It is fair to say that currently, rock is going through a rough patch. And I am not talking about album sales or market share because statistics can be used to manipulate the truth. I am talking about the quality of music and artistes on offer. I know I am not the final authority on this and my views are my own, but I do think rock is at a crossroads right now.
There was much fanfare about the fact that rock albums accounted for over 34% of sales in 2013, accompanied with startlingly original headlines like “Rock N’ Roll is not dead”. Now by itself, this statistic may be a cause for optimism. But let’s try to put it into context. Rock as a genre is one of the most famous and popular ones in the world. There are thousands of bands and millions
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It is not a phenomenon affecting only rock and is a part of a wider malaise. But it has affected rock the most. Is this because the quality of music has declined or has the general audience's taste in music changed? It is my personal opinion that there has been an overall decline in the quality of rock music since the 90’s and even early 2000’s. Like I have mentioned, no band has emerged in the past 5 years. But much more iimportant has been the absence of a new sub-genre of music to get everybody excited. There was psychedelic in the 70’s, glam rock in the 80’s, thrash and metal in late 80’s and early 90’s, grunge in mid 90’s and nu-metal in the late 90’s and early noughties 2000’s. It has been more than 10 years since the last wave of bands brought with them a new sound. As despised as it may be in the rock and metal community, Nu-metal was the last music genre to truly capture a wider audience’s attention and bring in a mini revolution. There has been no musical movement in the past 10 years, not taking into account the rise of metal subgenre Djent which caters to a very niche and selective audience. On the other hand, Electronic Dance Music has been at the forefront of a boom in dance/electronic music and has become extremely popular within 2