Is This It?: What Should We Do About Rock and Roll?

Is This It? examines the current state of rock music through a modern-day lens, highlighting the artists, perspectives and sounds that have kept the genre and its dedication to counter-culture alive.

I love to complain about rock music. I think most diehard fans do. I wouldn’t consider myself a sports enthusiast, but I assume my feelings are similar to having a favorite team. They lose, they win, you cheer or critique from the sidelines. Sometimes you actually go to the game, or watch it on television, and other times you just check your phone to see the stats. But you’re loyal because you love them, and even when you’re talking shit about your favorite team, it’s only because you want them to win. “You don’t get to hate it, unless you love it.”

I started this column to answer a question: When it comes to rock and roll, is this it? Will it forever trail behind hip-hop, R&B and even pop in terms of chart success, or will it someday peak again like during its inception in the ‘50s, its romanticized heyday of the ‘70s, or even in the early ‘00s when everyone just wanted to be one of The Strokes?

There have been countless articles and op-eds that have dove headfirst into the question, fishing out answers that range from “yes” to “maybe” to “absolutely not.” Some of the best headlines I’ve gathered on the alleged death of rock and roll are as follows: “Rock n’ Roll Is Dead and Tech Killed It,” “Is Rock ‘n’ Roll Dead, or Just Old?” and my favorite, Dan Ozzi’s aptly titled piece, “Rock Is Dead: Thank God.” Ozzi’s 2018 article does the best job of laying out the two basic dissertations outlined in those other the articles, the first being that rock is, in fact, still alive and well, although that completely ignores the data that, at the time, showed a decline in its listenership. The next theory is that rock is still alive, but it just looks different, thanks to the fresh cast of diverse characters making recent headway in the genre. It’s a viewpoint I’ve often championed, but even with the revival of pop-punk, and more women and non-white artists picking up guitars, the numbers don’t lie: rock’s listenership is still eclipsed by those of other genres. A third theory, the one Ozzi posits in his article, is that not only is rock dead, but also its death is worth celebrating.

“The more [rock’s] popularity shrinks, the more it attracts freaks and weirdos—those with something to prove and nothing to gain,” he wrote. “The more the traditional rock star career path crumbles, the more it draws in the true, inimitable visionaries making groundbreaking work for the sake of art and not money. Hopeful thinking? Sure. But the alternative is to accept that guitars are playing the siren song of a floating corpse.”

It’s optimistic, cynical and likely true, but instead of agreeing with this idea completely, I’d like to offer a fourth theory. I believe that rock and roll, whether it’s on life support, six feet underground or up onstage ushering in a new era, is completely within our control. Calling rock dead has always felt, to me, like a way to hand over its fate to some outside source, some sonic deity with the ability to determine whether a soul-stirring, visceral, life-altering seismic sound will flourish or fail. However, we music listeners have always been beings with the powers of intervention.