Rock's in a hard place Tuesday, February 1st, 2005
Is rock dead?
Not quite. But judging from its performance on the charts - and compared to its biggest bands and trends from a few years ago - it's wheezing.
Cast your eye down 2004's Top 10-selling album list and you won't see a single new rock band. The sole hard guitar group is Evanescence - a holdover from 2003. The nearest thing to a new guitar band is Maroon 5, which didn't make it on a rock song but on a soul single, "This Love," and a billowing pop ballad, "She Will Be Loved."
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Broaden your view to the year's Top 20 sellers and you'll find just one other rocker - and an aging one at that - Prince, who gave away enough copies of his "Musicology" to place it 18th in 2004.
Rap, meanwhile, racked up five albums in the Top 20.
R&B landed the No. 1 slot with Usher's "Confessions," which outsold the No. 2 entry, from Norah Jones, by more than 2 to 1.
Rap and country were both able to launch huge new stars. Kanye West and Gretchen Wilson each sold between 2.5 and 3 million copies of their debuts.
Only one breaking rock act, Hoobastank, cracked the 2 million mark, and by the skin of its teeth. And the Hoobsters managed that feat only by crossing over with an adult pop single, "The Reason." Considering that "The Reason" was the second-most-played number on radio last year (after Usher's "Yeah!"), Hoobastank's album should have sold many more copies.
When rock was more muscular - during the eras of grunge (mid-'90s), punk-pop (late '90s) and rap-metal (turn-of-the-century) - no such tepid pop crossover was even necessary.
What rock lacks these days is a newer band as humongous as Korn, Limp Bizkit, Metallica, Nickelback, Staind, Blink 182, Linkin Park, Coldplay or Creed - not to mention the super-power-hitters of grunge, like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden.
Each of those groups sold between 3 million and 10 million copies of their prime CDs.
Compare that to the typical sales of today's biggest new rock bands. Los Lonely Boys, Velvet Revolver, Switchfoot, Modest Mouse, Jet and Yellowcard have all sold fewer than 2 million albums. Another of the top rock albums of the last year, Guns N' Roses' "Greatest Hits," harkens back to past guitar glories.
The new rock groups who've gotten the most press lately have likewise yet to sell in star numbers.
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The Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Interpol and The Rapture, represent the rock trend of the moment - neo-'80s alterna-rock. But the biggest of those bands (Killers and Franz) have yet to go platinum after a year of sales. That means fewer than a million copies.
The lesser groups (Interpol and The Rapture) haven't even sold enough records to go gold between them. That's a total of fewer than 500,000 copies.
The neo-'80s trend follows a previous rock movement that fizzled - garage rock. The only major act to arise from that trend was the White Stripes. Their main competition, The Strokes, ran out of steam by album No. 2, while other heavily hyped contenders, like The Hives, faded completely.
Some other rock bands who've been positioned as "the next big thing" likewise haven't lived up to their hype.
The Darkness got as much ink as Paris Hilton in the last year. But their album barely snuck past gold. Alter Bridge, which comprises the musicians from the defunct band Creed, didn't even crack sales of 300,000 with their debut.
At the moment, the top-selling guitar acts - Green Day and U2 - have been around for 15 and 25 years, respectively.
Linkin Park is the only rock-rap group to continue to sell in multiplatinum numbers. And they may have needed the input of Jay-Z's extra rapping on their recent mash-up CD, "Collision Course," to sustain that.
What rock would need to reclaim its primacy isn't a band with a huge pop hit (like Hoobastank or Maroon5), but a real, grassroots movement with its own sound and philosophy - like grunge.
Some observers thought emo might be that movement, with its growing cult stars, Death Cab For Cutie, Dashboard Confessional and Bright Eyes. But those groups have sold only in the several hundred thousand range so far.
And to sell, they've softened their sound, not hardened it. Which means whoever or whatever revives rock's prominence is nowhere in sight.
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