There are some very good tracks on the new Kings of Leon album (When You See Yourself). Golden Restless Age is an example. The band specifically said they just wanted to write good music and didn’t care if it had any “hits.”
I’m sure their record company was thrilled, but honestly, if Sex on Fire came out right now, I doubt it’d be in the Billboard Top 100. Rock is now a sub-genre, like metal or prog rock. As silly as the 80’s were, you could see a country song, a metal song, a rock song, and a pop song, AND a rap, all in the same Top 40 list. These days you’re not making the Top 40 unless you have a name like “da T-Dolla$”. And “Alternative” music radio is where you go if you want to hear real drums and guitar again. Or mostly real.
And all of this is perfectly natural. The Top 100 is basically a list of what some people who are between 13 through 28 are listening to. There are of course people over 28 who listen to the Top 100, but the main demographic is young people. But artists from the 80s like Bon Jovi can still sell out a stadium.
There was a big hubbub a few years ago when some paper like Wapo published an article about how the guitar was dead, because the Top 100 had little to no guitar in it. They got it half right and half wrong. The guitar is not the center of Top 100 now. Not sure if it will be again. But there are millions of people who couldn’t, right now, name one song from the Top 100. It is no longer a “universal” thing – the Internet has made it almost irrelevant. My kids are between 18 and 22 – they don’t listen to Top 100.
I do wish modern radio wasn’t still acting like it was 1952. I think we still have modern radio because we don’t all have unlimited data on our smart phones. Once everyone has unlimited Internet access, how will radio survive? I won’t miss the commercials, the smug DJs, the talking over song intros or endings. But some DJs were awesome people who turned us on to cool music. I will miss those DJs. But maybe they won’t be gone. Maybe they’ll be on “Internet Radio.” Maybe they’re already there. Dammit, where’s my unlimited data plan?
