When Ed Sheeran stepped onto the stage at Croke Park last month, there was an unmistakable feeling of a baton being passed. Stadium rock is supposedly the preserve of swaggering men and women wielding electric guitars. Yet Sheeran was soft-spoken and humble, while his easy-on-the-ears repertoire felt entirely unacquainted with rock’n’roll’s snarling defiance.
Sheeran, in other words, is a pop star, not a rocker. In that respect, he typifies the new generation of chart-toppers. The Script, who also headlined Croke Park this summer, are nominally a “band”. However, with their slick hair and even slicker tunes they owe more to Louis Walsh than Louie Louie. Then there is Taylor Swift, whose career blasted through the stratosphere the moment she laid down her Stratocaster and unleashed her inner pop goddess.
The ascent of pop has been a long time coming, with rock’s imminent death first predicted in the mid-1970s. In 1975, I Love Rock ’n’ Roll was a plea not to give up on a genre many worried was already slouching towards the tombstones. The true surprise is the thoroughness with which pop is eclipsing rock. On radio, across the internet, in our daily discourse, pop is ubiquitous, rock increasingly niche.
Evidence of this transfer of power is all around. Though foisted free of charge upon 300m iTunes users, U2’s 2014 album Songs of Innocence has barely intruded on the public conscience.
Nearly 12 months on, even U2 fans might struggle to name a song from the collection.
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Contrast such indifference with the inescapability of the aforementioned Swift, her pronouncements on female friendship, rubbish boyfriends and Apple Music’s compensation policy are received as though carved in stone and handed down from a mountain top.
In isolation, U2’s deepening irrelevance might be written off as mid-career malaise rather than reflecting the general health of rock relative to pop. And yet the wider statistics are irrefutable in underscoring the diminution of guitar-based music. In 2000, half the songs in the American Hot 100 belonged to the rock genre. By 2012, that total had fallen to slightly over 10%. It is likely that figure has tumbled further in the intervening period.
“Modern mainstream radio and media seems increasingly enslaved to instant [satisfaction]; clicks, retweets and ‘likes’ are the new kingmakers,” says Wayne Fahy of the Irish electro trio Sleep Thieves. “Music with real depth may not always contain the crossover appeal and killer hook or chorus that will get tweens rushing to trumpet its brilliance. Simpler, throwaway pop bubbles to the top.”
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Fears that rock music is in danger of being asphyxiated beneath a landslide of pop are to be heard across the industry.
Kiss leader Gene Simmons spoke for many in decrying the dearth of new talent in a genre perceived for the past half-century as the embodiment of youthful rebellion. “I’ve been quoted as saying rock is dead, and, unfortunately, it truly is, because you cannot name a new Beatles or a new Elvis or a new Black Sabbath,” Gene has told Esquire USA. “Who’s the new Led Zeppelin? In the pop world, there’s Taylor, who’s fantastic, and Gaga. Rock is sadly dying a bad fate.”
“Revenues have gone down massively in the music industry and people aren’t investing in bands,” chimed in Chris Wolstenholme of arena trio Muse recently. “You have this vicious circle where people aren’t investing and so the quality isn’t as good as it used to be. The new bands are not . . . given a chance to develop. Everything has changed massively. Back in the day a label would sign a dozen bands on £400,000 (€570,000) deals. If one took off, it would pay for the rest. That doesn’t happen now.”
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The argument is echoed by Noel Gallagher. Speaking to the BBC in July, the former Oasis singer highlighted a paucity of important new rock outfits over the past decade. “The last great collection of groups came out 10 years after [Oasis’s] Definitely Maybe — Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian, Razorlight and the Libertines. Since then, nothing. Alternative music never used to go 10 years without regenerating. It was five at the most. It was a five-year gap between the Jam and the Smiths, five years between the Smiths and the Stone Roses, five years between the Stone Roses and Oasis. The evidence is [rock] is in hibernation. There’s certainly not the regeneration process.”
The role of technology in rock’s diminishment cannot be overstated. By tacitly encouraging users to flit between artists and genres, services such as Apple Music and Spotify are a perfect delivery mechanism for the saccharine and disposable. On the other hand, music demanding deeper immersion is likely to receive short shrift. In the 24-hour sonic candy stores of typical streaming sites, who has time to eat their vegetables, figuratively speaking?
“Streaming has without a doubt changed the way we listen to music in a huge way,” says Dana Donnelly, singer with Irish duo I’m Your Vinyl. “With everything so accessible online, the borders between genres are quickly being erased and tastes are becoming eclectic. It’s about the song, less about the genre. We can discover new music instantaneously, connect with listeners all around the world, and share playlists with the click of a mouse.”
“Pop was once a dirty word — it meant manufactured and sterile and junk,” adds Lizzy Plapinger of New York electro two-piece Ms Mr. “I don’t think it means that now. There’s a renaissance of pop. It means great songwriting that is accessible on a large scale. Pop more than ever, especially for our generation, represents merging genres and influences to a degree never experienced before.”
That isn’t to suggest rock is ready for the mausoleum. British outfit the Maccabees — a dictionary definition of tortured indie outsiders — recently celebrated their first No 1 LP in the UK. Meanwhile, the most buzzed about new Irish act of the moment isn’t Louis Walsh’s stillborn troupe HomeTown, it’s Girl Band, a scrappy Dublin quartet who flirt with artful tunelessness and have been championed by taste-makers such as Pitchfork and the Quietus.
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What’s changed is that bands are no longer part of a shared culture. Even with a chart-topper, the Maccabees are in little danger of being mobbed by fans. Their entire catalogue is arguably less influential than a single tweet from Justin Bieber or Rihanna.
Rock music still exists. It’s just that it doesn’t matter very much. “I do feel part of a different world where we used to see albums come out, we used to see tracks going to radio and those albums would become more and more popular,” U2’s Adam Clayton confided to the website Grantland last May. “This new way, I don’t really understand. We’re [part of] a generation that no longer gets music the way we like to listen. Does that mean that everyone else that’s getting their music in a different way is not getting as intense an experience?
I don’t really know the answer to that.”
Perhaps nobody does.