When David Isaacs, the history of rock professor at CSUDH, was in high school he used to be one of the very few people that enjoyed listening to metal, a subgenre of rock. He had long hair and wore Slayer shirts. This genre of music was his thing and eventually in the 90s another subgenre of rock, grunge, came to life becoming everyone else’s thing.
Over the years, rock and it’s various subgenres have seemingly “disappeared” under the mainstream eye. In the year end Billboard 2018 Hot 100 Songs chart, there weren’t any rock songs in the top 10. It was the same in 2016 and 2014.
Pop music began to dominate the radio stations, which were once rock’s main platform inadvertently pushing it into the background making headlines begin to surface asking if rock is dead or if it’s making a comeback.
According to Alan Perez, CSUDH pep band member and lead guitarist in the metal band “Render Me Insane” rock music is not dead nor is it making a comeback.
“To quote a song, don’t call it a comeback, I’ve been here for years,” Perez said, “I think rock has always been around. It just kind of went into the shadows, which doesn’t mean it’s gone.”
Perez adds that the main factor is whether or not rock music is in the limelight and whether or not any of us actually care about the genre.
“To put it simply, musicians like myself, we like what we like and that’s that. We care that our favorite artists are making music,” he said.
Ismael Vega, trumpet player for the CSUDH pep band agrees, “I feel like [rock] has never left. Popular music changes overtime with different experiences and technologies.”
Vega thinks that even though the general foundation is still there, there is a difference in what people will do to the music to make it their own. It ties in with how many subgenres there are in rock music.
“Depending on who you are and what your interests are, you may not know what’s going on because you’re not paying attention to [rock music]” Isaacs said.
While rock had not been in the mainstream spotlight like pop, which took the number one spot of the most streamed genre on Spotify, or hip hop, which has the most plays on Soundcloud, rock artists still continued to thrive in their own community.
“I don’t think rock has diminished at all. I think it’s been thriving and you just have to know where to look,” Isaacs said.
Isaacs talks about how the pandemic hurt a lot of these musicians who rely on live shows for interaction with fans. According to SeatGeek, a ticket reselling platform, rock is the leading genre when it comes to live shows with a total of 2.3 concerts per 100,000 residents but with the pandemic, many concerts were cancelled.
“There’s a band I love called Low, from Duluth, MN, that streamed concerts from their house every Friday night,” Isaacs said, “So [rock] was thriving through artists like that.”
Just as he said, rock has been thriving in recent times and not just in those specific communities.
It’s become more popularized among the mainstream crowd and newer generation due to social media app TikTok, which has over 1 billion active users and YouTube playlists which include the most popular rock songs.
For instance, Nirvana’s song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” has over 130,000 TikTok videos that feature the song. A recent study conducted by Viberate, found a 6 million Spotify listener increase due to social media’s use of the song from December 2019 to February 2022.
Other artists like Bring Me the Horizon, a British rock band, and Maneskin, an Italian rock band, have both been played countless times on Tiktok. Bring Me the Horizon’s “Can You Feel My Heart” has over 100,000 videos while Maneskin’s “Beggin” has over 9.8 million videos just on the app alone.
TikTok has been the leading app that has brought older bands like Nirvana and Bring Me the Horizon into the spotlight once again.
But is this simply a trend like the ones that we have seen occur in the past? Or a five minutes of fame brought about by this newer generation?
It can be, but to the older generations who have grown up around this music, it isn’t.
“[The rock scene] never stopped,” Issacs said, “I don’t think there’s ever been a lull in it. The spotlight just changes.”
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