An Analysis of Fifty Seven Years Of Pop Chart History Shows The Decline Of Rock ‘N’ Roll
A Provoking & Insightful Video By David Bennett
Led Zeppelin on stage circa 1970. photographer: unknown
Normally we don’t repeat opinions or commentary of other people or websites. But on a rare occasion we’ll stumble upon an argument made elsewhere that has merit and should be shared with a wider audience.
That is the case with David Bennett, a young musician who analytically examined the decline of rock ‘n’ roll over the last 60 years.
According to Bennett rock music disappeared in 2010 and possibly will never return, at least to the pop charts. The short entertaining video of when and why rock disappeared from the mainstream, is worth a few minutes of any rock fan’s time.
Here is Bennett’s theory.
As pointed out before, David Bennett is an extremely gifted musician, so he’s not just another numbskull spouting an opinion on YouTube. Here is a link to his other videos. If you watch any, I believe you will be impressed.
Barring Greta Van Fleet, Royal Blood and some other youthful lads willing to try and resurrect rock n’ roll to the youth, we may never see a REAL rock song hit the top of the charts ever again.
As the Who’s brilliant lyricist and guitarist Pete Townsend wrote in 1973’s Long Live Rock – “Rock is Dead.”
Finally as a commentator said about the Long Live Rock video and song, “should be REQUIRED listening for all teenagers today. There’s absolutely NO excuse for what exists as pop music today.”
Agreed.
While I agree overall with his thesis, I would add that every generation believes their music (and culture) was the best. I can’t stand today’s top 40, just as today’s fans will hate top 40 two decades from now. We’re not the target audience, as my parents weren’t in “my time”. The trick is to explore the sidelines of pop music to find what we consider the good stuff. It’s out there; just takes some digging.