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26.01.2012

Is rock’n'roll dead?

rock

Lately, an alarming rumour has been going about the Web: during 2011, rock’n’roll sales have …

Lately, an alarming rumour has been going about the Web: during 2011, rock’n'roll sales have been the lowest in the last eight years.

 

For confirmation, just take a look at the British top ten chart for 2011: the best selling albums are those by pop and r’n’b artists such as Adele, Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Michael Bublé, while only a couple of entries can be labeled as “rock”: Coldplay e Ed Sheeran.

 

Unfortunately, 2011 is not the first difficult year for rock’n'roll lovers – apparently, this is already a settled trend, to the point that Q magazine recently asked its readers: “Has there ever been a worse musical climate to be a guitar band in Britain?”

 

If you think about it, since the beginning of the new millennium – when The Strokes and Muse managed to meet with huge success – not a single rock band has attracted such big audiences or made it to the stadiums.

During the last five years, Coldplay have been the only rock band to compete with their pop and new soul rivals in the fight for the top positions in the Brtish charts.

 

Yet, apart from the low sales (which are not too vital in a market where the number of YouTube clicks counts more than iTunes sales), what’s even more frightening is the scarce success of the new generation of rock and indie artists.

 

In other words, no big names in sight. Which explains why the new rock bands are having such a hard time finding some space and visibility: contrary to what happened in the Nineties thanks to bands like Nirvana and Radiohead, there are currently no great bands able to dive and lead them from the underground into the mainstream.

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