‘Rock and Roll Ain’t What It Used to Be’
Close your eyes and think about what rock and roll looks like. Do you see a gang of comrades wielding and/or destroying instruments onstage? Do you see Mick and Keef, or Buckingham and Nicks, or all of the Blink-182 boys acting simultaneously like friends, siblings, colleagues, and rivals? This image is, by some measures, old-fashioned—in rock and other genres, bands are no longer prime.
For example: If you scanned the highest reaches of Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart last week, you’d find many solo artists going by their birth name (Steve Lacy, Zach Bryan) or TikTok-friendly alias (d4vd, dazy). Not until spot No. 10 would you see an actual band (one whose heyday was long ago: Linkin Park). This week’s cross-genre Hot 100 chart is even starker—the highest placement by a band is at No. 50 (for a song that’s actually by two bands, Fuerza Regida and Grupo Frontera). Exceptions exist in many vibrant scenes, such as K-pop and the jam-band circuit. Yet even in indie rock, much of the buzz now goes to individuals.
The singer-songwriters Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus have all been recipients of such buzz. Over the past few years, each woman’s highly specific take on emotionally vulnerable guitar music has achieved fervent acclaim (plus moderate fame in the case of
