It can be fascinating to learn which bands from past decades were popular and/or critically acclaimed in their day but don’t exist in the world of classic rock radio (like The Move in the ‘60s, Poco in the ‘70s etc.).

And we all know the bands that would later define their respective decades on the radio (The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, U2, and Nirvana). That poses the question: which bands/artists will define the 2000s on classic rock stations in 2032? (Unless, of course, the Mayans and senile televangelists were correct. In which case, there will be few radio listeners left.)

To think of it a different way, in 20 years, which current bands will be essential listening for anyone who wants to understand (for lack of a better term) rock music from the early 2000s?

This question is possibly trickier now than any time in modern history. It’s always difficult to understand the future historical significance of something, be it a band or a technological development, while it’s still occurring. Nonetheless, you didn’t have to be a psychic in the ‘80s or ‘90s to know U2 and Nirvana would be remembered since their legendary status was instant and unmistakable.

But as Alan Cross wrote in a column in February, “the music industry has been lousy at creating new legendary acts over the last dozen years.”   The economic, technological, and sociological reasons for this could be the subject of a lengthy graduate thesis, so I’m going to skip them.

Instead, here are five bands/artists from the past 12 years that I believe will be considered essential listening for music history geeks in 2032. Keep in mind that I am only looking at rock/indie music of bands/artists who debuted in 2000 or later.

5 – Bon Iver – Of the five names on this list, Bon Iver is the most likely to make me say, What the hell was I thinking? when I have the clarity of hindsight in 2032. After all, the folk rock revival was alive and well in indie music long before Bon Iver arrived. Plus, Bright Eyes, Fleet Foxes, Grizzly Bear, Iron and Wine, and others all released fantastic, and arguably better, folk-tinged albums before or around the same time as Bon Iver’s 2008 debut For Emma, Forever Ago.

However, none of those groups were able to cross the indie/mainstream divide as successfully as Bon Iver did with its self-titled sophomore album in 2011.

When a band wins two Grammys and also receives the Album of the Year designation by self-appointed indie cred gatekeeper Pitchfork, you know it has achieved that ultra-rare feat of crossing over into the mainstream while remaining “cool.” And if the music isn’t remembered, those “Who is Bonny Bear?” tweets by confused Grammy watchers were too funny to forget.

4 – Arctic Monkeys – Many North Americans probably question the Arctic Monkeys’ inclusion on this list, but it’s hard to overstate this band’s significance in the U.K. over the past six years. They’re just the latest in a long line of British bands – such as The Smiths, The Stone Roses, and Oasis – that achieve massive popularity and critical acclaim in their homeland but never experience the same level of success in North America.

However, their post-punk riffs and Alex Turner’s uber-British lyricism made 2006’s Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not the fastest selling British debut album of all time. That album alone was enough for Britain’s NME Magazine to declare them Our Generation’s Most Important Band.

As well, their stunningly fast assent to stardom –the result of online file sharing and a fan-created MySpace page – has seen them called the first great musical success story of the Internet age. Though they may never recreate the mania that surrounded their debut, four albums in, an Arctic Monkeys’ release remains a cultural event in the U.K.

3 – Arcade Fire – Like the bands at number two and four on this list, Arcade Fire has released multiple critically acclaimed albums – and even received an Album of the Year Grammy for 2010’s The Suburbs – but their real significance lies in their debut album.

Funeral received rave reviews from just about every music publication on the planet and was in the top 10 of every “best of the 2000s” list during the 2009 rush to judge the past decade.

But ultimately the Montreal band has proven to be much more than just Funeral. Frankly, it’s near impossible to find a negative album or concert review of Arcade Fire. In just three albums, they’ve become indie rock royalty, celebrated for their epic anthems, daring instrumentation, and emotive lyrics.

2 – The Strokes – To even greater extent than either Arcade Fire or Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes’ legacy and significance is the result of a single brilliant album.

It’s easy to forget just how dismal the state of rock and roll was in 2001 when The Strokes released their debut album, Is This It? In North America, teen pop was king and Nu-metal morons Limp Bizkit were at their height. On the other side of the Atlantic, watered down Britpop leftovers, like Travis and  Starsailor, were all over the British airwaves.

It was a sad, sad time for popular music.  Amazingly, it took just one album, with a running time of only 35 minutes, by five cool-as-hell looking New Yorkers to herald a new era in rock and roll.

As The Guardian newspaper wrote in its own list of the decade’s best albums, “The impact of the first Strokes album was immediate and dramatic.”

Seemingly overnight, what was considered “cool” in rock music and fashion changed. As well, it usually takes at least a decade to witness a band’s influence on others, but groups such as Kings of Leon, The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, and Franz Ferdinand have all said that Is This It? was a major influence on them.

Three albums later it appears The Strokes will never live up to the expectations that Is This It? created. But they’ve already changed music once, which is far more than most bands can say.

1 – Jack White – Yes, I’m cheating a bit here because The White Stripes’ debut album was released in 1999 but I created the rules of this list and I can break them. Plus, it would criminal to exclude White from this list over a mere formality. If anyone can be considered a “rock icon” over the past 12 years, it’s White.

A complex musician and songwriter with a complex public persona and personality, White is incapable of being summed up in a paragraph or two.

He’s credited with reviving the blues in the popular consciousness yet collaborated with the Insane Clown Posse. He’s considered one of the greatest guitarists of his generation but plays drums in The Dead Weather. He says his bandmate is his sister when she’s actually his ex-wife. He takes his ex-wife’s last name (he was born John Gillis) but credits himself on albums as Jack White III.

It’s no wonder The New York Times labelled him the “coolest, weirdest, savviest rock star of our time.” Quite simply, there is no one more exciting in modern music than Jack White.

Image: The Strokes, courtesy of the artist. 

The post A wild guess at the musical future appeared first on Quip Magazine.

It’s an old lament, one that has been repeated ad nausea by online music writers since there was such a thing as “online music writers.” But what most of the writing on this topic points at, implicitly or explicitly, is that it’s radio’s job to play new music and break new bands. By not doing so, modern rock radio is not doing its job and is therefore letting down music fans.

Well, guess what, according to those in charge of music radio programming, it’s not radio’s job to play new music so we should all stop our whining. “It’s not radio’s job to break new music,” Dave Farough, Vice President, Brands and Programming for Corus Entertainment’s 37 commercial stations including 102.1 The Edge in Toronto, told Maclean’s magazine in a recent article about why indie music is currently being heard everywhere except on mainstream rock radio. He added, “In some cases, listeners want to hear new music. But in most cases they just want to hear what they like.”

Now, I was planning on writing about completely different topic when I plopped my laptop onto my lap to write this column but then I was distracted by this Maclean’s article via my usual morning visit to Alan Cross’ website. Farough’s comments boldly confirmed something I have long suspected but hadn’t heard anyone in a position of authority say outright. That new rock radio is no longer interested in, or even in the business of, playing music by new bands.

My first reaction was to think, What the hell does he mean ‘it’s not radio’s job to break new music’? After all, breaking new music has been the hallmark of rock radio since the format was invented, especially with the creation of pirate stations such as Radio Luxembourg in 1960s. For decades people turned to radio disc jockeys like Wolfman Jack and John Peel – whose personalities and musical tastes made them into celebrities in their own rights – to hear the best new music.

Of course, it’s been a long time – or maybe the Internet’s acceleration of pop culture just makes it seem like a long time, but that’s a whole other topic – since eager music fans needed radio to discover new music. There are now more websites and blogs dedicated to new music than any one person can keep track of and they exist alongside a growing number of internet radio stations and streaming services, which can be accessed anywhere you go via a smartphone.

Given that it’s now easier to hear new music than ever before, it’s a little silly to fret over the death of indie music on mainstream radio, unless you want to partake in some nostalgic wallowing.

That being said, while it may not be, and maybe never was the job of radio to break new music, it certainly held that role for a long time and has since gradually given it up. There are number of reasons for this including the decline of independent DJs, who are no longer free to play what they want but instead must select songs from an increasingly shorter pre-approved playlist, and the fact that more and more stations are owned by fewer and fewer companies, including Chorus Entertainment.

While appeasing the aging Gen X crowd by playing a ton of Nirvana, Foo Fighters, and Pearl Jam, along with Blind Melon’s one hit song, over and over may make short-term sense for rock radio, it could spell the end of rock radio in the long-term.

That’s because while radio is still a staggeringly popular medium, it’s losing its relevance for the younger generation.

According to BBM statistics sited in the Maclean’s article, radio listenership and profits are as strong as ever and the percentage of the population that has access to radio is in the low-90s. However, the BBM stats also showed that while the average Canadian spends 17 and a half hours per week listening to the radio, that number drops to 12 hours per week among 17 to 24-years-olds. In fact, the number of hours spent listening to radio among that younger age bracket is declining three times faster than the national average.

There is a chicken and the egg scenario here. Are young music fans not listening to radio because they don’t hear any new music, or is there no new music because young music fans aren’t listening?

As Farough explained to Maclean’s, Toronto station The Edge’s average listener is 30-years-old and “grew up on ‘90s music and they still want to hear it, so that’s what we give them.”

That’s all fine and good in the short-term, but what happens when the current crop of 18-year-old music fans turn 30 and Nirvana can officially be categorized as “classic rock”? For one, these listeners will have no attachment to any radio station because no radio station ever played music directed to them and, second, radio programmers will have a very limited working knowledge of what songs have a sentimental or nostalgic appeal for this age group.

That is why some are rightfully calling for a revitalized effort toward music discovery. “The [music] discovery process on TV is running full tilt,” writes Dan Halyburton, EVP at McVay, Cook and Associates, which advises newspapers, radio stations, and magazines on developing their interactive divisions. “If every radio station found just a couple of artists that they truly thought would speak to their audience and committed to make them ‘important’ to their audience, Radio could make a difference and our time honoured role as a musical discovery medium could be preserved. There is more corporate influence in playlists today than since the days of [radio programmer] Bill Drake. I don’t believe for a second that there will be a wholesale change, but if individual stations made ‘Discovery’ a goal, Artists, Stations and, most importantly, our listeners would all WIN.”

Halyburton’s evaluation touches on key aspect that is necessary to get indie music back on the radio and breaking new music a priority. As music fans, we can’t expect radio stations to start playing new music out of sense of duty, as Farough made painfully clear. But if radio stations realize that playing at least some indie music makes long-term business sense, then don’t be surprised if you start hearing White Rabbits, or whoever else you’re into, on the local new rock station.

Then again, this is only necessary if music fans actually care what gets played on the radio or even if new rock radio survives. The more I think about it, the more I agree with Farough. It isn’t radio’s job to break bands, that job has been taken over by the blogs and online magazines. But it is a role that radio once held and is giving up at its own expense. But for us fans, as long as there is new music and we can find it and hear whenever we want, does it really matter where it’s coming from? For us, no, it doesn’t, but it should matter a great deal for people like Farough. If only he could realize it.

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