Arctic Monkeys were awarded the MasterCard Album of the Year at the BRITs in 2014. On stage, lead singer Alex Turner took the mic without missing a beat, and starting raving about the immortality of their genre – rock & roll. 

“That rock and roll, eh. It just won’t go away. It may hibernate from time to time, sink back into the swamp, but it’s always waiting there, around the corner,” Alex said. 

“Ready to make its way back through the sludge. And smash through the glass ceiling, looking better than ever,” he continued. 

Cut to less than ten years later, it does seem like rock & roll has died. It feels like it barely even existed. It has been unable to compete with modern music – or Instagram music, to be specific. 

The nature of Instagram reels or TikToks require little to no attention span, which essentially means one catchy chorus in an otherwise dull four-minute song could potentially, financially set you for life. Enough people catch on to a reel trend, and a song is bound to blow up on other streaming platforms, too. 

Music no longer requires years of training, or an intricate knowledge of melody, beats, or instruments. Anyone with a mic and Logic Pro on their laptop could potentially create a song that will dominate your social media till the end of the month. And while the accessibility of music is certainly a plus point, one cannot help but think that it is becoming more repetitive than ever before. Independent music has taken a turn for the worse, with the goal to create inarguably the most famous art form on the planet narrowed down to blowing up on social media. Therefore, listeners, too, are settling for less. 

Lyrically, too, music has become rather mundane. Apart from hip-hop, no other genre talks about socio-cultural issues in society anymore. Even hip-hop and rap are being narrowed down to the same patterns and structures – hooks are getting longer, and easier while, verses and bridges shorter. Easy to remember, non-controversial lyrics are more likely to get you to the desired destination – viral land. It has also narrowed down the sheer quantity of genres at offer at this point. Since pop music is the easiest to produce, at least independently, it dominates the charts easily, reaches the masses, and also garners awards in the process. Further, the ability to recreate instruments on a digital platform has essentially killed rock and jazz. 

Not to forget, the popularity of this type of music also takes away the soul of live music – in whichever genre. Recently, for example, Steve Lacy’s live performance caught fire on social media when the crowd did not know the lyrics to his song ‘Bad Habits’ after the hook (“I wish I knew you wanted me”) and went silent after singing the chorus. Lacy gave the crowd another attempt, asking them why they did not sing the next verse, but his efforts were in vain. It really makes me think whether these people chose to attend Steve Lacy’s live performance – often the biggest high an artist receives – just for one hook. Not only is it embarrassing for the fans, but it would be utterly humiliating for the artist himself. 

this is ridiculous shdjsjjsj pic.twitter.com/eec0RNEUPz

— j a d a (@jadawadas) October 17, 2022

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“Yeah, that rock and roll. It seems like it is fading away sometimes, but it will never die.”

We hope so, too, Alex. Rock and roll has to return to save music, to save art.