Where have all the rock stars gone?

[Callu-chan]

So, the other day I was skiing, and I was getting on the chair with another man, probably in his 40's. As I was getting on the chair, a Queen song was playing on the speakers at the bottom, so I started to hum along. I continued to do so for about a minute, then stopped. The man next to me then asked me how somebody so young (I'm a teenager) knows such outdated songs (outdated meaning an older song).

And that got me thinking. Where have all the rockstars gone? My dad is a big fan of classic rock, so I have grown up listening to it. But I am not alone in being apart of the large group of youth that still enjoy music that's 20 - 30 years old. Bands like Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Queen are still household names, and a large group of the younger generation knows the band and their music.

Picture this: somewhere in suburbia, there’s a twenty year old sitting in a cold garage with a guitar, practicing riffs from songs that are older than he is. All his friends know the songs. In fact, two of them are wearing shirts sporting the band’s name. When the session is over, they get into a car where they listen to Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy. They know all the words. They know all the solos. They know this band as if they had grown up with them.

So why have no modern Led Zeppelin's or Rolling Stones come along?

With newer artists, you aren't really seeing big names anymore. This isn't necessarily bad, plenty of artists still produce quality music! But its hard to find a band that has been around for a while and one that we would be able to grow up with, like my dad did with Led Zeppelin.

 

[tmw_redcell]

I wonder if musical tastes change faster now that there is so much more stuff available. A band, even one that tries really hard to evolve their sound, is never going to be able to adapt to current tastes as well as a record company that can hand-pick their stars and produce all their music. I think this is why we see a lot of new individual artists hit the big-time but not as much with bands. A single artist can appear in commercials, make guest appearances on TV shows, appear on other artist's albums, etc. a lot more easily and organically than a whole band can.

It's also harder to break out and become a mega-star in a more diverse and competitive market. A rock band is only one type of music. Yes, it's still a popular type of music. But in the 70s rock wasn't really competing with hip-hop, electronica, and all their descendants. Those forms existed but they weren't hugely popular like rock.

Once a band has already become popular it is easy for them to stay popular. So Queen and Led Zeppelin are still popular. But a new, similar band, might not really break into the mainstream in a big way even if they are just as good.

AT the risk of over-explaining it's kinda the same with TV shows. Before the 2000s it was relatively easy for a sitcom to become a classic mega-hit that upwards of 30 million people would watch live in the US. Now it basically takes a miracle for a sitcom to break 10 million US viewers. People still love sitcoms. But now people have access to hundreds of channels, not just five or six major ones and a handful of local stations. The greater competition makes it so no one creation gets a major slice of the pie.