Did Rock Die with David Bowie?

Rock bands in today's music climate are a shadow of what the great bands in the 70's use to be. The musicianship is not at a high standard anymore because technology has made it easier to make music and you don't need to make as much of an effort as before. However I am not suggesting that music made by new technologies is crap but it isn’t hard to tell that we are happy to just accept mediocrity because music with integrity and authenticity has disappeared from the mainstream. Bowie’s music was mainstream but he never lost his authenticity and his death has left us thinking about great artists who really made music that was timeless and fearless.

Music festivals are also getting more predictable in their line-ups and to see interesting bands you have to dig deeper to find the real gems. In most parts of the western world audiences are craving for something exciting that has the same passion and rebelliousness as the bands from the 60's and 70's. That went away completely in the 80's but returned in the 90's for a short period of time and by the 00's it had become fairly underground. Rock in 2016 is considered by MTV a genre that is no longer relevant.

According to MTV and mainstream broadcasting rock is dead, I think this is not true its just now rock bands are no longer having the same success commercially because we already have over 50 years of rock music history and as a consequence bands are finding it harder to come up with something fresh. I think artist today can learn a lot from the older bands in terms of dedication to the craft of composing music, writing lyrics and playing your instrument well.

Today there is an opportunity to make music that is progressive in the truest sense of the word but only time will tell if artists can explore new musical idioms that have yet to be discovered. When you have great musicians using technology creatively then you can start to see a transformation not just in the technical side of production but also trying to creatively push music foreword just like the bands from the 60’s and 70’s and 90’s did. Artists today have to conform and fit within a specific genre but I think if bands start making music in a genre-less way of thinking then new hybrids can emerge and we will find much more interesting music in the future. All of my favorite artists have made music by this philosophy and instead of isolating audiences the hybrid way of making music embraces larger audiences.

Rock bands like Wolfmother for example have suffered from trying to sound too retro and perhaps if some of them started embracing new ideas maybe we would have bands coming out that sound fresher and make rock fans excited again. The music industry especially in rock music must avoid following the film industry that keeps rehashing old classics because they are too scared to come up with fresh and original material.

I am usually keeping an eye out for bands that I already like but I am also open to listening to some new stuff that is trying to push the envelope. There are many albums’ coming out in 2016 that I’m looking foreword to. David Bowie’s latest album Blackstar sounds fresh and exciting mixing rock and jazz with a pop sensibility. His imprint on music history is a reminder of how younger musicians should be making music at higher standard and demanding quality music to be played on radio and nightclubs. By the late 90’s Bowie also realized that the adoration for groups as the Beatles, The Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin had disappeared and the artist had now become a part of the audience rather than a kind of God above them, which was evident in other music genre’ such as Rave and Jungle music where the DJ is an equal member of the music community.

R.I.P David Bowie: