Mar 22, 2016
Odds are, most of us don’t have the guts to declare the impending death of a musical genre. I mean, that’s a heavy claim to stand by. But then again most of us aren’t the bold Courtney Love.
In an interview with Dazed, the rock star herself claimed rock and roll is “pretty much close to dead.” The reason being that the modern genre hasn’t been able to reach audiences at a resonating level. But the question is: can anything be done to save rock and roll? According to Love, unless the next Nirvana or Oasis emerges into the industry, it’s done for good.
“Rock and roll is pretty much close to dead, unless there’s some great savior art direction, unless there’s a new Oasis or Nirvana and people buy into that and it gets as big as Kanye is.”
The Hole singer elaborated: “It’s gotta be innovative, it’s gotta touch that many lives and kids, millennials, have all been raised, with very few exceptions, on rap and so I don’t know if they’d recognize (rock and roll) even if they heard it. When we were growing up they’d say ‘oh, Dylan couldn’t get signed today’, 20 years ago people were saying that, so I don’t know, I don’t know if it could get recognized today. Do you think it could get recognized? I don’t know… A lot of millennials don’t know who Patti Smith is, it’s crazy! It’s weird.”
Love continued on to discuss double standards in the music industry, making successful females musicians a rarity, and specifically female rockstars as an even greater rarity: "There’s maybe 30 (female stars) if you count pop stars. Think about that, on the planet. Rockstars, I don’t know, I’ve never really sat down and counted female rock stars. There’s a few, there’s 10… 15… but throw a TV out on the balcony, the same stuff that Keith Richards did, the same stuff Jim Morrison did, the same things that Bono did – that we all forgot about – yeah, I think I get judged by a double standard a lot, but that’s just the way it is."
Courtney Love isn’t the only artist to make a prediction of this sort. Just last week KISS frontman Gene Simmon’s claimed "rap will die" ..It seems to be that the new job linked with being a musician is now also being a psychic – particularly in foreseeing genres that are borderline extinct.
Image: ConsequenceOfSound