comcast.net Music: JT Ramsay: Is the Rock Star Dead?:
The days of major labels turning ordinary people into rock stars is over. There will be pop hits here and there, but chances are you’ll never see someone reach the heights of (sustainable) fame in the manner that artists as disparate as Guns ‘N Roses and Britney Spears enjoyed again. You could blame Britney and Miley, but we’ve always had pop stars. We could just as soon blame Frankie Avalon!
But that’s not just because of the major label’s money woes. It’s that major music media just keeps disappearing, whether it’s in print or on television. It seems much tougher for stars to create myths about themselves at a time when we know even the most minute details about them, whether it’s through outlets like TMZ.com, or from the star’s themselves (or their ghost-tweeters) via Twitter.
This is a great topic to discuss Karl.
I am not sure I agree 100% with why you think the Rock Star is dead. I agree with some of the things you are saying as far as the change in how we preceive and even now interact with artists, but I think there is a much simpler reason the rock star is dead – The music of today simply sucks. When the biggest current names in rock are Nickleback, which i admit I like a couple of thier songs, and they are talented, I just don’t hear the same dedication and soul in thier music, instead I hear their talent being dictated and modified to what the lables think that will seel now and fast. Music being produced these days is not meant for longevity. Honestly, what song that has been produced in the last decade can anyone really say will still have the same airplay, envoke the same feelings and be talked about 20 or 30 years from now like songs like Welcome to the Jungle, Highway to Hell, Black Dog, etc.? I think the rock star is dead because there is no real rock left.
steveb – i would disagree that there is no real rock anymore. It all depends upon what is shoveled out on the radio and media networks.
I want my MTV! Or at least the version of the station that actually promoted bands by playing their videos 24 hours a day. Or the station that had 120 minutes of alternative videos. No today they would rather put on Ozzie Osbourn making an ass of himself, Real World 37, or one of the 87 half hour dating shows they air. Rock is dying because the media is choosing to kill it.
But I would hold hope, because these things are cyclical, and we will always need music.
The challeneg still stands, show me anything in the past 15 years that will still have the same type of airplay as the aforemention bands in my previous post.
Just a thought in terms of great rock –
Green Day’s entire American Idiot album. I’m sure I can come up with others.
In fact, I’d argue that there is a lot of great music “out there” now. Just not presented and sold to us the way it used to be because there is less shared media experience. We’re fragmented. Without a real mass music media – you can’t have the ‘rock star’.
The irony is that rock stardom *required* a media that enabled few voices to reach many, many people. Without that – the ‘rock star’ can’t exist.
But there is plenty of rock. Yes indeed.
I wish I could agree 100% with you. I just can’t because I am not hearing anything today or in the past 10 – 15 years that really just grabs ahold like def leppard, bon jovi, GnR, Metallica of old, etc. all did. I think the product sells itself and although this media that you speak of really has diluted into something else, I still think if you had music that hada sound, a messaage, and just that ‘thing’ that makes it great, that “rock star” would still exist.
“Wait till they get a load of me.” – the Joker