sleater-kinney are one of the best rock n roll band of the last decade unquestionably (though they didn't chart WHUTEVA), a cokemachineglower reviewer put it nicely when he said he realized how low his expectations were for rock music when he heard their album 'the woods' as it blew literally everything else in the same vein out of the water.

 

2:50 - 3:50 in their song "let's call it love" is one of the most exciting moments in music period.

 

I'll have to make a point that Rock fans should not really care whether their bands make it in the charts or not. All that matters is that it has a killer sound and one that you enjoy.

 

I say well to hell with the charts... If people just want to listen to techno tunes and pre-recorded noises all day long let them. For me there is nothing that beats hearing a kickarse rift and drum beat and the experience you get from a live rock act.

 

 

- Boualem Bouderba

Top 5 highest grossing tours of 2010:

 

1) Bon Jovi

2) AC/DC

3) U2

4) Lady Gaga

5) Metallica

 

Spot the odd one out...yes, rock might not be big in the charts anymore, but it's kicking the $h!t out of everything else on the live scene.

Edited January 6, 201114 yr by ags_rule

Might be a bit tenuous on this forum but it's still rock on the general spectrum of things (well, post-punk at least), White Lies entering top 40 this week :D

From Music Week

 

The number of rock songs in the singles charts fell to its lowest tally in half a decade last year, with only three tracks appearing among the 100 biggest hits in the UK.

 

The three tracks – led by Journey’s vintage Don’t Stop Believin’ at 25 – meant rock had a 3% share of the top 100, down from 13% last year - far behind hip hop / R&B (47%), pop (40%) and dance (10%).

 

This was its lowest tally in 50 years and underlines what has been a difficult year for new rock acts, with few commercial breakthroughs; a phenomenon that led Absolute Radio COO Clive Dickens to proclaim guitar-based music was “in a real lull” in 2010, while Radio 1 head of music George Ergatoudis said “brilliant” rock songs were few and far between.

 

Rock used to challenge pop for leadership of the singles chart and as recently as 2008 it accounted for 27 of the 100 biggest sellers.

 

On the top 100 albums, rock fared better, recording a 27% share, down just one percentage point on 2009. But there was still a paucity of rock acts at the very top of the charts, with only one rock act in the top 10 albums of the year – Mumford & Sons at 10 (although a case could be made for Florence + The Machine at eight).

 

The news comes as many in the industry are predicting a resurgence of rock music in 2011, pointing to the high-profile signings of Mona, Brother, The Vaccines and Yuck in late 2010, with debut albums due this year.

 

Of these acts, all save Brother appear on the BBC Sound Of 2011 longlist, although only The Vaccines made it into the five-strong shortlist.

 

For more chart analysis see Music Week on Monday

Top 5 highest grossing tours of 2010:

 

1) Bon Jovi

2) AC/DC

3) U2

4) Lady Gaga

5) Metallica

 

Spot the odd one out...yes, rock might not be big in the charts anymore, but it's kicking the $h!t out of everything else on the live scene.

 

Although notably all those rock artists have been around for at least 30 years each. Rock might dominate the live scene, but not any of the new(er) stuff.

From Music Week

 

The number of rock songs in the singles charts fell to its lowest tally in half a decade last year, with only three tracks appearing among the 100 biggest hits in the UK.

 

The three tracks – led by Journey’s vintage Don’t Stop Believin’ at 25 – meant rock had a 3% share of the top 100, down from 13% last year - far behind hip hop / R&B (47%), pop (40%) and dance (10%).

 

This was its lowest tally in 50 years and underlines what has been a difficult year for new rock acts, with few commercial breakthroughs; a phenomenon that led Absolute Radio COO Clive Dickens to proclaim guitar-based music was “in a real lull” in 2010, while Radio 1 head of music George Ergatoudis said “brilliant” rock songs were few and far between.

 

Rock used to challenge pop for leadership of the singles chart and as recently as 2008 it accounted for 27 of the 100 biggest sellers.

 

On the top 100 albums, rock fared better, recording a 27% share, down just one percentage point on 2009. But there was still a paucity of rock acts at the very top of the charts, with only one rock act in the top 10 albums of the year – Mumford & Sons at 10 (although a case could be made for Florence + The Machine at eight).

 

The news comes as many in the industry are predicting a resurgence of rock music in 2011, pointing to the high-profile signings of Mona, Brother, The Vaccines and Yuck in late 2010, with debut albums due this year.

 

Of these acts, all save Brother appear on the BBC Sound Of 2011 longlist, although only The Vaccines made it into the five-strong shortlist.

 

For more chart analysis see Music Week on Monday

 

This is a very narrow angle to take as it's UK only.

 

Iron Maiden's newest album debuted at No. 1 in 30 countries worldwide and shifted 800,00 copies in one week alone. Avenged Sevenfold debuted top of the Billboard 200 and Bullet For My Valentine hit No. 3 on both sides of the Atlantic.

 

The problem is that rock goes through so many trends, at the moment the main one being indie. But only one sub-genre has rode the wave of every other one and came out on top, and that's heavy-metal. It's perhaps the only genre that can claim to have a truly worldwide fanbase.

They could've as well put out a press release wondering why don't US hip hop acts rule the charts any more.

 

And what is rock these days? Either people don't know (as we see above) or don't care.

Edited January 7, 201114 yr by SKOB

On the top 100 albums, rock fared better, recording a 27% share, down just one percentage point on 2009. But there was still a paucity of rock acts at the very top of the charts, with only one rock act in the top 10 albums of the year – Mumford & Sons at 10 (although a case could be made for Florence + The Machine at eight).

If Mumfiord & Sons and Florence + The Machine are Rock then it truly is dead

(They're not and it isn't)

This is a very narrow angle to take as it's UK only.

 

Iron Maiden's newest album debuted at No. 1 in 30 countries worldwide and shifted 800,00 copies in one week alone. Avenged Sevenfold debuted top of the Billboard 200 and Bullet For My Valentine hit No. 3 on both sides of the Atlantic.

 

The problem is that rock goes through so many trends, at the moment the main one being indie. But only one sub-genre has rode the wave of every other one and came out on top, and that's heavy-metal. It's perhaps the only genre that can claim to have a truly worldwide fanbase.

 

Only because SOME metal fans (and this is only a hardcore minority) are amongst the most loyal and closed-minded fans in the world. Punk rock has survived in one form or another for 35 years now, and its roots go back further than that. Both punk and metal have changed with the times - punk has split into the streamlined mainstream (bands like Green Day and Blink whose main influence was the Ramones) and the hardcore which shares ground with certain strands of metal, while metal has largely gotten more anti-establishment and exclusive bar the big bands (Metallica etc.) who have continued support. Both punk and metal will survive for a long time yet, even if they become more cut off from the mainstream.

This was its lowest tally in 50 years and underlines what has been a difficult year for new rock acts, with few commercial breakthroughs; a phenomenon that led Absolute Radio COO Clive Dickens to proclaim guitar-based music was “in a real lull” in 2010, while Radio 1 head of music George Ergatoudis said “brilliant” rock songs were few and far between.

 

what the Radio 1 guy means isn't "brilliant" but something mainstream and watered down so it can sell to people and be played on the radio

 

plenty of stuff that has been brilliant rock wise away from the charts this year - Deftones came back to form with the brilliant Diamond Eyes which is very much right up there with the classic White Pony that they released almost a decade ago. The Dillinger Escape Plan continue to make great albums and Option Paralysis is no exception. A lot of people were disappointed by the Pulled Apart By Horses debut album last year as most of the songs were from their previous EPs but more likely because I never bothered with their EPs, I thought the debut album was fantastic

 

plenty of other albums such as The Bled, The Chariot, The Showdown and for the hardcore punk lovers, Comeback Kid who made great albums last year. Just because it doesn't sell to ITunes buyers (who basically mostly buy rubbish) doesn't mean that bands haven't exactly brought out great material

 

mainstream wise I could mention Avenged Sevenfold and Bullet For My Valentine who have had success in the US and UK last year but I don't think either albums were up to their previous material. Bullet will never beat their first EP and debut album The Poison and Avenged Sevenfold have fallen away since their first two albums but obviously gained in mainstream success because MTV and sources like that highlight them

I was never a fan of BFMV until Fever, but that's probably because I'm not a big metalcore fan and Fever was more like classic metal than metalcore.

 

This may be a controversial opinion but IMO Nightmare was Avenged's strongest album yet, just pipping City Of Evil. I felt that the songwriting was better; not as progressive as CoE but it had plenty of heaviness and technicality, with the poppy hooks of self-titled.

 

Other than that there were some great rock/metal albums this year from Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, Alter Bridge, Tarja, Slash, Ghost, Mastodon, Stone Sour, Apocalyptica...

good article on rock not being dead:

 

So claims the latest report that sees rock records sink to their lowest representation in the singles chart ever and the ‘head of music’ at Radio One say that no great rock records are getting made these days and ‘pop professor’ Paul Gambaccini claim that rock has become a dead genre like jazz.This, it has to be said is about the thinnest possible evidence of a genre’s demise you could gather.

 

I mean who actually cares about the singles chart in the 21st century? You can get a No1 single by selling less than a metal band would draw to one stadium gig in the UK. If anything is dead, it is the singles chart.

In the fast forward rush of multi cultures and internet file sharing and youtube and spotify and a thousand ways of accessing music does the singles chart actually mean anything? is it a barometer of what’s going on like it was once?

Is it f***.

 

Or is a place for Major labels to hype their safe acts and celebrity novelty hits and ‘best ever selling single of all time’ X Factor chancers to no-one apart from autistic males who care about numbers and no-one else? Does anyone in the whole world care what number 18 in the single charts is this week? Can anyone name all the X factor ‘stars’ who have number one ‘smashes’. Can these ‘stars’ sell anything now apart from burgers at Muckdonalds?

Does rock need to be in the singles chart to prove itself?

Rock music has always been pushed to the side by the record labels and the music industry- we all know they prefer their music far less spiky and the same goes for ‘wonderful’ Radio One- that in its mainstream form still plays anti-rock music.

I’m fine with them and their pop agenda- there are some great pop records-I’m bored of their obsession with Cowell pop though and it been given 99 per cent of media time and the other one per cent to Jools Holland and his damn piano- another show that goes nowhere near anything loud.

I’m bored of this endless editing of what goes on.

How come a band like Rammstein can sell out the arena in Manchester (20 000) people and not get played anywhere on the radio- selling out an arena is an act of a popular band- that’s pop and that should be recognised by the BBC- a public service.

But, of course, they know better and they stick rigidly to their Cowell pop agenda and on the fringes white boy indie rules the roost- ok as a genre as well but rock is forced onto the fringes- do you hear any Scandinavian black metal? Nope- a hugely popular form of music across the world that never gets any mainstream attention. That’s just one corner of the rock empire that carries on ignoring the self-congratulating music mainstream. Even today Kerrang is still the best selling music weekly in the world and Metal hammer is one of the very few music papers that’s circulation increases.

The mainstream media pulls silly faces and acts zany and acts like its got something to do with music but it’s still populated by grinning buffoons and musical conservatives who are STILL scared of guitars turned up above 2/10 because it’s the sound of sex. They still play what they are told to by market researchers. They have the fear.

So Absolute Radio COO, Clive Dickens, told Music Week that guitar-based music was “in a real lull” in 2010 and George Ergatoudis, head of music at Radio 1, said “brilliant” rock songs were rare- someone from Radio 1 thinks rock is dead.

So what?

Radio One has never played rock music. It’s been terrified of anything that is loud and thrilling since the BBC created it to crush the pirates in the sixties. Of course they play fringe music in the evenings and they have loads of great DJ’s doing it pushed away when only the fanatics care. Daytime radio one has been an endless pitiless trough of inanity and always will be.

To be honest neither of these aforementioned heads of music are much to do with music. They hold all the power and have none of the interest. They wouldn’t know what a great rock song is.

You have a huge genre of music with its own infrastructure cut adrift from the cosy world of mainstream media, a mainstream media obsessed with celebrity.

How could it possibly understand what rock music was, how could they tell a good rock record from a bad rock record. They sit there in their ivory towers overlooking London pontificating about music occasionally then it’s back to the rounds of award ceremonies etc. They don’t live in the music world.

Rock is perfectly fine.

It exists in a huge cutting edge form well away from ‘wonderful’ Radio One and the hot top twenty countdown that no-one gives a toss about.

 

It can be Shellac recent astonishing gigs in the UK or Sunn O))) deconstructing music yet again and creating a new cutting edge. It can by AC/DC with the second best selling album of all time or it can be an endlessly noisy and huge sprawling underground world from punk to death metal. It never needed the charts- it was about music and community and not about being number 7.

 

http://louderthanwar.com/featured/rock-is-dead-or-is-it

With all due respect to Rammstein, they did have four top 40 hits at the start of the decade. Whilst I doubt getting played on the Radio 1 chart countdown four times is enough to get itself such a hugh following to play to 20,000 people, I'm sure it helped.

Rocksound magazine did a retort to it as well, geared towards the bands they highlight but it's the same sort of thing as the other article

 

http://www.rocksound.tv/features/article/i...and-utter-moron

 

The Guardian article will be changed next year if "rock" bands such as Coldplay or U2 have big selling albums this year, not that I'd really class them as rock but I'm sure the media would paint them as that

good article on rock not being dead:

 

So claims the latest report that sees rock records sink to their lowest representation in the singles chart ever and the ‘head of music’ at Radio One say that no great rock records are getting made these days and ‘pop professor’ Paul Gambaccini claim that rock has become a dead genre like jazz.This, it has to be said is about the thinnest possible evidence of a genre’s demise you could gather.

 

I mean who actually cares about the singles chart in the 21st century? You can get a No1 single by selling less than a metal band would draw to one stadium gig in the UK. If anything is dead, it is the singles chart.

In the fast forward rush of multi cultures and internet file sharing and youtube and spotify and a thousand ways of accessing music does the singles chart actually mean anything? is it a barometer of what’s going on like it was once?

Is it f***.

 

Or is a place for Major labels to hype their safe acts and celebrity novelty hits and ‘best ever selling single of all time’ X Factor chancers to no-one apart from autistic males who care about numbers and no-one else? Does anyone in the whole world care what number 18 in the single charts is this week? Can anyone name all the X factor ‘stars’ who have number one ‘smashes’. Can these ‘stars’ sell anything now apart from burgers at Muckdonalds?

Does rock need to be in the singles chart to prove itself?

Rock music has always been pushed to the side by the record labels and the music industry- we all know they prefer their music far less spiky and the same goes for ‘wonderful’ Radio One- that in its mainstream form still plays anti-rock music.

I’m fine with them and their pop agenda- there are some great pop records-I’m bored of their obsession with Cowell pop though and it been given 99 per cent of media time and the other one per cent to Jools Holland and his damn piano- another show that goes nowhere near anything loud.

I’m bored of this endless editing of what goes on.

How come a band like Rammstein can sell out the arena in Manchester (20 000) people and not get played anywhere on the radio- selling out an arena is an act of a popular band- that’s pop and that should be recognised by the BBC- a public service.

But, of course, they know better and they stick rigidly to their Cowell pop agenda and on the fringes white boy indie rules the roost- ok as a genre as well but rock is forced onto the fringes- do you hear any Scandinavian black metal? Nope- a hugely popular form of music across the world that never gets any mainstream attention. That’s just one corner of the rock empire that carries on ignoring the self-congratulating music mainstream. Even today Kerrang is still the best selling music weekly in the world and Metal hammer is one of the very few music papers that’s circulation increases.

The mainstream media pulls silly faces and acts zany and acts like its got something to do with music but it’s still populated by grinning buffoons and musical conservatives who are STILL scared of guitars turned up above 2/10 because it’s the sound of sex. They still play what they are told to by market researchers. They have the fear.

So Absolute Radio COO, Clive Dickens, told Music Week that guitar-based music was “in a real lull” in 2010 and George Ergatoudis, head of music at Radio 1, said “brilliant” rock songs were rare- someone from Radio 1 thinks rock is dead.

So what?

Radio One has never played rock music. It’s been terrified of anything that is loud and thrilling since the BBC created it to crush the pirates in the sixties. Of course they play fringe music in the evenings and they have loads of great DJ’s doing it pushed away when only the fanatics care. Daytime radio one has been an endless pitiless trough of inanity and always will be.

To be honest neither of these aforementioned heads of music are much to do with music. They hold all the power and have none of the interest. They wouldn’t know what a great rock song is.

You have a huge genre of music with its own infrastructure cut adrift from the cosy world of mainstream media, a mainstream media obsessed with celebrity.

How could it possibly understand what rock music was, how could they tell a good rock record from a bad rock record. They sit there in their ivory towers overlooking London pontificating about music occasionally then it’s back to the rounds of award ceremonies etc. They don’t live in the music world.

Rock is perfectly fine.

It exists in a huge cutting edge form well away from ‘wonderful’ Radio One and the hot top twenty countdown that no-one gives a toss about.

 

It can be Shellac recent astonishing gigs in the UK or Sunn O))) deconstructing music yet again and creating a new cutting edge. It can by AC/DC with the second best selling album of all time or it can be an endlessly noisy and huge sprawling underground world from punk to death metal. It never needed the charts- it was about music and community and not about being number 7.

 

http://louderthanwar.com/featured/rock-is-dead-or-is-it

 

It's a good argument, although it still pains me to see hardworking rock bands not rewarded by success on the singles chart that their predecessors achieved less than a decade ago. Rock music's main stronghold is the live circuit, in the same way that pop music's stronghold is daytime radio. It's difficult to use the argument that no one wants to see certain pop acts perform live without accepting that, even if Radio 1 did play a healthy amount of rock/punk/metal during the day, the majority of listeners wouldn't be especially interested.

 

I don't buy that there's a lack of good rock music out there - what there is a lack of is a new band with mainstream potential that can genuinely provide a breakthrough. No matter how good Avenged Sevenfold/Rammstein/Disturbed get, they don't have the ability to sell records in the same way that a band the 2011 equivalent of Nirvana/Oasis/The Strokes could. When there is a new breakthrough, the floodgates will open.

I don't buy that there's a lack of good rock music out there - what there is a lack of is a new band with mainstream potential that can genuinely provide a breakthrough. No matter how good Avenged Sevenfold/Rammstein/Disturbed get, they don't have the ability to sell records in the same way that a band the 2011 equivalent of Nirvana/Oasis/The Strokes could. When there is a new breakthrough, the floodgates will open.

 

At the same time though, music has changed. Just like no pop act will ever sell as many albums as Thriller, I don't believe we will ever see a new rock/metal act that sells as many albums as Metallica, Iron Maiden and AC/DC have. Music just doesn't sell like that anymore.

 

But I do truly believe in the years to come that we will see Avenged Sevenfold and Bullet For My Valentine making huge progress in terms of popularity. Slipknot as well.

Edited January 12, 201114 yr by ags_rule