Dean Christakos

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June 18, 2005

Imminent Death of Rock Predicted

Today's article in Salon Magazine poking fun of Coldplay's Chris Martin for cozying up to Tony Blair, because, you know, what kind of music is so earnest as to think Tony Blair is cool? Coldplay got pegged as the most insufferable band of the decade, recently (full article), which means we've finally, after many years, hit the full-tilt backlash against the "whiner rock" that has plagued us since the early 1990s.

But, anyway, the above-mentioned Salon article points out the problem thusly:

...listening to Coldplay's new album "X&Y" is a lot like listening to a speech by Tony Blair: You're made to believe that you are hearing something Big and Important, but scratch the surface and there is very little heart or soul underneath. When he's giving a public speech, Blair's theatrical glottal stops and pained expressions say, "Listen to me, I'm saying something profound!" as do the epic guitar riffs and Martin's earnest vocalizing on "X&Y." But both Blair's and Coldplay's performances feel too forced and formulaic to be taken seriously: Blair in public-speaking mode comes across as an actor trying too hard to please, while Martin and Co. seem to have written their latest Big Tunes by rote, conspiring to get the audience waving our lighters in the air whether we want to or not.

This, in fact, reminds me of an article from Reason Magazine on the death of rock(tm) as a countercultural phenomenon which I wrote about in my old reading journal (scroll down to June 28, 2002). To whit:

more precisely, the death of rock's pretensions to Dionysian excess and subversive power, once widely understood to be its very raison d'etre... As Frank Sinatra memorably put it in 1957, rock "is sung, played, and written for the most part by cretinous goons. By means of its almost imbecilic reiteration it manages to be the martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the earth." Exactly. And therein lies its great and enduring appeal...

[R]ock itself, which after more than five decades now ... so endlessly gestures toward maturity and responsibility that you almost suspect rockers to be suffering from repetitive-stress injuries. Is there anything more appalling than the sight of dried-out rock stars ranging from Alice Cooper to Steven Tyler extolling the virtues of booze-free living like so many reformed drunks testifying at a 19th-century temperance revival meeting? As if fans had ever looked to rock stars for role models rather than vicarious thrills.

See, I was picking up on this stuff ages ago. :)

On related music musings, I came across the Punk Goes 80s compilation from Fearless Records, today. Well worth it, if only for So They Say's rendition of Forever Young.

Posted by Dean at June 18, 2005 6:13 PM

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