It’s December and thanks to bloggers and the free subscription my mother has somehow ended up getting from Rolling Stone, I’ve been looking over what I’ve missed this year on the annual “best of the year” lists.
Since ROCKRGRL’s demise at the end of ’05, I work at home and have musically become a bit of a hermit. I thought that maybe perusing these “best of” lists from friends and colleagues in-the-know would introduce me to music I might have missed and enlighten me to what’s going on outside the wheels in my head.
Anyhow, I’m looking at all these lists from all these people with very eclectic tastes and can’t help thinking: What happened to the rock? You know, the stuff that has been horrifying parents for generations.
Duffy and Fleet Foxes and Coldplay are fine, I guess, but their music has all the angst of a lullaby. Did angst go out of style when I wasn’t looking? How can this qualify as rock?
The current crop of buzz bands sound like rejects from the Lilith Fair tour. And I’m talking about the guys. Everything sounds like Jewel circa 1994. (And I hate Jewel.)
I know I risk sounding like one of those doddering elderly people waxing nostalgic about the good old days. Fair enough. But what I’ve always loved about rock is the raw power and emotion behind it. I need edge. And I don’t mean the guy from U2.
I just can’t believe that with the internet offering a world of variety, the baby-voiced singers on iPod commercials and television processed American Cheese Idols are the best we’ve got.
All I want is one artist, one song, that will make me excited about listening to music again. Despite her demons, Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black is the last album that really did it for me. And I love Adele’s “Cold Shoulder” (produced by Winehouse’s producer, Mark Ronson) but the rest of the album is just sort of…eh.
So please, tastemakers, just find me the one artist that I will still love ten years from now. That’s all I ask. In the meantime, I think I’ll go back to my regularly scheduled hibernation until it’s safe to scare my parents again. Especially since Rolling Stone is after my mom to subscribe.
Carla Desantis is the former editor of ROCKRGRL.
