What Rock Music Needs

[Class-Punk]

I love Rock and Roll. And the rockstar at its best has usually been a representation of societal disillusionment. But after early 2000's rock, more and more I find myself hating rockstars and the whole rockstar mentality. Its never been more Mainstream than it is now, and its never felt more like its trying too hard to be masculine. No matter how many fans a musician has, I will not respect them if I don't like their music.

I don't need to listen to aggressive music all the time because its more "manly" not having anything to prove. The guy who only listens to Metal or Gangsta rap is a typical example of this. There are a lot of bodybuilders who ironically listen to Pop music or Trance while lifting, even Henry Rollins admitted to listening to love songs in the gym. Having complex emotions used to be a requirement for making good music.

I had an interesting conversation about how the best music has lyrics balanced between social relevance and interesting abstraction. We were talking about how Marilyn Manson doesn't really have any social relevance left, which I attributed to the internet uprising of Atheism because the hook of his music was usually anti-religious; but now I would add that the social conditioning of internet culture probably hurt shock rock.

I don't care if there's sexism in music as long as it serves good wit, probably in an abstract context; but I honestly can't think of any examples. This would go along with general black humor used in the context of abstraction. As much as I dislike a lot of Indie love songs, I don't appreciate the misogyny in heavier music either, which goes back to trying to prove gender over social relevance.

Ultimately, what I want to hear in the lyrics of any genre is interesting abstraction that tells a story and/or raw, hard-hitting, time-stopping social relevance.

Edited February 3, 2013 by Class-Punk