‘Rock and Roll is dead’ Lenny Kravitz already sang it in 95, but I can’t stand the guy and his multi-dimensional ego. However, the rock song did well in the charts but it was almost 2 decades ago.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers are releasing their 10th studio album, ‘I’m With You’ and they are right now on a mission to push it up in the charts, with a global listening party on August 22nd, a radio station campaign playing tracks on the same date world wide, and a live performance of the album captured live in high-definition and broadcasted to movie screens everywhere in the world on Tuesday, August 30th. Iman thinks that, it they fail, rock and roll is really dead.
True, rock sells far less than hip-hop and R&B, according to the Guardian, ‘last year saw the number of rock songs in the singles chart fall to its lowest level in half a century, with only three tracks appearing in the top 100 best-selling hits in the UK’. The percentage of rock songs went from 13% in 2009 to 3% in 2011 whereas hip-hop and R&B were at 47%, pop at 40% and dance at 10% at the beginning of this year, still according to the Guardian. I looked at the numbers 1 on Billboard for this week, and, oh surprise, Katy Perry, Jay Z-Kayne West, LMFAO, Lil Wayne featuring Drake, Justin Bieber, Traphik are at the top in different categories.
UK radio and television personality Paul Gambaccini ('The Professor of Pop') even declared to the Guardian at the beginning of this year: ’It is the end of the rock era. It's over, in the same way the jazz era is over. That doesn't mean there will be no more good rock musicians, but rock as a prevailing style is part of music history.’
‘I feel sorry for rock artists today, because record labels have started chasing the quarter-term profit rather than long-term development.’
But aren’t some big rock acts, the U2 and Bon Jovi (who had the highest earning tour in 2010) doing very well live? But we are talking about record sales here, it’s different, plus these guys are kind of old, where are the new Rolling Stones? The Kings of Leon? Their last album may have been the biggest selling album of 2010 in the UK with 694,300 sales, but Taylor Swift sold a million albums in just a week!
The culture is changing and pop, rap, dance, hip-hop, R&B are taking the lead, is there an audience left for Rock and Roll? Is it the end of the big-arena-style rock? Should we forget about it as we did for jazz, swing, big band? Music culture evolves like anything else, it’s a cruel war, with no pity for the weak, a sort of natural selection applied to the world of music, but I don’t know where it is going, as evolution cannot be predicted.
I did not watch the VMA, but caught some tweets from local rock bands, doing their who-cares-for-the-VMA offended scream. I agree, but indeed, the VMA were all about Jay-Z, Beyonce, Tyler the creator, and Lady Gaga if I am not mistaken.
Who still cares about the Foo Fighters or the Red Hot Chili Peppers after the 90s? The 90s? It was already all about Public Enemy, 2-Pac, Dr. Dre, and the Beastie Boys,…. Ok there was still Nirvana and Oasis, but who is up there right now?
The Red Hot Chili Peppers have to show us they are still there, but the marketing campaign they are doing right now may be a thing of the past, times have changed,… we’ll see.