released in 2020:


And yes it's quantized.


And if you jack the BPM up, you have DnB beat, there are multiple people who are creating hop-hop and DnB at the same time, reusing beats (which means just drums, snares, percussion)....


Machine gun kelly's whole collaboration with Travis Barker is really good. Check out the other songs too. the album drops this month.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Machine gun kelly's whole collaboration with Travis Barker is really good. Check out the other songs too. the album drops this month.
I agree, he did very good with the collaboration. I listened for more songs, but I am not sure if they have a clip. I also really like the accoustic version.



I though this is another rapper, but he is really good musician. I enjoy his new endeavor.
 

Scotty W

Banned
youre a fuckin weirdo
Don’t take it personally veK veK. I am positive that this is resentment and jealousy over that hair of yours. I know that sometimes I can barely contain myself you jazz ass listening halo wearin turkeu fawkes guy ass motherfucker!
 
Computers didn't kill rock, Hip-hop didn't kill rock, a lack of people who know the G minor chord didn't kill rock, a perceived lack of coolness didn't kill rock, the list goes on.

What led to the mainstream decline of rock is that the average listener couldn't relate to the music anymore. That's it. When people can't connect with your music then you're fucked. For as corny and 'simple' as a lot of Hip-hop and pop songs are, themes such as love, losing a loved one, wanting to make more money, wanting to kill an annoying person, pursuing pussy etc. are things that everyone can recognize and relate to.

A lot of bands -- in hindsight, for worse -- started trying to one-up each other by creating these densely produced densely written songs. The problem with that is while your core fanbase -- the people who tat your brand logo on their arm -- can keep up, newer and on-the-fence people can't. And as people get older, they have less time to go to concerts, events, parties, etc. So you end up catering to a shrinking fanbase with no replacement in sight.

It's admirable that artists can create artistic vague shit, but nobody wants to spend their weekend deciphering the meaning behind a song. So rock ran into the same problem jazz did, i.e. the creators focused on other creators and in the process ending up creating shit that flew over consumers heads. Funnily enough, Hip-hop came dangerously close to making that exact same mistake in the 90's when rappers focused on who could regurgitate more words from a Thesaurus (e.g. Spiritual lyrical miracle individual) in order to come across as more 'ill'.

Anyways, rock isn't dead-dead; just not growing in the mainstream. Outside of the Drakes and Taylor Swifteses, legacy bands still generate significantly more money than the majority of artists in any other genre. As long as they bring in the cash, labels and businesses will keep them going.
 

Rikkori

Member
It's not dead, it's just more underground. You gotta look a bit harder.



It'll never die, because when you see music live, most other music is pretty pathetic.


AAL is great, but I'd put them in the wider "Post-Rock" group (they're math rock) which imo is distinctly different than what OP is talking about (in fact, explicitly so, hence "post"). Post-Rock is a very 2010s phenomenon but it's also kinda already over now as we go into the '20s. Not sure what's going on anymore as I'm not paying as much attention to all the niche/underground scenes.
 

DarkestHour

Banned
It's still out there, it just isn't mainstream. Hip hop has been mainstream and probably won't stop being mainstream for a very long time.
 

devilNprada

Member
Relooking at this topic... It's because artist like Lil peep can knock off saves the day without learning to play instruments and call it emo rap....
 

cryptoadam

Banned
Blame Eminem.

But ya he basically changed the music industry and transformed white kids from wanting to play a guitar, be in a band, do a shit ton of drugs and bang a lot of women into dudes who want to wear their pants down their ass smoke weed and get arrested by the cops and shot by gangsters.

If you are old enough then everyone knows the difference in culture pre and post Eminem.
 

devilNprada

Member
Blame Eminem.

But ya he basically changed the music industry and transformed white kids from wanting to play a guitar, be in a band, do a shit ton of drugs and bang a lot of women into dudes who want to wear their pants down their ass smoke weed and get arrested by the cops and shot by gangsters.

If you are old enough then everyone knows the difference in culture pre and post Eminem.

What about new kids on the block where teenage boy bands quit using live instruments?
 
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Relativ9

Member
I mean Foo Fighters is still going strong and really popular... they're definitely rock aren't they? You can also argue that Muse are the modern interpretation of stadium rock (so Queen).
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
Live music in general is going out of fashion. My dad used to play in a southern rock band and all the country venues have DJs now and play that horrible country rap mix stuff.

Anyways there is still good rock being made. Andrew WK is one of the modern rock artists I love who are still making new stuff that rules.
 
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TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Not really into Rock exactly
But I like stuff like this and do miss it
 

teezzy

Banned
Oh shit, I saw Dilly Dally a few years back open for Grouplove and was super taken aback. I really loved their sound but people in the crowd started booing them because they were so different from the headliner.

When I got home I had to immediately look up these two




Seeing how few views these songs have is pretty saddening though, not gonna lie.


Yeah dude they're raw as shit, very grungy and post punky. I dig it.

If pop culture had any common sense, they'd be huge.
 
Not sure why OP got so triggered over this 🤷🏻‍♂️ Sad.

I couldn’t say if rock is dead artistically because I, like many others, migrated to metal and don’t stray too far into rock unless it’s proggy stuff. Will absolutely go through the songs linked in this thread, though.

There will always be good rock out there being made, but it has no large-scale cultural relevance. It makes sense because genres kinda get their time in the sun.

Metal is doing very well but in scene pockets rather than the charts. Shows have great attendance and the crowds are highly engaged.

I'm not trying to be mean but then explain why even pop music by gay whites is dead? It's as if anything that is deemed culturally relevant in the music industry that is perceived as (white) is snuffed out.

There's no Erasure, Real Life, Queen, Dead or Alive. Rock was killed and somehow pop music by gays died to.







Whites are the majority in the U.S, when was the last time there was a mainstream U.S pop/rock group? One Republic from nearly a decade ago?
 
I mean Foo Fighters is still going strong and really popular... they're definitely rock aren't they? You can also argue that Muse are the modern interpretation of stadium rock (so Queen).

Muse was great, but they haven't been relevant in the U.S for nearly a decade either. I love Muse but the entire band is over 40 now.
 
Pop was an extension of rock which blended the two together in a very good fashion. We've lost very rich music.

 
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If ((they)) would ever allow us to have fun songs again who own the majority of record labels. Then we wouldn't be going through the shit we're going through now.
 

oagboghi2

Member
That's still not a good enough excuse as to why western rock died when it was very popular.

Yes your explanation applies to hip-hop and sampling, but that does not specifically pertain to Rock.
Because rock music takes time, and time takes money.

Pop and rap is cheap and disposable. Rock music doesn't scale as well. Music companies don't invest in it, so it gets no radio play. No advertising means no new stars, so the genre slowly dies as newer acts rarely rise in popularity.

Every once in a while you get a greta van fleet that breaks through but that's it.
 
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Because rock music takes time, and time takes money.

Pop and rap is cheap and disposable. Rock music doesn't scale as well. Music companies don't invest in it, so it gets no radio play. No advertising means no new stars, so the genre slowly dies as newer acts rarely rise in popularity.

Every once in a while you get a great van fleet that breaks through but that's it.

That doesn't make any sense though considering how many talented musicians and instrument players there are that have been scattered around for decades.

Have you ever been to Nashville? There's talented instrument players abound just waiting to be picked up.

Now blaming producers is a legitimate excuse for not putting things together, but putting together a good band is not all that difficult as it's made out to be. In the late 70's and 80's producers forced bands to churn out records in insanely quick turnarounds.
 
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