Are bands really disappearing or is it a myth?

Far Out Magazine ^ | February 25, 2025 | Tom Phelan

[DoodleBob]

Despite the ‘album era’ fast approaching its approximate 60th anniversary, the lauded rock heritage that deified stadium monsters such as Led Zeppelin or The Rolling Stones as the paragons of musical achievement and authentic expression still looms over a pop climate that’s undergone seismic creative and social shifts across the last half-century. It won’t be too long before the cultural totems that still command such collective veneration, rock and roll, Woodstock, and AOR, will all cease to be living memories sooner than you think.

With Rolling Stone‘s ‘rockist’ residue still colouring many muso’s quality metrics and indication of a healthy music climate, the stats collated on the absence of bands from the contemporary charts by TV personality Richard Osman triggered much online debate. Speaking on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast with Marina Hyde last year, Osman revealed that in the first half of the 1980s, there were 146 weeks where bands were number one, with 141 weeks for the first half of the ’90s. Jump to the 2020s, and the number drops to three, one from Little Mix, another from The Beatles’ AI-drossed ‘Now and Then’, and BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge Allstars take on Foo Fighters’ ‘Times Like These’.

On the face of it, it’s all fairly humdrum, and tempting to lapse into curmudgeonly deadends lambasting the supposed artistic degradation of Gen Z and well-trodden theories on an increasingly hyper-individualist fracturing of broader pop culture in the TikTok age.

While there are grains of truth to such talking points and legitimate discussions to be had about risk-averse corporate labels favouring easily marketable solo stars over the complex bag of characters that make up a band, such critique can often feel like ruses to merely attack a youth culture whose trends and expressions alienate one’s rock puritanism, a typical lashing out when the pangs of old age irrelevancy start to rear its head.

The digital age has fundamentally freed up scores of budding artists to create their art without the need for studio time and multiple collaborators, production software and Digital Audio Workstations offering a platform for music-makers to record and release an album entirely in one’s bedroom, handling all promotion and marketing with savvy social media knack as well as send over stems and audio files anywhere in the world for mixing and mastering. Economic pressures, too, have forced artists to go it alone, the dismal revenues made from streaming and loss-incurring tours simply unviable to split across multiple parties.

But the concern for bands ‘disappearing’ only holds water if your search for such artists is as deep as who’s currently in the top ten. At the time of writing on a drizzly morning, tonight Italian kosmiche conjurers Traum are playing Dalston’s The Shacklewell Arms, Million Moons are showering New Cross Inn with their gargantuan industrial post-rock, and Fabric will be host to Decius’ squalid electronics. Beyond London, antipop metallers Gürl will be taking over Bristol’s Exchange, and Newcastle’s The Cluny will witness Renegade Brass Band’s 12-piece fusion of jazz, hip-hop and funk.

Bands are very much alive. Never mind the success of The 1975, The Last Dinner Party, Fontaines DC, and Kneecap bringing back the hip-hop group, but on a grassroots level, there’s a myriad of bands playing some of the most vital music you’ll ever hear.

The stale ‘only bands are good’ prism should die a death, fantastic and innovative art is being forged that will look and sound contrary to the rock monoliths that still serve as eternal barometers of artfulness but, buried beneath homogeneous algorithms and lazy radio curations, a thriving eco-system of bands are cutting essential soundtracks to the febrile contemporary alongside all manner of differing art ensembles and collectives. Let’s celebrate the continued shine of the band, but let’s finally shake off the notion that exciting music must conventionally look like one.

[Norski]

AI or not?

“My Parole Officer Is The AntiChrist!”

70s Funk 3:02

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O5fFGBfsXs&list=RD3O5fFGBfsXs&start_radio=1

[ifinnegan]

This is pretty much incoherent writing.

[ifinnegan]

“ Well respected music expert Rick Beato did a video on the disappearance of “bands”. It happened in the early 2000s, when the number of bands on the charts dropped from nearly 150 to 3.”

This word salad actually does say this but not much else.

[minnesota_bound]

Only 6 companies control 90% of what we see and hear.
Very few people determine what gets on tv and on the radio and big websites. You really think Taylor Swift would have been a thing in the 50’s thru the 90’s? It is all marketing now with the least talented in many cases as far as music is concern. We also see how bad the tv shows and movies have gotten too. Now throw in the AI music wave a’coming.

Rick Beato
4.97M subscribers
Why Are Bands Mysteriously Disappearing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_DjmtR0Xls

[FLT-bird]

Bands are disappearing? How about Rock? Rock seems to have disappeared about 20-25 years ago. I’d like for Rock to show up again.

[FLT-bird]

Who listens to any classical music that was composed in the last 100 years?

Aside from obvious answers like Shostakovich, I'd point out that movies and TV shows are loaded with recently written classical music scores.

It’s virtually impossible at this point to do anything with rock music that hasn’t already been done.

Oh I disagree with that. There is infinite variation. Saying there's no more room for anything really new is like the guy who said we should shut down the patent office at the turn of the 20th century because everything had already been invented.

[Huskrrrr]

Rock’s older brother the Blues is still going strong.

[equaviator]

I’m still discovering music from bygone eras and finding songs on YT that I couldn’t remember the titles of, names of bands or artists. I tend to hear a song and after a while, I might look into the albums and try to find any live material. It’s getting to be a regular hobby of mine. For example, I found these two just last month:

AIR- Kelly Watch The Stars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3I8KZ5uPu4

Lawne- Mamasong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2gqmwFGwb8

[Sirius Lee]

Who listens to any classical music that was composed in the last 100 years?

I do. All the time.

[MayflowerMadam]

There are bands now?
(There are singers now?)

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Wouldn’t it be cool if big horn bands made a comeback?

The Joey Thomas Band is quite good. They've been going strong for a good while...since 1992 I think. (Strongly anti-Biden BTW)

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

"EEEEEEE....drop?"

[DouglasKC]

Mark for later

[drwoof]

Yep, it’s ‘AI’; not composed or performed by humans.

[plain talk]

Yep. DJs (real person or not) with hologram creating virtual bands that play AI original music and covers. Wedding receptions are already low hanging fruit for DJ style entertainment.

There will be interest in real musicians and their performances like we still enjoy orchestras but it will continue to become more rare.

[dfwgator]

Now everybody listens to different music. When we grew up, everybody pretty much just listened to what was on the radio. So we all knew the same songs and the same bands.

In high school, on Mondays everybody was wearing the T-Shirt of the band that played that weekend.

[packrat35]

I am a fan of The Warning. Three sisters from Mexico that can really rock and their songs are all in english.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Pxe9KTgJc

[packrat35]

Music companies like to work with only one person instead of a group. Music companies are stupid, but who already did not know that..

[USAF1985]

Just turned 60, and I’ve been listening to all different kinds of music and bands over the years. Everything from Fleetwood Mac, to Enya to Mike Oldfield...you get the idea. I’m not adverse to some of the music over the last few years either. My particular current favorite is M83:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg_CMA5QSb0

Just watched The Warning (excellent - will listen to more of them), and Wolfclub (Tears). The only bad music is Rap...

[packrat35]

Check out The Warnings cover to Sandman when they were children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1boUYB9LFJY

Then their reimagined version over 10 years later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-stoqv5W8RM